And then the rain came

We have entered the monsoon season. It’s been raining in Dhaka like crazy and some of the streets in the city had a few feet of water flooding them.

There is nothing as lovely as a monsoon rain on an unbearably hot, dusty afternoon. All of a sudden you hear a deep rumble of thunder from the skies, signaling the onset of the monsoon rains. I have never seen rain like in Bangladesh. The clouds release their loads in torrents. Sheets of water hurry down so hard and so fast that visibility goes down to nothing. There is no wind, so it is just a constant downpour that mingles with the humid, warm day.

As people run for cover, I can see some laugh. Smiles come out as we marvel at the rains, which bring out Bangladesh’s beauty.

Back home, the rain is cold and unwelcoming. You just stay home with a hot drink and a good book, seeking the comfort of the bed. In Bangladesh, umbrellas are actually used when sun is out and absent in the rain. Instead, people welcome the water. Sure enough, in minutes, the streets are flooded. But the dust and pollution are gone, the heat has dissipated.

You can actually breath the air once again!

Too Close for comfort

Ain't showing affection great?

Sure. Up to a point!

But in the Desh - the line of demarcation is not always clearly defined. We took a trip to Bashundhara mall yesterday with among others, our newly arrived friends and their eight month old baby. The little lady is nothing short of adorable. It's very hard to resist pinching her cheeks and lots of the Bangladeshis do just that. A little annoying at times, but "When in Rome..."

However, at the entrance of the mall, after going thru the check point, the security guard starts playing with the baby. Cheek pinching, sweet talking, etc. Except that this time, she finishes with a determined kiss on the mouth, all this under the horrified eyes of the mother.

A little more affection then one would wish for!

The glorious, magical Dhaka commissary

One of the privileges we are so grateful for here in Dhaka is definitely the US Commissary. This is the grocery store that serves the diplomatic personnel. It is about the size of a small neighborhood market store and carries most of the brands and stuff you would see in the US.

Not all the foreign diplomats in Dhaka have the same privilege. The Canadians don't have anything similar and cannot shop there. For the most part the prices are comparable, but there will be a premium for items that need to be transported in a refrigerated container all the way from US. However, it is comforting to shop for something familiar once in a while.

The Bangladeshi markets are just fine and anyone would be able to get along great once they learn how to navigate them. But I have to tell you, it is a nice to walk into the Commissary and see the frozen pizza in the refrigerated case, the Mac ‘n Cheese, Tostitos, cheese, ice cream, frozen OJ, soups, Reeses Pieces, garlic bread pretzels, frozen salmon fillets, Dr Pepper.

And don't forget the virtually impossible to come by here in Dhaka: the ALCOHOL (any beer beer, wine or hard liquor you can think of at duty free price). And yes, the bacon Vlad is so found of!

Plan B

Taka has already reached 78 to a US dollar, getting stronger from a level of 84 per dollar. That is good news, right?

On the parallel market, the country currency is shifting into the other direction. An US Dollar will cost you 81 takas.
With a strong influx of hard currency from foreign workers remittances this is counter intuitive. So what is happening?

Answer is simple. Rich Bangladeshis are already voting with their feet and they are buying abroad in Singapore, Dubai or Kuala Lumpur. They learned their lesson from the anti-corruption crackdown during the last military backed caretaker government. No matter the price of foreign currency, they need an exit plan and a rainy day fund.

From liberation hero to villain to redeemed father of a nation

Mention Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's name to a Bangladeshi and you can rest assured you will not be bored hearing the stories.

The one nicknamed Bangabandhu (the friend of the Bengalis) is really the founder of Bangladesh, the father of the nation (one of my Bengali friends joked that the mother is yet to be found). In other words, the closest this country has to a George Washington.

The issue is the once revered father turned dictator and somehow "managed" in only three and a half years, to go from savior of the Bengali people and their leader in the bloody war against Pakistan in 1971, to a dictator surrounded by corruption.

Mujib was a born leader, able to draw a million cheering nationalists when he arrived in Dhaka from a Pakistani prison. Unfortunately, his qualities as a manager did not match his leadership ones. He struggled to address the challenges of poverty and unemployment in the country, coupled with rampant corruption. In the aftermath of the 1974 famine, he banned other political parties and most of the newspapers. He declared himself as President under a one party system, destroying the parliamentary government and declaring martial law.

When Mujib was assassinated by a group of junior army officers on August 15, 1975, along with most of his family, very few Bengalis mourned.

His house is now a museum. All the rooms are cordoned off, everything covered with plastic. The steps where his body fell are covered with glass sheets, supposedly preserving bloodstains underneath. Bullet holes are 

covered with plates. And there are the odd pictures with the likes of Fidel Castro and Leonid Brezhnev.

Over all, another sad story of rise and fall.

The street battlefield

I started driving (only until our driver becomes available)! One might wonder what the big deal about that is.

