I preferred the situations when I didn’t have money. I liked me more. I took more care. I watched every Euro I spent and I was grateful for every extra piece of bread someone gave me.
“Shall we go?” I suggested to them, wanting to suppress the depressed thoughts.
We got up, divided ourselves in two groups and called two taxies. Six of us managed to fit in one taxi, and I was forced to share the co-driver’s seat with Jewel, who sat on my lap. Some hundred metres later we were pulled over by the police.
“Excuse me, sir, but we have to do our job,” a policeman with a big moustache apologized to me, while his colleagues frisked my friends and searched the trunk looking for a bottle of alcohol or something like that, “but, tell me, how do you like Bangladesh?”
Day 743.
I was in a luxurious neighbourhood of Dhaka, with four other pale-skinned ones and a driver who was always at our disposal. We had all been given the traditional clothes which we were supposed to wear to the different receptions and dinners during the following few days. Women wore colourful saris, while men wore panjabi.
Samai, just like the groom, came from a wealthy family, and the wedding reception was supposed to host more than thousand guests.
The first wedding day was dedicated to the bride. Her friends (luckily, I wasn’t included) performed all sorts of shows and dances in her honour, so she could say goodbye to her maiden life. The initial ceremony was followed by a traditional ritual called holud in which people approached the bride and applied a natural cream made of saffron that was good for her complexion to her face, after which each person gave her a piece of food to wish her abundance of food in her new life.
The second day was dedicated to the groom, who went through the same procedure as Samai the day before. As the following day was the central ceremony of the wedding, after dinner we went to the bride’s home and started with the preparations. While the father of the bride supervised the transformation of hundreds of sweet goats into a delicious meal, the female part of the company decorated their bodies with kana. They painted the bride’s hands and feet hoping that the patterns would remain dark and visible even after the paint had been washed off. An old Bangladeshi belief said that the longer the stains remained dark, the greater the love between the bride and groom.
The house in which we stayed was enormous, and not less than seventeen members of the service, who’d been living there for generations, took care of it.
“They’ve played an important role in my growing up,” Samai told me, introducing me to them and explaining that having servants was an old custom in Bangladesh, with both sides benefitting from it. On one hand, the house was clean, the meals were delicious, there was always someone to keep an eye on the children; while, on the other hand, the servants had a place to live, food to eat, and the possibility to go to school without the fear of losing their jobs. Talking to them I realized that, if I were ever to live in Bangladesh, I’d rather work in someone’s service than in one of the factories I’d seen, or as a prostitute.
The next day started with both families coming together in the house of the bride where, after the imam’s prayer and the consent of both sides, the couple was married. After a hearty meal we headed for the wedding hall where we were taken aback by the luxury, size and colour of the room, which was soon filled with more than a thousand people. More than 150 waiters had been hired for the job.
The bride and groom were dressed and decorated in gold and precious stones, which made the whole ceremony appear more like a royal wedding than a wedding of two of my peers.
Still, the peak of the evening was the moment when all the guests, dressed in expensive suits and silk saris, dug into the dishes in the traditional Bangladeshi way, with their bare hands.
I did the same thing, observing all the sparkle and comparing it to the misery I’d witnessed walking down the streets of the same city just as a couple of evenings before. The thoughts left me restless. I was lost between two extremes.
Leaving the hall, I smuggled out some of the food and gave it to a kid lurking outside, looking for someone to give him a few coins. He stuffed it all in his mouth, and I could discern ‘thank you’ in his bright eyes. I didn’t see that brightness in the eyes of the guests who were in the wedding hall. No one, including me, had it. No one among us was hungry. We took the feast, the gold, the silk and the fireworks for granted.
That was the reason why, not wanting to wait until the end of the five-day ceremony, I packed my things in my backpack, went to the bus station and sat on the first bus heading east. It was time to return to reality and face hunger, thirst, and poverty, and to feel gratitude after satisfying those needs.
“May I sit next to you?” a polite teenager asked me in his impeccable English. He was carrying a transportable air-conditioner in his hands, taking care of it as if it was his most precious possession. Since I’d long given up on my fantasy of an uncovered beautiful Bangladeshi woman entering the bus, sitting next to me and looking for comfort after each sudden movement of the driver, I had no reason to turn him down.
“Thank you,” the kid said politely, “my name is Sajid.”
A couple of hours later, following good old Bangladeshi customs, I was having tea in Sajid’s house in Comilla, in the company of his close and large family, and only two members of the family’s staff.
“Unfortunately, I cannot invite you to stay at my house tonight,” he said sadly during the dinner, “but some of my cousins are leaving tomorrow, so you could sleep at our place tomorrow.”
I accepted the offer, as I did his suggestion that he be my guide and show me the interesting sights of Comilla. I went out on the street to look for a place to spend the night. It was dark, but there was still a glimpse of hope within me that I would be able to find a free place to stay so as not to break the only tradition I had kept alive on all of my journeys – not paying for accommodation.
