|
Chapter 1
There
is something about a tropical rainstorm. The skies turn
a menacing dark, bruised shade. The wind picks up,
slowly at first, then increasing in its intensity, in
it’s venom, sweeping up the litter in its eddy and
depositing it afar. Pedestrians hurry for cover, plastic
sheets are pulled over rickshaw wallah and passenger,
car drivers resign themselves to a slow journey ahead, a
trip to the shops is put off till the deluge abates.
Then come the rains. Almost lethargic, large, heavy
blotches stain the footpaths, the tarmac as if testing
the surface. Is this where nature wishes to unleash her
might? The answer is usually affirmative, rain falls in
thick sheets, reducing visibility to a few yards,
pounding the manmade surface with such force raindrops
bounce up again before settling in quickly developing
puddles forever ebbing and flowing under the pressure of
interminable ripples.
To
observe this from the shelter of your 15th
floor office or apartment, you cannot help be feel awed
by the sheer force, the majesty as nature lets rip. To
hear the rain lash against the windows, to see the
traffic slow to a crawl, to feel thankful you cancelled
the meeting with the bank manager. And yet you feel sure
nature is holding something back. That what it is doing
is flexing her muscles as she has done for time
immemorial yet should she so wish she could truly play
havoc.
Sitting in the corner bar, Chins, Lions and Cloggy
listen to the backdrop, the symphony of raindrops. There
are times when it can be truly humbling to observe the
natural world, untamed.
“Three more, Sami,” says Chins, signing the chit and
passing it over to the steward. “Oh, make that one
more,” he adds as BC walks in, looking like he’d been
wrestling a tadpole in the Jamuna.
Sami
hands over the chilled beers, a job he has been doing
for nigh on a quarter of a century. As much a part of
the bar as the fridge and the dartboard, and nearly as
indispensable. BC settles down, and the four men pull
the ring tops and sup straight from the can, Chins
taking too much and wiping the spill from his cheek. The
lights in the bar flicker, go out momentarily before the
generator kicks in, ensuring the beers will stay cold.
“You
know on Road 27, just near the park? Have you seen the
old women who sits on the manhole cover?” Asks Lions
The
manhole cover abuts arrogantly from the smooth road
surface, forcing everyone to drive around, down the
middle of the narrow carriageway. Sitting serenely,
seemingly unaware of the passing traffic, sits, no
squats is a better description, squats an old lady.
Crone, in a less PC world. She has deep-set staring
eyes, a hawk like nose. Matted silver hair falls down
the back of her neck in a congealed mass. She covers the
top of her head with a thin head cover; her palms join
together in supplication, the tips of her encrusted
fingernails forming a steeple under her nose.
“Day
in, day out she squats there. No one sees her arrive, no
one sees her leave.”
Outside, the rain shows no sign of letting up. Cloggy
gets another round. “I know about her.”
Cloggy’s wife is a bit of a do gooder, viewed as an
anomaly by the denizens of the corner bar but because of
her old mans high standing as a piss pot par excellence,
she was tolerated on her few visits here. Mrs. Cloggy
had gone native. Well not really, but that was how she
was viewed by the lads. I mean she couldn’t speak the
lingo but she dressed as the locals, ate as the locals
using her fingers to gather some rice before dipping it
into the dishes.. Everything locally produced was the
mutt’s nuts and everything produced by the evil
capitalistic west was exploitive. This gave her, in her
own view, the moral ground on every issue concerning the
developing world though it did not prevent her from
having top of the range Nokia mobile, Pajaro with her
own, much abused, driver. She was Millie Tant with a
lisp and she frightened the living daylights out of
Lions. Which was the reason why she was encouraged to
visit as often as possible. But her heart was in the
right place.
Cloggy continues with his tale. “My missus got involved
with her a short while back. She had a couple of buffalo
she kept by the lake, just opposite the Wimpy. Just
squatting, like everyone else here.”