Well, I will try to describe what it is like driving in Dhaka. Imagine two gigantic armies - SUVs, cars, buses, motorcycles - down to infantry, thousands of pedestrians and rickshaws. Then imagine them now forced into long columns coming toward each other, on a narrow path full of obstacles - potholes, trenches, open sewage holes. Imagine them passing through each other, trying just somehow to keep to the left but, occupying the whole road.

Put yourself in the middle of of this ocean of humans and wheels. You have some measure of protection offered by the car itself. Mine in particular has the sturdy metal bumpers and you bump into someone or something at least several times per trip.
The only real rule in this encounter with the road is "Might is Right". If a truck is coming through, it is coming through. Most vehicles fight for space, but they do manage to push through most of the times without bumping anything else. The smaller the vehicle, the more it has to give way and the more smarter it has to be.
I am pretty sure Darwin could have written his theories here as well. If you can't drive, you get driven, or take a rickshaw.

As for myself, I am becoming more Bangladeshi then Bangladeshis themselves. I now have no issues driving on the wrong side (that does not apply to Cristina who is getting close to a heat attack). I can honk my horn in Bangla as well. Negotiating these streets is a specialty art, and Radu bhai is becoming the king of the road.

Jahaj Bari - the boat house

One of the famous landmarks in Dhaka is this red house with a tall tower like minaret right on the Dhanmondi lake. The locals call it “Jahaj Bari”(boat house). The huge structure with its domes reminded us of Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom  palaces.

This magnificent palace is owned by Sher-e-Khwaja - a religious leader and business tycoon. Must have been a pretty productive religion...

We got wheels!

We bought a car!!!

Driving in Dhaka is a bit of a dilemma. While we looked for a car we had a hard time deciding between getting the biggest SUV possible – intimidating – and getting something small enough to squeeze through the crowd.

We live in the posh area of town, Baridhara. Yet, two blocks off the street could be a dirt road. Numerous times even on a paved street you can't find any resemblance of concrete. So we decided we needed an SUV. After all, MIGHT IS RIGHT on the Dhaka streets!

Traffic is a major issue. Roads built for two lanes most of the times accommodate four. I can't logically explain how, but I see it all the times. Passing on a two-lane road doesn't mean waiting until no one is coming, it just means getting all the vehicles to fit side-by-side. 

Traffic is pretty much a given. People you talk to measure distances in both with- and without-traffic times: “It takes 10 minutes to get there without traffic; about an hour and a half with.”
So, there a number of implications for car buying. First, almost everyone who has a car also hires a driver. This seemed strange to me, after all I am buying a car to drive it. After talking to people, we were convinced that the reduced stress and lower blood pressure are worth paying a driver to do it for you. So we’re hiring a driver. This means that when buying a car, you should take a close look and see how comfy you feel in the back-seat not in front.

The second implication of the traffic is that all the cars have massive metal bumpers. They’re like big metal cages, both front and back. In the fender-benders they may save you some paint. But most off all, they are there to demand RESPECT!

So how do you actually buy a car in Bangladesh? Well, you can buy from another diplomat who is leaving or you look to Japan – thousands of used cars, relatively inexpensive, and they also drive on the left side. It is a little weird even for me (who I am diagnosed online shopaholic) that you can actually buy used cars online, just like shopping on Amazon. You go online, look at the pictures, ire them 15 thousand and you get a car on the boat. Unlike Amazon, you don’t get free shipping, but in our case, the Embassy would have picked up the tab.

We went the first route, found a car from a diplomat leaving post. Here’s the car we picked! Not too big, but still big enough to get some respect on the mean streets of Dhaka!

The night when fate is decided for upcoming year - Shab-e-Barat

We are getting to celebrate a holiday we had not even heard before coming to Bangladesh, Shab-e-Barat.

Muslims across the country will observe the holy Shab-e-Barat tonight with late night prayers, recitations from the Holy Quran. They will be seeking blessings from Allah, the almighty, peace and progress for them and their families.

It is on this night when Allah, the almighty, decides the destiny of all people for the coming year, including whether a person lives or dies,.

And of course, how can one celebrate in the Desh without food? There is a lot eating and also distributing food to friend and neighbors.

And yes, we have been blessed to have friends who thought of us. We have so much food now that I honestly believe we could survive a month without ever leaving our home for supplies.

Halwa

Bangladesh—where’s that?

Bangladesh - where's that? That was the question that very often encountered when we talked to friends or acquaintances about our first mission.

I remember at that time reading an article about the challenges the immigrants from Bangladesh face in the United States.http://www.bu.edu/today/2011/probing-the-bangladeshi-diaspora/


The article discussed Bangladeshi immigrants and how many are over qualified for the low-level jobs they take in the US, in hopes that their children will have a better live. However, after the 9/11 attacks, most of these Bangladeshi immigrants are met with anti-terrorist sentiments and face adverse health and economic conditions due to their jobs and relocation into major cities. The article makes the statement:

"Bangladesh is kind of invisible in the U.S.,” says Kibria, who, like many of her fellow Bangladeshis, is sometimes mistaken for Hispanic. Or, in the eyes of many Westerners, Bangladeshis inhabit a limbo between East Indians and Pakistanis."

