Dhaka to Darsana
The day was dark. Dirty silver clouds created a smooth ceiling above, greying the world. Our train to Darsana was due at 6am and already the station squirmed with life. Mosquitos swarmed like flies at a dead carcass. Legless cripples shuffled across the station floor, dragging their torso with one arm and extending the other up to the waists of waiting people, moaning for sympathy. A young boy led a blind Muslim man in a white cap and gown, stopping to let him recite a plea for pittance.
A train arrived a few minutes before six, crawling to a stop and rolling backwards a metre as people already began alighting. I thought for a brief moment that our train was on time; that all I had heard of the un-reliability of Bangladeshi transport had been a lie. The ideology was scattered by Solomon; ours would be late, of course.
The whistle blew and the train crept away as a smattering of large raindrops hammered the metal roof of the station. The sound was like a train rattling across a track junction and the skies darkened further. By the time the last carriage had pulled past, the rain stopped, but with the darkness still above, it would not be the end of it. Solomon looked at the timetable board and returned with news of a three-hour delay for our train. We headed out for breakfast and tea, passing the time and feeding ourselves.
After rutis and a poached egg, we returned to the station, ambling across to the waiting room. Inside, seventeen heads lay twisted on shoulders and hands, their bodies slumped and awkward in their chairs. Even in the early morning air, a room with no fans soon became stifling and stagnant, sending its occupants into an uncomfortable sleep. Beneath a row of seats against a wall, I saw the boney bodies of two children, their ribbed chests rising and falling ever so slightly. They lay on the stone floor over the rails of the seats above, naked but for a dirty cloth tied around their waist.
Next to me sat Ashraf-Uz-Zaman, an attorney of law in Dhaka. I told him about our work at the Dhaka Project, teaching English for the last seventeen days. He asked if I lived with my parents and siblings. In England, I did, here in Bangladesh I was without family.
He nodded and said, “I think in England it is often like this. Your culture always saying ‘alone is good, lonely is best.’”
In Bangladesh it is very different. Families often depend on one son or daughter for income and will try to live together in the same room or house.
Ashraf continued, “My income is forty-thousand, maybe five-hundred pounds, and rent and food maybe one-hundred and fifty pounds. For apartment and electricity and all, you know. Maybe one-hundred pounds. With the other four hundred, I am not using. That goes to mother, father, sisters, you know?”
Ashraf had an average sized family—a brother and two sisters—who lived outside of Dhaka in a smaller town. He travelled in to Dhaka each week and stayed in an apartment whilst working as a lawyer before heading back to his hometown.
“Provide for the family is very important. In England you, everyone, is alone, provide for self, not for others. Even mother, father, grandfather, must provide themselves.” He spoke with certainty and passion.
“Which is better? Bengali way or England?” My question made him lean back in his chair and smile.
“Ah, and that is the important question. Very big question.” He did not have a definitive answer but he had his opinions. He told me that the first societies were built on sharing, on dependence, on helping out your peers and elders. Without this, there could be no society. He said the Bangladeshi way was much closer to being this societal way. Depending on each other and providing for others built a strong community within families.
After staying in Ratanpur for a week, I realised these communal values reached further than direct family; neighbours and nearby friends become a part of the same household and a network of support builds up.
Ashraf went on to say that the way Bangladeshi families operated was more natural, that building a society was more natural.
“I’m not saying Bengali is best way, but it is more natural, you know?”
I couldn’t disagree, but I tried to put forward my own argument for the English—and Western—loneliness and selfishness. Being alone and separate enables people to become self-supportive and independent, able to fend and think for themselves.
An announcement faded across the platform and filtered into the waiting room. Ashraf translated for me, saying our train would be arriving in maybe ten minutes and advised passengers to make their way to the platform now. He thanked me for the conversation, handing me his business card and inviting Fiona and myself to visit the courtroom with a tour from himself, should we be able to make it. As I was strapping my rucksack to my back, a second man got up to shake my hand too. He had been sitting nearby and listening intently to the entire conversation.
Ashraf said that he wanted to thank me as he had been listening to the English and trying to learn from it. We departed the stuffy room and walked to the edge of the platform, waiting there for a further twenty minutes before our train rolled into view. There was a complete absence of urgency, despite being four and a half hours late.
We sat in the first class carriage, a dirty car with rows of seats with the stuffing squashed and the coverings loose. Rusty fans hung from the ceiling and a few old air-conditioners hung from the walls, rattling and whirring away with condensation dribbling down them. The windows were small and square, moulding at the edges and smeared with grease and scratches. Waiters donned in smudged white chef’s uniforms wobbled up and down the gangway, balancing pots of tea and plates of sandwiches wrapped in white tissue. Nearby, a family of six—mother and father; grandfather and mother; an uncle and two children—took up two rows. The grandfather had a stomach problem that left him belching every few minutes.
The journey was miserable for the first half, streams of rainwater running down the windows and dulling the landscape. The train stopped at intervals, often with no platform in sight, and crossed over a wide river, islets and silt beds visible in the low water. As we neared Darsana, the sun finally broke through, drying the land and lighting our way. Our station stop had no platform so we alighted on to the track and walked along the raised embankment to the nearby level crossing. The train passed and we hopped on to a bicycle rickshaw, different to those in Dhaka.