As
with many capital cities through out the developing
world, indeed throughout the world, every country
bumpkin and his cat fancies themselves as Dick
Whittington, those city streets are paved with gold and
there is enough to go round. So people up sticks and
move, carrying their worldly belongings, they travel on
overcrowded buses, trains, ferries and are disgorged
into the heathing mass of humanity that is Dhaka. By
some kind of street ESP, they nearly always gravitate to
a locale populated by people from their area and so
loose themselves. Work is still difficult to find but
breaking bricks or riding a rickshaw is not as
backbreaking as working the fields back home and the
income is more regular.
A lot
of the people in that particular area come from the
North West of the country, near the city of Rajshahi,
and this old woman is no different. Mrs. Cloggy had been
driving over the lake when she saw blue uniformed
policemen with lathis surrounded by a crowd of on
lookers, gesticulating wilding to the old lady. Stopping
the car, she instructed her driver to find out what was
going on.
Such
public disputes are a popular form of entertainment, and
a crowd soon develops, it is not considered unusual for
a complete stranger to sticky beak his way into a
conflict, and soon the police chief and the driver were
standing by the road yelling at each other, looking for
all the world like they were a couple of drunks who had
been hitting the sauce a bit too much. The fact that a
white woman was present added exoticness to the
encounter and soon the spectators were spilled out into
the middle of the road, backing up the traffic.
A
picture slowly emerged. A vacant plot of land overlooked
the lake, and some incredibly bright ruling power
politician had seen an opportunity to make some money.
He deduced that what this area needed was another
apartment block, exactly the same as all the other
apartment blocks in this area, those empty concrete
monoliths standing proud, a legacy of too much money,
lax planning regulations and a low brain cell count.
Anyway, this wonderfully bright representative of the
people had decided this was where he wanted his toy, his
apartment block. And sod anyone who was in his way,
especially a frail 70 year + lady with her livelihood:
couple of buffalo that she milked daily. She had
squatted on the bank of the lake, impervious to the
waste and the shit that lapped the edge. The underground
community had assembled a rough lean to for her and a
9-year-old girl. And here was where she went after
sitting on the manhole cover all day. This was her home.
Flimsy rattan aside a rotting fetid lake with 2 mangy
buffalo tethered to a pole. And a guy with enough money
to buy a fleet of private jets should he so desire
wanted her gone.
A
gang of mastan had taken the animals, now the
police were taking the rattan. Then the lady would have
nothing. Mrs. Cloggy screamed against the injustice of
this, this was what she lived for. The fact that the
lawmaker, or breaker, the words are interchangeable,
that the law breaker had been educated in the West was
to her vindication that she was right and that we were a
bad influence.
Fair
play to Mrs. Cloggy, when she gets bit between her teeth
she fights. She got the police to delay demolishing the
rattan lean to, giving old lady and orphan a bit of
breathing space if no obvious source of income. But
there was more. Mrs. Cloggy was even, through her
driver, able to trace the beasts and have them returned.
She even got to meet the smarmy creature, delighted in
his western affectations and secured an agreement they
could stay till the end of the month while she made
other arrangements. She found him smarmy, loathsome,
repulsive, sickly. He was probably more amused by his
guest. He was patronizing, yes I’m sure you’re right but
she is breaking the law madam. It was the madam that did
it; she hurled the best Anglo Saxon she could think of
in his direction.
She
made enquiries about the old lady and the orphan. The
old lady had been in Dhaka some 40 years, had not been
back to her village since leaving. She had been married,
had 2 sons and 3 daughters but didn’t know where they
were. Her husband had been killed in the War of
Liberation, she was a widow of a decorated war hero and
was entitled to a small pension but she knew nothing of
this. For a while she had been passed around by some
rickshaw wallahs in the area, she was a mobile library,
the only book on the shelf and everyone wanted a read,
then after turning the final page she was returned to
the ledge to gather dust. She broke bricks for a while,
worked as a domestic but always returned to the street.
