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Tuesday, March 3, 2020
I have a new Instagram account devoted to my travels in India. Take a look here:
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Monday, June 26, 2017
Monday, January 30, 2017
Dhaka, Bangladesh
DHAKA, BANGLADESH (Nov./Dec. 2016)
Man selling lunghis and pomegranates
I'll confess that part of my impetus to
visit Bangladesh was to be a show-off. I'm drawn to places, especially big
cities, with bad reputations, and get a certain thrill from learning to love
them. I'm happy to get my fix of nature from the Discovery Channel. Pollution,
crime, poverty are my magnets, along with good food, lively street life, and
overt displays of religious fervor. Having considered myself a big scaredy cat
most of my life, I find the role of urban explorer allows my inner tough guy to
shine.
My training years were in New York City,
arriving at age 19 and living (only briefly--I headed uptown after being mugged
twice) in the Lower East Side, on a street, I later learned, that had more
known drug addicts than any place in the Manhattan.
My twenty years of exploring and writing
about Mexico City have made it easy for me to adjust to broken sidewalks, total
lack of zoning restrictions, numbing traffic jams, and crowded metros. Multiple
trips to Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai, Delhi, and Calcutta honed my skills for
walking on the wild side.
So what was this thing in the pit of my
stomach as I contemplated my arrival in Dhaka?
Did it have anything to do with the New
York Times article my friend Vivian sent me just before I left, calling
Dhaka "a traffic jam that never ends?" Or was it the one about the
terrorist attack in the tourist-friendly café? The collapse of a clothing
sweatshop that destroyed a whole city block? Or this article naming Dhaka one of the ten worst tourist destinations in the world?
My knowledge of Bangladesh did not go much
beyond a vague memory of a benefit concert
organized by Ringo Starr in 1971, the devastating famine that followed a few
years later, and scattered reports of overloaded ferries sinking in murky
waters.
One thing that living in Mexico City has
taught me is that the bad news about a place makes a much stronger impression
on most of us than the good news. But it rarely paints a complete picture. So,
in spite of arriving in Dhaka and thinking "this has to be the ugliest
place on earth," we decided to stick around, ending up spending 8 nights there.
Now I dream of going back.
Our taxi ride from the airport confirmed
the traffic reports. Moments of stasis alternated with rapid spurts of forward
motion, and about 90 minutes later we arrived at our hotel.
I had chosen the Hotel 71 based on its location near to
Old Dhaka, which my Lonely Planet guidebook described as 'unrivalled
chaos'. We dropped off our bags, headed
out into the fray, and immediately felt happy.
One of our first 'sights' was a
construction crew, attired in fetching plaid lunghis (wrap around skirts) operating a jerry-rigged water pump on
makeshift bamboo scaffolding. Construction became a familiar sight in Dhaka,
where it seems that half the streets are being dug up, and buildings in stages
of construction or decay seem to outnumber finished ones.
Our encounters with people begin at once,
with a mix of blank stares, greetings of Hello, Welcome to Bangladesh, Where
are you from? What is your name? It felt like being on a reception line at a
wedding as guest of honor. In our eleven days in Bangladesh we only saw four
foreigners that we could identify as tourists, so it was easy to understand
what made us unusual. Of all the countries I have visited, no place has made me
feel so welcome as Bangladesh.
The first few days I walked around astounded
at the physical ugliness of the city. Unlike India, where ornate Mughal era
buildings interrupt the urban rot, Dhaka has very little that is old. New
construction (and there's lots of it) seems to have been designed by whoever
finished last in architecture class. Abandoned, half-build construction is
found throughout the city, suggesting a boom and bust economy, a tug-of-war
between moving forward and collapsing into an exhausted pile (a sensation I
often experienced here).
There's a lot of what I would call
dystopian architecture, which perhaps once looked slick and glitzy or never
quite made it there. After recoiling in horror at the grim and dreary aspect of
the city, I started seeing it as a geometric background for the very colorful
street theater. Making my way along broken streets became a sport.
We stated in several places in Dhaka--we
got an upgrade to a larger room at the Hotel Victory (photo below), which was
quite comfortable. Outside chaos reigned.
(American architect Louis
Kahn's Government Assembly building is the city's most famous structure,
but since Parliament was in session we were not allowed in.)
Sadarghat is the bustling riverside dock with dozens of ferries like this one lined up.
But when my focused changed from the big
picture to the details is when it really started to be fun. I began to find beauty in unexpected places,
even traffic jams.
Traffic in Dhaka is a form of improvised
choreography, jazz on wheels. With tens of thousands of bicycle rickshaws
plying the streets, everything slows down to their speed, making it easy for
pedestrians to barge right into the mix. The sweet tinkling of their bells and
the Muslim call to prayer provide background music, adding an odd element of
charm to the inferno. (Click on the
image below to see video).
