David, Solomon’s father, decided that Solomon’s hair was too long; that it should be more like mine, or Tom’s—Fiona’s younger brother with short hair—or Dan’s—Fiona’s older brother, also with short hair. I asked Fiona where he was hoping to get his hair cut.

“Don’t know, walk down the street, I guess.”

I couldn’t remember seeing any hairdressers in the vicinity, nor could I picture a barber’s salon amidst the wattle and daub houses and bamboo picket fences of this street. I took the camera just in case.

We were soon out of what I assumed to be the village of Ratonpur—one street dead-ending at a church and its graveyard, and lined with huts and courtyards—and we were walking through fields of rice grain, banana palms and groves of mango trees on a herring-bone cobble road. Further along, past a thicket of bamboo bunches growing to the thickness of my thigh, the brick road merged with a metalled one and rounded a slight bend. On the curve, a cluster of shops had settled: six on the left in plastered brick buildings; and three on the right, constructed from bamboo and wood panels, and thatched with straw, palm and corrugated iron. The three smaller shops—looking more like shacks—clung to a steep decline headed away from the road into the fields and orchards beyond. One was serving chai to a huddle of men in their fifties or sixties, greyed and `gangly; another sold a variety of mishti, sweets, ranging from fried jilapis, to white-dusted nuggets of brown paste and ochre-brown balls submersed in syrup; the third was shut—its owner no doubt at the chai shop—and wrapped in blue awning and packing string.

Of the six shops set up on our left, two were hairdressers. The first was empty and the second occupied with a client, so we joined the bundle at the chai shop. The usual questions of who we were and where we were from passed and I lapsed into silence, the men talking with Solomon and Bobita. We were offered jilapis by the owner of the mishti stall, who had wondered over to nose around—as had three or four other passers-by. As with all mishti, it was sickening in its sweetness and oiliness. Jilapis, tubes of tasteless, deep-fried pastry twisted into a flat spiral and oozing with syrup. I could stomach no more than a quarter, whilst Solomon wolfed down an entire jilapi in seconds.

They have a profound sweet tooth in Bangladesh and when they aren’t eating a spicy curry with rice then you can be sure to find them snacking on street mishti or sat in a chai shop, the chai, not to break the tradition, mixed with a heap of sugar and a spoonful of condensed milk for good measure.

Hoping the barber to be finished, we crossed the road again, but found him to be busy with another client—the father of the previous client—and so we left again, wandering down the road. We entered a stately property, in comparison with the homemade bungalows of the village. It had a whitewashed wall surrounding it and within the modest grounds were covered in large trees, mango mostly, and the ground in-between had small shrubs and grasses growing where they could. The building itself was a three storey cube with small, barred windows. At the doorway, a guard stood and wondered why we were here. He requested our stay be brief so, after an aimless stroll down one side of the house to a dirty green-brown pond at the back, we left and took a different turning from the road. Our new heading took us away from the cluster of buildings and within two hundred metres of cobbled track, we were immersed once more in the green of rice grass speckled with lighter dots of rice beginning to ripen.

All around Ratonpur, and Darsana, the land is almost exclusively used for rice paddies, stretching for miles between infrequent settlements and villages. It was not a patchwork of colours and levels as in China and South-East Asia, but more of a continuous, thick-pile carpet laid from one risen road to the next. A few lone figures stooped low in the grass, weeding the ground below with small sickles.

Back at the hairdressers, a single small room with a window at the far end and mirrors lining one side, under which a small ledge held a variety of implements: scissors, combs, gels and foams, the barber was finished and so Solomon sat in the wooden chair and settled in for a cut. By the time he had finished, hair was everywhere, covering the floor and the four of us sat waiting. He had gone for the whole cut and shave, his face lathered with thick foam around his brow, cheeks and chin, and then systematically swept away with a cutthroat razor.

Looking clean and fresh we popped back to the chai shop for chai, and in the ten minutes we were there a crowd of twenty people had piled around the small shack, threatening to topple the thin bamboo structure. I said what I could in Bangla—kamon achen, how are you, and ballo achi, I am good—which brought smiles and I think a few laughs at my English accent. There was one English speaker amongst the mob, a policeman from Darsana, who asked a few questions about my family, where they were, and what I did back in England.

Bicycling Bangladesh

On the way back to our house in Ratonpur, I had a quick attempt on one of these Bangladeshi bikes I had seen in Gowair and around Dorsana. They have a one-size-fits-all policy, too small for me, but I went ahead anyway. Gripping the handlebars—facing the wrong way to what I’m used to—I pushed off to a shaky start and had trouble controlling the bike on the road, partly from no practice for a few years myself, but the rest I’d like to blame on a bent bike that didn’t go where it was told.

The other day I had seen a child of six or seven riding a bike down the street. Riding the same size bike I had just used, he had to put his right leg through the centre of the frame and hang out the side of the bike. As I saw him careering across the road, bent almost double and stretching for the other handlebar, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how one would learn to ride a bike twice the size of oneself. Later the same day I had seen an older boy riding a bike who, having trouble reaching the pedal at its extreme point, rocked them back and forth, pushing the bike along with small jolts.

Giving up on the rickety machine, I returned to my feet and we walked back to the house for a quick stop before heading off once more to a nearby pond—one that we had previously passed and Fiona had commented that it looked a bit dirty, with flotsam nudging at the banks of the murky green-brown pool. We arrived at a large hole sunk into the ground perhaps fifty metres long and thirty wide. There was a small amount of water in the bottom and a set of stone steps led down to the rippling surface. At the bottom, four old women squatted next to piles of sodden clothes. They took one at a time, dunking it under the stinking water, and scrubbing up a lather before pounding the clothes on the stone beside them. Several small children perched on the steps, daring each other to jump in the water. We sidled down to the water’s edge and dipped a foot in, stepping on to the next submerged step and onto the slimy stone.

Watched by the washing women and curious children, we swam in the water. It was cold and warm, in patches of changing temperature, and swimming just three metres took me through three patches of successive warm and cold. Solomon, not used to such cold waters, and with the sun hidden by cool-grey clouds, soon hopped out of the pond and sat shivering on the side. Mercy in our hearts, we left the pool and went for lunch.