The years passed, age began to show. She became a figure
of fun for new generations, living off paisals some
days, takas on others. A plate of rice here, a cup of
tea there. Once in a while a hand job bought her a roof
for the night, away from the rains.
About
2 years ago, time has lost meaning as she sits on the
manhole cover waiting death to take her in it’s arms,
the orphan entered her life. The orphan spoke little,
asked less. She ran errands, sold milk, begged from the
cars. Running barefoot between the stalled traffic hands
out stretched, collecting for two. Her eyes had seen
more than any 9 year old should be allowed to witness,
she has a mental toughness from street living that is
scary in it’s intensity. She is a hyena, slinking in the
shadows of the concrete jungle, living off others,
pouncing when she has the opportunity. She knows as
little about the old lady as she knows about her. Their
company is all, the young and the old, the most
defenceless in any society, the only protection they
have is each other.
The
rain beat an incessant drum roll outside the bar as the
punters luxuriated in their air-conditioned lifestyle,
blowing the froth off one chilled beer after another.
The long-suffering Cloggy is slightly mocking of his
wife. She is a bit of a rent a badge, if you need
someone to organize a protest, or give a speech; she is
who you would contact. However, if you want something
done, look elsewhere. She talks the talk mate, but she
can’t walk for shit, is how Lions summed her up one
night and that is a pretty accurate description that the
patient Cloggy goes along with. He despaired going home
some nights, especially after a natural, or preferably
man made disaster. She loved pollution did Mrs. Cloggy,
and would picket a multi national oil or gas company at
the drop of a hat. She would exhort all and sundry to
give up their time and money to help lesbian pygmies
with in deepest Africa but then move on to a new cause
before any work was due to start. She had the badges,
the leaflets, the websites that any welly and anorak in
the west would cream for, but she actually did sod all.
She offered no constructive ideas, she saw her role as a
crusader, bringing the plight to public awareness, well
the Tuesday Ladies Bridge Club, batter them in to guilt
mode then move on to another cause.
Sami
hands over some more beers. “So what happened?” BC
lights up another cigarette. The bar is quiet, just the
4 friends, no music even, just the quiet voices and the
rain.
Cloggy takes a large mouthful, burps and says” The
usual. She went running round for a couple of days
trying to find a place for them to stay. Then she had
the bright idea of hiring a truck and taking her, the
orphan and the buffalo back to her home village but she
baulked at the 400 USD that would cost. Anyway, she soon
found someone else to feel sorry forwho was a lot less
hard work and shifted her sympathy elsewhere.”
“And
what happened to the old lady,” asks Chins. “And the
orphan.”
Cloggy doesn’t know. Once his wife finds a new cause,
she loses interest in everything that had gone before.
He staggers off to the dunnie, leaving Lions shaking his
head.
“Imagine being married to that, a cross between Mother
Theresa and Millie Tant. No wonder he can drink so
well.”
“Excuse me Sir?” Sami interrupts hesitantly. Although he
knows the lads really well, and they enjoy talking with
him, his is still very respectful. “I know how this
ended up. A few days ago, I think it was on Monday, they
were moved. The cows were taken from them, the shelter
was destroyed. The old lady and the orphan spent a
couple of days in the rickshaw wallah community near the
Medical Centre.”
He
looks like he wants to say more, but really there is
nothing to add. He goes to put on some music.
Chins
could be quite a sensitive type when the mood, and the
bevies, took him. “What kind of life is that for a young
girl?” he asked.
“The
only one she knows.” The words hung in the air, mingling
with the cigarette smoke and Elvis Costello crooning
about Alison. And briefly an outside reality entered the
bar, each man alone with his thoughts, cradling his
beer, trying hard not to think of what a 9 year old
orphan had to do to survive. And lurking at the back of
their subconscious were a couple of thoughts. Scary
thoughts. This is a story they know about, how many are
there they don’t know about. And but for an accident of
birth…
Outside, the rain beats its monotonous call to life.
|