I visited the local Catholic church, which was locked, hung around with some guys playing badminton in a park nearby, I even started making some arrangements with a guy to spend the night at his place, but at the last minute he changed the plan and took me to his friend who owned a hotel and who would give me a clean and cheap room where I could sleep.
I accepted that offer reluctantly, feeling the nostalgia. I missed Europe once again, its expensive hotels and CouchSurfers everywhere. In a country where I could afford a bus ride and sleeping in hotels, I didn’t feel the need to test my limits. Consequently, there was no challenge, no adventure, no excitement.
I was lonely in the little hotel room. Perhaps for the first time since I’d been travelling. In Bangladesh I was either in the company of people who saw me as a movie star, a guru or a rich white man, or I was surrounded by the sparkle and luxury that looked so unnatural in that environment.
I went to an internet café in search of a word of comfort from my homeland far away: I was looking for anything that could put my mind at ease.
I found a message that had come to the CS site:
Hey Thomas,
We’re two girls from Australia, travelling across Bangladesh. We’ve noticed that you’re not far from us so if you’re bored by travelling on your own and answering the same questions all over again by the dazzled locals, contact us, so we could answer the questions of the dazzled locals – together. We’ll be in Srimangal in two days.
Hugs,
April and Taya
I must’ve have been a very good person in a past life.
Day 748.
A man with a big bowl in his hand was walking down the Comilla to Srimangal train, between the rows of shabby seats, saying out loud the name of the sweets he was selling. He tripped over someone’s foot, and a fat sweet ball rolled out of the bowl and fell straight to the floor. He turned left, he turned right, picked it up, blew on it and returned it to the others.
And the best thing was that a person sitting next to me, who had probably seen the whole scene, called him over and bou
ght one.
Oh, Bangladesh.
I had headphones in my ears and a book in my hand: I didn’t want to talk to anyone until I reached my destination. I honestly didn’t have the energy to make new friends, new acquaintances, superficial conversations that always led to the same thing, especially as the previous night I almost got myself married.
After I had spent the whole day sightseeing in the ruins of Buddhist temples with Sajid, and the afternoon in his house, we spent the evening at a neighbour’s house, where we had dinner.
“Do you like Leza?” Sajid asked me when silence fell upon the room, winking at me as I explored my plate, filled with rice and a couple of pieces of chicken, with my right hand.
I felt Leza’s eyes on me and the intense look her parents gave me as they waited for my answer; I blushed.
“It’s not polite to talk during dinner.” I managed to push the words through my mouth and started to fill it with food, chewing slowly so I could buy some time to come up with an answer.
I could’ve guessed that something like this would happen. When I entered their apartment, Leza was dressed in a colourful sari, much more festive than those that was usually worn for dinner, and she wore too much make-up. Her parents started complaining about her still being single, as she was already twenty-four. Too old for that country.
I somehow managed to change the subject after I’d licked my plate, but the kid couldn’t be confused.
“Do you like Leza?” he repeated, louder than before.
While I was eating I was trying to come up with an answer that would be the most appropriate for the situation. I couldn’t say ‘yes’ because: a) it wasn’t true; and b) in their culture it would probably be understood as a half-arranged marriage. Still, I couldn’t say ‘no’ either because: a) Leza would probably start crying, which would ruin the make-up; and b) it could be understood as an offense, after which her father might stab me with the sword hanging on the living room wall.
“I’ll tell you when we get home,” I replied to the little monster, smiling at him and at the others. No one assumed that the smile meant I’ll beat Allah out of you when we get home.
“It would be wonderful if you married Leza,” Sajid said as we returned home. “You could stay here so we could hang around every day.”
Hearing those words I didn’t want to kick his ass anymore. I still had to get used to the fact that in Bangladesh people grew quickly attached and that after you exchanged a few sentences they would start calling you brother.
“I love you, brother,” Sajid whispered in my ear that night, sneaking into my bed and hugging me as I was pretending to be sleeping.
Srimangal, from the very moment I arrived at the train station, offered a different image than those I’d seen in Dhaka, Kushtia and Comilla. I even saw two white people on the streets. Merchants weren’t marvels to me, but they invited me to their chambers, and every now and then a tourist guide would approach me offering his services.
I took a room in a modest hotel and welcomed the two girls with whom I’d be spending some time on the Road.
April and Taya had just turned nineteen and they had six months of volunteering in India and Nepal and a couple of months of wandering across nearby countries behind them. Their bodies were decorated with a couple of cool tattoos each, and they brought a small guitar with them. When April took it, hit A-minor and started playing a song by my favourite Australian band, I was overwhelmed by melancholy.
Hey little one,
I just wanted to let you know that I’ve run into two Australian girls who are just playing our song.
I hope India treats you well and that I’ll see you soon, when you arrive in Europe, since we weren’t able to meet in this part of the world.
Love, T.
Day 756.
“IIIIIIL!” I shouted, stopping by Lalon Shah’s tomb, when I spotted my old friends, and the old man-prophet among them.
“IIIIIIL!” he replied, standing up and opening his arms in a hug.