ADD VIDEO
There are no stoplights in Dhaka, although
at a few large intersections policemen keep things under strict control with a
slight wave of their hand. It remained one of the city's mysteries how and why
these barely perceptible hand movements were met with such total obedience.
Everywhere else it seemed like a free-for-all.
Although I only saw one small accident--a
hefty woman was tilted off her rickshaw by a passing truck--the evidence is
clear that driving in the city is a contact sport. Just take a look at the
buses.
Dinged, dented, battered and bashed, mangled, scratched and crumpled,
the battle scarred public transport buses of Dhaka wear their wounds
with pride.
Paintings like this one by German artist Gerhard Richter sell for millions:
The seat of a bicycle rickshaw offers the
perfect opportunity to observe fashion--many of the drivers were quite nattily
dressed. Most wore lunghis, long wrap
around skirts, accessorized with sashes and scarves. Mismatched plaids and
vibrant colors were in style. Even though these guys are laboring at the lower
rungs of the economic ladder, it looks like they give more than a passing
thought to what they are going to wear to work. In the upscale areas of Banani
and Gulshan in North Dhaka, where we spent less time, the lunghi is less common--western style has taken over.
Ultimately what makes Dhaka fascinating is
the street life. The so-called sights were usually ho-hum, but getting there
and back was always an adventure.
The pink Ahsan Manzil, a former nawab's palace,
now a museum, is one of the few real tourist sights in town.
You don't see many women on the street
compared to the number of men, so I can only assume they're home cooking and
cleaning. But it's rare to see a woman in purdah and those you see often seem
self-assured and open. This beauty is one of the few who actually started a
conversation with us and allowed a photo.
Sign for a dental clinic
Mysterious street scene.
Lakshmi in a Hindu scultpure studio.
Bamboo is used as scaffolding, even on
high-rise buildings.
In front of a butcher's shop.
Daily newpapers are pasted to the wall for
easy reading.
I met this one-man walking coffee shop and
had a cup after lunch one day.
Bicycle rickshaws are the most highly
decorative element in Dhaka.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
ORISSA (India)
Travel date: November 2014
INDIA: Encounters in Rural Orissa
The Rajah of Panchkote's tiger-hunting
lodge has seen better days. But as his great grandson Debjit Singh Deo relates
the story of the family estate, the opulence of that bygone era springs to
life.
"Our family palace in West Bengal had
the largest chandelier in Asia at the time--it took three elephants to hoist it
into place. There was a customized Rolls Royce, several houses by the sea, and
this," he says with a sweep of his hand. "Once the largest private
game reserve in the whole state of Orissa."
The lodge, built in the 1930's and known as
Kila Dalijoda (Fort in the Forest), was the family's summer home, an escape
from the stifling heat of West Bengal. Back then, the rajah traveled with more
than fifty servants at his command, including cooks, priests, doctors,
musicians and dancing girls, flower arrangers, masseurs, car mechanics, a technician
to maintain his collection of clocks, a specialist to prepare his hookah, and
of course, someone to skin the tigers. The queen and her entourage had their
own staff.
"Our ancestry goes back to 81
A.D.," Debjit states proudly. "But after Independence, the family's
fortune declined."
Coal mines, the rajah's main source of
wealth, were nationalized, and land was expropriated for an elephant
sanctuary (the tigers had been hunted to near extinction), reducing the family
holdings from 11,000 acres to 80. The Rolls Royce and the chandelier were
auctioned off. Most of the land is now devoted to rice paddies, cultivated by
local villagers, who pay a small tax to the estate.
The house was abandoned for more than
thirty years when Debjit arrived in 2005 with his new bride Namrata.
"There were trees growing on the roof," she recalls, laughing. "And roots were dangling down into the dining room."
Rats, bats, pigeons and lizards inhabited the upper floors, and the ground
floor was taken over by the local land revenue office--it's still there.
"In a way it was a blessing that the
tax men came," Debjit explains. "Otherwise the whole house would have been taken away, stone by
stone--anything portable was carted off by the villagers long ago."
The house, made of local volcanic stone,
was designed in the somber European style fashionable at the time, with none of
the ornate Mughal details often associated with India. Debjit and Namrata made
part of the upstairs into an apartment for themselves and their 6-year old
daughter, decorating it with period furniture. Two guest rooms are simply
furnished with antique beds and old photographs. What looks like a fireplace is
actually an old safe, where the raja stashed his jewels.
"We aim to keep the estate
self-sustaining, as it was in the old days," Debjit states proudly. All of
the gas for cooking comes from methane, produced in a simple cistern utilizing
cow manure. The cows also provide milk, cheese and yogurt, made fresh daily.
Most of the vegetables and rice are grown within view of the kitchen.
Rooms are cooled in summer by thick
curtains fashioned from aromatic twigs of the khus tree. Through a network of
small tubes, water drips down the curtains, cooling and scenting the air as it
passes through.
