Old Dhaka is one of the most fascinating, incomprehensible and surreal places I have ever been to.
Recently, I was fortunate enough to join a guided walk through the narrow alleys with Urban Study Group which is a group of enthusiastic young people with respect for the past and hope for the future. They do a wonderful job and I really pray for that their dreams of restoring the run-down historic buildings could become true one day.
Old Dhaka might have had a glorious past but its present shape is rather shabby.
We toured the streets and sailed the river early on a Friday morning. It was really "quiet", especially after shab-e-barat, when muslims pray all night. There were a lot of tired and sleeping people in the mosques, streets and shops.
A bright young student became my personal guide. He has lived all his 23 years in old Dhaka and knows every corner of the for me totally illogical and crazy part of Dhaka. Nothing is functional but everything works - either you live in a soap factory or in the ruins of an old mansion.
If Old Dhaka is the worn out heart of the capital, the river Buriganga represents the extremely dirty veins of the city. Buriganga is a water highway filled with river rickshaws, small boats, big boats, total chaos.
The traffic rules are the same as in the streets: size matters, no respect.
The water is extremely polluted but still people do their laundry in the in river, it is their shower. As a transport way it has a huge economic impact.
Economic success hits very few, this boy for example "joins" social media by biting a phone line.
Yet I haven't visited that part of Dhaka, but heard a lot of things!People of old Dhaka speaks a very different accent of Bangla and hugely famous for their eating habit especially Biriyani, tehari, Borhani, Bakarkhani etc. People are very self centered and reluctant to widen their radius of relation and activities. The Original inhabitants of old Dhaka are known as "Dhakayia Kutti".Let me share you a funny story. One of my friend's grandfather was become very rich for his biriyani restaurant. Oneday he thought that as a rich man he should have an aircraft, so he wore his traditional white lungi and tied some money with it and as per his thought straightly went to the airport and quarreled enough with the immigration officer why they were not letting him to have a standing Plane out there when he had sufficient money in his lungi!
ReplyDeleteInteresting story!
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