After I visited the tea plantations in Srimangal, in the company of the two Australians, the green hills of Bandarban and the longest beach in the world at Cox’s Bazar, I decided to spend the time I had until I went back home in the place where I had felt most at home – Kushtia.
This time, I only had one thing on my mind. This time I’d try to lose the royal treatment I’d had and live like my hosts, do the same things they did, see how it felt to be a local, and not a white tourist with a tourist’s benefits. During my whole stay in Bangladesh I didn’t manage to do it, except in some moments.
“Let’s go to the river to wash our clothes,” I said to Johnny, one of my faithful shadows, who knew a couple of words in English.
He took me to the place where a couple of weeks before I had had a ritual bath where there were a lot of women rubbing endlessly at a few colourful rags. He practically stole the clothes from my hands, grabbed the soap, found a big stone and started rubbing.
“Here, let me do the next one,” I said when he was done with the first piece.
“Why, brother?” he said sadly, “why would you wash it, when I am here?”
He really didn’t get it. From his perspective, he was the one who should be washing my dirty clothes, preparing something for me to eat, taking me wherever I wanted to go. Letting me do the dirty work was a direct punch to his pride.
“We’ll make a documentary,” I quickly came up with a reason to make it clear to him. “Here, take the camera, you’ll shoot and I’ll do the washing.”
“I’ll wash with you,” he proposed a compromise. The camera ended up in John’s hands, a guy I met that day, and who, as it turned out, had come from a city far away after a call from Boss, just because they knew I would be back in Kushtia.
So, Johnny and I washed the clothes on the river where baby Lalon was found floating in a basket. Many people gathered around to witness the unusual scene, but we managed to ignore them.
I thought about my parents, especially about my Mom, who often behaved like Johnny and the others in Bangladesh. Why should I do something when she could do it? How many times had she made my bed, without saying a word, cleaned the table after me, done the vacuuming when I didn’t feel like doing it, picked up the dirty clothes scattered around the house, washed them, hung them to dry and later folded them and placed them in the wardrobe?
With the best intentions, and hoping that her son wouldn’t have the hard life she’d had, with an immense quantity of love, she’d made a lazy, incapable man out of me. I let her do it for all those years. Why should I do something when she could do it?
I realized it the first time I’d moved out, when I realized the amount of work that was actually involved in keeping a small apartment clean and tidy and how much time it took to prepare lunch. And during those years she did all those things for me as well as having a proper job. For herself and for the three males living with her.
Above all, she tried to raise us properly in the best way she could.
From this perspective, as I was washing my clothes in a river in Bangladesh, it seemed so unbelievable, so worthy of respect. I knew she would say to me something like: you’re washin’ your clothes in another part of the world, and if you were home you’d never think of doing it. And yet, she would be right. I couldn’t explain it.
Maybe it was really necessary to change drastically your perspective to finally see certain things.
When we were done with the washing we headed to our building. As we were crossing the road I paid closer attention to many rickshaws that were constantly passing through our street.
“I would like to drive a rickshaw,” I continued, expressing my wishes, but that time I was talking to my other shadow, Monir.
“No problem, brother,” he replied, not even trying to talk me out of it.
Half an hour later he was back with a rickshaw, which he parked in front of the entrance to the building. I sat behind the handlebars and told him, just like I’d been told by man
y drivers who’d picked me up during my hitchhiking career: “Get in!”
After the first turn of the pedals I nearly managed to achieve the impossible, which is turn over a three-wheel vehicle and scare Monir who wanted to get off the rickshaw, but couldn’t out of fear (or maybe not to insult me). I continued driving slowly down the streets of Kushtia, dressed in a clean lungi and with a gamcha around my neck. If by doing that I was planning to become one of them, it rather backfired and instead my popularity kept on growing. For the first time in their lives, people watched in awe a white man driving a vehicle intended for the poorest; they commented loudly and some of them even gave me a spontaneous round of applause.
The pedalling itself wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined it when I was sitting behind locals who were much shorter than me down the city streets in Bangladesh. Still, I wondered how I’d have felt if I was of their build, driving a rickshaw with three people behind me, for ten hours a day for a low wage, as the locals do.
I was quite a lucky man, in fact, growing up in a wonderful country, surrounded by awesome people, never being hungry or bare-foot, being healthy, having a warm and safe place to sleep, free education, being able to do, basically, anything in the world for a living.
How ungrateful I was, in fact. How many times had I taken for granted all the beauty I’d been surrounded by my whole life, got mad at people who hadn’t deserved it, wasted food, neglected my body, criticized my home, my neighbourhood, my city, my country, ditched school, whined when I had to pass exams at university?
That was the realization I was taking with me after I said goodbye to my friends, headed for Dhaka and got onto a plane that would take me back to my reality. It was the same realization I’d made during my first journeys across Europe and which was now confirmed: I was a spoilt brat, ungrateful and blind, ignorant of the awful global situation, especially in Third World countries.
1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker Page 19