Beggars

When you look out at the Bangladesh traffic, you see more than just a tumult of cars and a confusion of people, you see a booming, bustling market. Candy floss in Mohammadpur, Lemons and Towels at the Sonargaon signal, Popcorn pretty much everywhere - I wager that you can get most household goods just by taking a tour of Dhaka's streets. Someone, sometime had the bright idea that it may be possible to earn more money if the mass of unoccupied and bored commuters could be exploited. This endeavor can't be said to be an unmitigated success as most people consider them them to be as good as beggars (After all, Orwell said that the sale of such products were 'legalized crimes' as they are just making a nuisance of themselves) and normal beggars - with less competition - get an opportunity to make more money.

I, as a person who normally falls asleep as soon as I enter a car, usually pay little attention to which child raps on my window, whether she cradles a baby or a bag of lemons. Tonight though, with the air-conditioning on full blast, I saw a boy finger the words K L F A on the fogged-up window next to me. I could see he was sweating and it seemed that his hot index finger would release steam on contact. Was it a code? You see these types of things all the time in movies, you know, when the 'random' civilian marks a car so that it can be identified as a target. Stranger things have happened in this country, but somehow I doubted it. Was he trying to damage the car window by leaving indelible marks with his dirty fingers, as my chauffeur presumed? Not likely. It didn't seem like much of an advertisement of the popcorn he held limply in his hand either. To me it felt defiant, that though he may not be in a silver Mitsubishi or have a comfortable bed like the one awaiting me at home, he too could write English and we were not better than him.

08/07/06
Dhaka

Mind Without Fear

There are some poems that just suit the moment or the emotions you are feeling. Great poems though seem fitting at all times, like this one. Amazingly, the translation is as good as the original..I suppose that's what happens when the poet himself does it! "Mind Without Fear Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake." - Rabindranath Tagore Gitanjali