As an immigrant myself, I have nothing but respect and admiration for people like them. For the ones I had the privilege to meet, U.S. is their only country, and they have an undivided loyalty towards their adopted motherland. I feel that, like myself, their patriotism for the United States is probably more mature than that of many born Americans just because they made the conscious decision to become a citizen of the country rather than getting born into it.

An Yankee island in Dhaka- The American club

As I have been writing, Dhaka is not the easiest place to live. There are all sorts of reasons to it, but bottom line with the lack of green spaces, Dhaka badly needs a refuge. And it’s called the American Club. 

There are all sorts of expat clubs. The Brits have one. And so do the Germans. The Nordics bundled themselves together and set aside differences between Danish, Finns and Swedes and formed a Nordic club. Canadians have one too, aye?

But for now, I’ll just stick with MY club, the American one. When we first arrived here, we thought we died and gone to heaven. I had never belonged to a private club before in my life. Rows upon rows of blooming flowers. Green grass in the otherwise brown and dry climate, stretching over a city of dust and rubble. Ladies in two piece swimming suites in country where they are fresh meat on the street if they do not cover themselves, even in the raging-hot summer temperatures.

The American Club: a place where an American can be an American. It has tennis courts, a gym, and a pool. And, more importantly, their menu includes hamburgers and fries, macaroni and cheese, a weekly barbecue, and seasonal pumpkin pie. Nachos, tacos, Cheetos and Doritos  It does not get more American then this. And don't forget the drinks, the alcohol! In a country where alcohol was not permitted, the club has Happy Hours. And that’s right – all prices are in dollars, so you know how much money you are spending.
For my fellow Americans, the Club is a refuge in times of deepest, darkest depression – and rightly so. It is the only place to feel normal – sort of (because the mosquitoes and bad air, sadly, did not park themselves outside the Club’s door). It is the only place to serve the kind of food that is so bad for you and your health, but tastes so yummy. You might not imagine they would be so hard to come by on the mean streets of Dhaka, but of course you would be wrong. 

Laying in the sun by the pool on a Saturday afternoon reading a book on my Kindle with a beer in the other hand, it suddenly made sense to me why mom's dishes tasted so good even when they were burned.

More Bangladeshi humor

More Bangladeshi humor: A voting booth made out of Playboy fabric in Rajshahi!

Unfortunately, I can't take credit for the following one. I completely missed it during my visit to Panam city.

Bangladeshi Taj Mahal (or "Imitation is the highest form of flattery")

In one of my previous posts I talked about knock offs. Cell phones, expensive shoes, fancy clothes, cookies.

But could one copy an entire famous building? Well, if you leave it to a Bangladeshi, yes, everything is possible!

Taj Mahal is one of the seven wonders of World. Every year, millions and millions of people flock to the Taj Mahal in the Indian city of Agra for their chance to have a glimpse of the tomb which a Mughal emperor made for his beloved queen.

Taking inspiration from the popularity of Taj, a Bangladeshi filmmaker created a replica just outside Dhaka. Ahsanullah Moni motivation? He simply wanted his countrymen to experience the beauty of the Indian monument even if they were too poor to travel to see the original. And the good news? Because of the modern technology, the replica's cost was only $58m.

Initially, the Indian High Commission in Bangladesh wanted to sue for copyright infringement; however, it later concluded that the replica was unlikely to deter visitors from visiting the original. I guess the original will stay original!

The Lost City of Panam Nagar: Sonargaon

A "short" distance from Dhaka lies one of Bangladesh’s most impressive historical treasures: the ancient city of Sonargaon. Sonargaon (literal meaning ‘golden village’) was the capital of eastern Bengal under the Shahi Sultan rulers of Bengal during medieval age. It survives as a township, but it looks like a ghost city called Painam Nagar (Panam City).

Painam Nagar is a single line of narrow street made up of 50 once-lavish mansions owned by rich Hindu merchants. In those days, no city at the east Bengal was near as wealthy as Panam. All the buildings in the city were built facing a single road. The whole city is surrounded with artificial canals. These canals were dug to protect the city from any outside attack. After the 1965 war of India-Pakistan, Hindu businessmen started to leave for India to elude imminent death, leaving their mansions to the care of poor tenants.

Decades of political strife throughout Bangladesh hasn’t allowed the merchants to return. These lavish mansions have fallen into decay, their brick walls crumbling along with their rich historical past., and the city was deserted. World monument fund listed Panam city in the World 100 ruined city in 2006.

At the back of every mansion there is a lake or pond. Decrepit it may be, this once grandiose city still manages to convey its past. You can't escape his sensation of awe that embraces you all throughout the visit. And if you listen closely enough you might even hear the sound of forgotten times when Moghul nawabs beckoned temple dancers for lavish court entertainment.