It had two back wheels with a platform of slatted wood attached on top. Towards the front, the driver sat on the amputated head of a bicycle and pedalled us along from there.
We left the house and headed out the back way to a field. Passing a cluster of small wooden huts, we moved on to the rim of a large pond, almost empty of water in the summer months. Following the path around the perimeter, we took a tarmacked walkway towards a main street beyond. We were in the grounds of the sugar mill, all this area consisted of fields and trees, and in front of us, on the other side of the small road, a line of modest houses stretched away in both directions. This was the accommodation for the workforce of the sugar mill. It looked more like the grounds of a stately English lord, with curving tracks and lines of palms, neat and clean, running along the network of pathways.
Under our feet, a disused railway line extended towards the sugar mill building itself. This would have been the lifeline of the industry, transporting all goods and materials to and from the sugar mill and connecting the produce to the rest of Bangladesh. Now it was empty, except for more palms growing between the sleepers and grasses tufting up over the tracks themselves.
The street followed the houses, headed towards the main railway line in the distance. We approached a metal gate. Monju talked through the bars with the guards, convincing them, I think, to let us through. Beyond, in the fading light, I could make out a driveway lined with smaller palms, tree ferns, and an array of flowering shrubs: tulips, roses and orchids.
To our left stood a grand building, obviously British in influence with whitewashed walls, large windows and a huge porch with circular steps leading down to the driveway. The large oak doors opened, revealing a wide hallway with a stone staircase reaching up to the second storey above us. A butler led us through to an adjoining room adorned with plump couches along every wall. We sat down in silence, not wanting to disturb the quiet hum of the fans above.
The room held a variety of ornaments from around the world: a jade dragon from China; an oversized hand fan from Japan; ornate vases that seemed taken from a museum; traditional Bangladeshi patterns in simple poster colours; and an old European painting depicting three women by a sun-dappled stream in old-fashioned lace dresses. Above one of the windows hung two portraits: the Prime Minister; and her Father.
Mr Shudoshon walked into the room and bid us good evening. Monju spoke with him for a while in Bangla. I could pick out a few words and heard Fiona’s name and mine a few times during the conversation, smiling when she mentioned me.
“I have been to England in 1995. I was in north England. Yorkshire,” he had paused before switching to English. “I also visited Buckingham Palace. Very beautiful.”
“Were you working in England? Or just visiting?” Fiona asked.
“No, I was there for training purposes. Management training with the British council.” There was a pause for almost a minute. I took one of the biscuits. It tasted a little like shortbread, but not as sweet. I could hear the crickets outside the window and cautious birdsong. “How do you feel here?”
Fiona replied, “I like it a lot. I have been here before, to my auntie’s house. But for Jake, it’s his first time.”
“How do you feel in Dhaka?”
I grinned, “it’s very busy. Noisy, with lots happening. But here it is much quieter. Much quieter compared to Dhaka.”
I could think of nothing more to say, and Mr Shudoshon offered no further questions to answer.
“My wife isn’t here. She is now in Calcutta. India is very small distance from Darsana.” He said It so matter-of-factly that I could not comment. Thinking of nothing else to say, I complemented his home.
“Thank you. Can you speak Bengali?”
“Olpo. Olpo olpo. Little. Little litte. At the school, we were teaching English, but they also taught me a bit of Bengali.”
Again, stillness filled the room. I scanned the paintings and photographs in the room for a third time, biding the time and desperate for a question to ask him. Thinking of nothing I resorted to confirming that which I already knew, “so you are the owner of the Sugar mill?”
He shook his head slightly, leaning forward in his chair. “The founder was from England. Kelrose industry. Robert Russel Kelrose, the founder of this industry. I am the managing director of this industry. We have a sugar factory. We have a liquor factory. And, now, we are going to start fertilizers. It’s under construction.”
I asked him when the factory was built, when the industry was started. “1938.”
Another minute passed. Fiona, perhaps trying to round things off, thanked Mr Shudoson for his hospitality.
“You are most welcome. Please, have a cup of tea.”
Though I didn’t want one—for fear of continued awkward silences and nothing to say—I thought it would be impolite not to, and accepted. Thankfully, Monju talked him out of it, proclaiming, I think, that it was late and we should get going. He took us back out. Solomon hit a dangling wind-chime in the doorway, apologising profusely as the rest of us ducked around it. He watched us put our shoes and sandals on. He led us back along the curving driveway, past the exuberant garden packed with palms, shrubs, ferns and flowering plants.
I told him his garden was beautiful, even in the evening light. A polite smile skimmed his lips, “but I am alone here.” He had a son at university, studying to become a doctor.
We had reached the gate again and the guards opened it for us. For a moment, he followed us through and I thought he would escort us further, but he stopped a few steps beyond.
“Ok, thank you very much. Goodbye.” He shook our hands left us to the chirping crickets and the dark pathway lined with palm trees on one side and sporadic fluorescent street lights on the other. We didn’t look back.