Although Namrata claims not to be a great
cook, the food she serves from her simple kitchen is superb. "We eat
mostly vegetarian," she explains, "and occasionally lamb and
quail." Chicken is not permitted in the house because the property is
dedicated to the Hindu deity Bagalamata, in whose presence chickens are not
allowed. "We can eat chicken outside of the house if we want, but never
inside."
Debjit is keen to show the traditional life
of rural Orissa, so after touring the estate we head off to some surrounding
tribal villages. As we walk down the lane away from his house, something incredible occurs. Gone is the familiar cacophony of India. As
far as one can see in either direction there is neither a vehicle nor a person,
not a sound to be heard except the chirping of a few birds.
Orissa, one of the poorest states in India,
is home to many indigenous tribes, each with its own customs, languages and
religious beliefs (most are animists who worship nature). We visit the village
of Kuchila Nuagon, inhabited by the Munda tribe. A scraggly tulsi tree, sacred
to the Munda, guards the entrance of the compound. The
mud-brick houses have thatched roofs and walls painted with geometric and
floral designs. Floors are recovered weekly with a thin layer of fine mud that
is burnished to a smooth, clean surface. With the exception of a few plastic
buckets, almost every object in sight is hand made. Most villagers are off in
the fields, but a few are busy husking rice or collecting firewood to sell in
the weekly market. A team of oxen yoked to an old millstone grinds wheat.
We visit the local goshala, a
combination orphanage/old age home for cows. Young cows from families too poor
to feed them, or old bulls beyond breeding age, are sent here. The place is
luxurious by village standards, and spotlessly clean.
The remote Sabar tribe village of Banjhiama
is an hour's walk through the jungle foothills of an elephant reserve. Debjit
had mentioned recent rampages that destroyed some local rice paddies, so the
occasional elephant droppings cause a bit of alarm. What would happen if one
showed up? "Don't worry, he says reassuringly, "They only come out at
night."
As we emerge from the forest, a serene view
of rice paddies appears before us. A few women are harvesting rice, the
thatched roofs of their village visible in the distance. Suddenly one woman
starts screaming, racing to the edge of the paddy, waving her arms frantically.
"Monkeys," Debjit explains. "They're a real nuisance here. They
just tear up the rice plants, and don't even eat them."
A few dusty children and an old woman
crouching on the ground, her black wrinkled skin gleaming in the sunlight,
greet us as we enter the village. Seeing Debjit her face lights up in a broad
smile, exposing a mouthful of teeth stained red from chewing betel nuts.
"Her husband was a guide for my
grandfather when he came to hunt tigers. I represent the family to them. Nobody
else from the outside world comes here. There is no medical care, no help from
the government. So they consider my presence a great honor."
With Debjit as interpreter, I ask how old
she is; she has no idea. "When will you come back to visit us?" she asks.
"Next year," I answer hopefully. "I'll probably be dead by
then," she says with a big grin.
On the way home, we pass a simple roadside
hut selling vegetables and paan, a pungent mixture of spices
wrapped in a leaf, used by locals much like chewing tobacco. A few men greet us
in a surprisingly friendly manner, and offer a taste of rassi, the local
liquor made from rice. "An Australian woman who was here recently insisted
on trying it and was sick for days," Debjit warns. "It's a real
problem with the local men. It's one of their few entertainments, but it wrecks
their bodies and causes all kinds of problems at home with their wives."
Another day we visit the Alekh Mahima
Dharma temple in the town of Joranda to witness a fire ceremony. Founded in 1876
by Mahima Gosain, this monotheistic sect attracts followers from poorer classes
of society, and is particularly strong in tribal areas of Orissa. Sadhus, holy
men who renounce worldly goods (including most of their clothing), oversee the
temple complex and tend the eternal flame, which has been
maintained for nearly 150 years. Unusual for India, no
idols are found in the Mahima temple, as they believe there is no possible
visual representation of God.
In spite of their otherworldly looks, the
sadhus turned out to be a funny bunch of guys, eager to have their picture
taken, showing off their long hair, smiling and laughing amongst themselves and
with us, clearly expressing their teachings, which stress peace and brotherly
love.
During the final meal with the Deo family,
the couple tells of their arranged marriage. "We can only marry within the
royal Rajput lineage, and astrology is very important," Namrata explains
as she serves steaming, hand rolled chapati. "I had a very unusual chart,
so it took a long time to find someone like Debjit. I tell people he's one in a
million. "
According to one popular guidebook, the
state of Orissa receives only about 1000 western visitors each year. Aside from
the temple at Konark, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it lacks high profile
tourist destinations. The real treasures here are memories of the people encountered in this remote corner of
Orissa.
To arrange to stay at Kila Dalijoda,
contact Debjit by email at debjitsinghdeo@yahoo.co.in
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