FF18: Dhoting on Dhaka
As soon as we arrived in Dhaka, we realised that we hadn’t really prepared.
‘What’s the name of the currency?’ Sarah said to me.
‘Tacko, tacca… taka? I think. Wait — is that clock right?’
The flight had taken 40 minutes, but somehow the timezone had inched forward half an hour, and what with various delays, midnight had arrived.
We’d been warned that the airport would feel like a marketplace, but standing at the Visa on Arrival desk, chatting with the friendliest immigration officials I’d ever encountered, we felt a kind of calm and welcome that knocked us from our guarded perches. Walking away to their cheery cry of ‘Welcome to Bangladesh, enjoy your stay!’, we entered the fray of Dhaka’s infamous traffic.
At times like these, you need a friend like Amy. We could have Googled and TripAdvisor’d our way through figuring out what to do, done the Lonely Planet thing. Instead, we arrived with a list of instructions from Amy, who’d been working in Bangladesh a few months before. From what to see, where to catch a boat on the Buriganga river, where to go for lunch, to ‘the most beautiful church I’ve been in’ and how to get into it when the gate seems locked, Amy’s tour of Dhaka sounded like a perfect way to spend the one day we had there, and we followed her advice to the letter.
You might think that this kind of excursive prescriptiveness might preclude spontaneity or the kind of serendipity that comes of wandering aimlessly in a place, but no — Dhaka’s magic transcended any of the limits we might have put on it.
Racing through the back alleys, clinging to the sides of one of Dhaka’s famously colourful cycle rickshaws, we sped past countless cottage industries and through a sea of people ceaselessly moving through the arteries of the city. Arriving at the banks of the Buriganga river, a local helped us onto a wooden punt and waved goodbye as we paddled out into the depths of the churning river.
Surrounded by a chain of other small boats bobbing back and forth from both sides of the river, a sort of fluvial peace descended amidst the hot sewage stink of the water and the thrumming life of the markets and garment factories on the shore. Large ferries and commercial boats roared past, so heavily laden that their fifteen-foot sides were totally submerged, leaving only a small cabin and the lips of their sides precariously visible.
Back on shore, we walked along the edge of the river, stopping at a collection of market sellers peddling clothes laid out on mats on the floor, perhaps the closest trading point to the garments’ genesis. Scanning through the items, I recognised a few piles of fabric that have interested me for a while. Picking one up, I stretched out the dhoti (or perhaps lungi — I’m still unsure if there’s a difference) and, like many times previously, thought how on earth do you tie this?
As if he’d read my mind, the stall owner leapt up and threw the enclosed ring of material over my head and began to perform some kind of sartorial origami on me. Transfixed by his method, it took me a minute before I looked up. The river had gone. A crowd of — and I jest not — around 50 people had gathered around and were looking on with a mix of curiosity and open amusement. Now wearing this man-skirt over my jeans — I not only felt great, but also compelled to make the purchase, in case the crowd decided I needed any extra encouragement. £1 lighter, but one dhoti heavier, we walked away from gazes of what I presumed was silent admiration from the multitude.
Half an hour later we were standing on top of a passenger ferry, looking out across the river to the garment factories and shipbuilders on the far side. Suddenly, our unofficial guide lifts Sarah off her feet and beams at me. ‘Photo! Photo!’.
This moment crystallised our experience of Bangladesh’s capital. It’s a city well known for its problems, and while we left with lungs wheezing and having survived two auto-rickshaw accidents, Dhaka had truly swept us off our feet.
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