Dhaka Life: Apparently a modern day Oliver Twist Story

Today, this article was slipped under my front door, to put at rest the minds of residents who had witnessed the "gangsters/urchins" (they use the words interchangeably) break in to the ground floor apartment.

The break-in referred to happened in apartment B-1 (I live in D-4 thankfully out of reach of the riff-raff and hoi-poloi). I was eating breakfast only to be disturbed by the noise of a youth (under 18 I think although you can never tell with the level of malnourishment here) being beaten up on the street outside. As we went down to the street it turned out the kid was being set upon by two of the drivers/servants of staff in our building who had caught him coming out of one of the first floor apartments he had broken in to. He had the misfortune of being caught with the iron bar that he had filed out of the window, so that that was being used as a weapon against him, but they weren't exactly kicking the shit out of him either. I intervened and stopped the violence at that point. The senior guards came and eventually took him away to the police station, and it seems from today's newspaper that they dealt with things efficiently enough from there.

What was disturbing in that episode was that two drivers felt the need to beat up the youth so severely. Who or what did they feel so compelled to protect? For me their job is only a couple of steps from living on the street, especially when I see them every day living in the drivers quarters of our building. But the reality I guess is that there is a micro pecking order so that even the "poor" have now developed minute levels of distinction between themselves. One of the best books I have read this year, highlights how such a distinction will often turn on whether they have something as cheap and pathetic as a badge or whistle. As a result, a driver of a car in the area that I live in is infinitely more important then a street kid, even if they were neighbours in the same village and migrated to Dhaka.

Was it that status that the drivers felt so violently compelled to protect? I doubt it was the property of their owners although I guess a display of allegience to the protection of their owners probably does make buy them some job security. They were able, as the article doesn't mention, to beat up that kid with impunity. This is just the surface, and again as the White Tiger demonstrates, it is not clear through which this social relationship should be viewed as it doesn't seem to be related directly to class or caste. What is clear is anyone who can afford to in Bangladesh exploits these drivers, child domestic workers, guards, urchins, cleaners, brick breakers, building site labourers etc. as a means of preventing their own contact with the deplorable living and social conditions of urban Bangladesh (akin to slums of Victorian Britain for the majority), which serves only in deepening these divisions further. Try navigating through that with your conscience intact, and that is one of the dilemas of the conscientious expat.

Travelling in... Bangladesh: Seven Layer Tea

Finally this weekend, at the Nilkantha Tea Cabin near Srimangal, I had the chance to drink the infamous “seven layer” tea invented by Mymensingh’s local visionary Romash Ram Gour. His business card proclaims that news of his tea has been broadcast round the world (Bangladesh, USA, Canada, England, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia to be precise which is close enough to being the whole world) but I had never heard of it, even having lived in Bangladesh for two months. So I suspected there was a catch somewhere?
Seven layer tea does hold incredible promise: a single glass of tea which has seven individual layers of distinctly visible tea, and hold their individual density whilst you drink it. I ordered a round for the five of us (the guides and the CNG driver) but they politely refused instead requesting a simple, single-layered green tea. Considering green tea was thirty-five times cheaper than the seven layer tea this only made me more sceptical. But still I hoped right until my first sip that there would be a Willy Wonka sensation of seven different flavours in one cup. In one sense I was right, and there were 7 different flavours:
Layer 1: watery dishwater
Layer 2: milky dishwater
Layer 3: ginger tea
Layer 4: taste of ginger tea was so strong that this layer still tasted of ginger tea
Layer 5: lemon tea
Layer 6: milky dishwater with a taste of lemon (like fairy liquid)
Layer 7: watery dishwater
But of course there was a catch; it looked amazing but tasted awful. I believe this can be overcome, as it is clear that Mr Romash is advancing in his technique constantly. The original layered cup of tea was only 5 layers, but local competition has driven Mr Romash to increase the number of layers. In the meantime I will stick to drinking one layer tea.

Travelling in... Nepal: Dodgy Flight Home

Flying back from Kathmandu, again on a Fokker F28 , we were very quickly above the clouds trying to digest our complementary sandwich and the usual convoluted syntax of Bangladeshi English press when the captain announced that if we looked out to our left we would be able to see Mount Everest.

And above the clouds was the surreal sight of a mountain and several peaks poking through. It was compelling because logically you would not have expected to see it there and in my excitement I pointed this out to my neighbour who had the window seat. He registered a polite interest, and returned back to his newspaper clearly having been starved of the Edwardian grammar and high school style sensationalism that is lacking in Nepali journalism. However, when we came into land in Dhaka, my neighbour could not take enough photos of the city. Literally, I think he filled his memory card with photos of unplanned urban mess. I registered polite interest and prepared myself to start sweating again.