Bangladesh: Land of Pathos, Paradox and Natural Beauty

(All photos by Hasan Z. Rahim)

In my previous post, I had written of a dear cousin, a physician from Connecticut, who I was hoping to meet up with in Bangladesh this winter. He had arrived in the country of our birth in mid-December, two weeks before I was scheduled to arrive from San Jose, California.

But the transience of life and the absurdity of human planning cruelly manifested themselves. Suddenly he became ill and in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he breathed his last. His body was taken by road from Dhaka, the capital, to Chittagong, the port-city by the Bay of Bengal, about 150 miles south. From there it was taken to our ancestral village 15 miles further south. He was buried in the family graveyard, 8000 miles away from Connecticut to which he had booked his flight to return in the third week of January.

And so it happened that I found myself on the 2^nd of January standing by my cousin’s grave, still bearing the evidence freshly dug earth, surrounded by ancient mango trees loud with birds. I prayed for his soul and wept.

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Modernity has come to Bangladeshi villages. City folks arrive by car to visit relatives, unlike the boats and the steamers we relied on few decades ago. There are shopping centers and banquet halls and the hustle and bustle of the marketplace, more than agriculture, has become the norm. Farmers still carry hay on their head but instead of wearing the traditional lungi, they now wear jeans.

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I visit Bangladesh every winter to see my mother. She is in her mid-80s and is rapidly sliding downward. She cannot talk. The guttural sound she makes to express herself is indecipherable to me. But it doesn’t matter, for my sister, a leading pediatrician of Bangladesh and our mother’s principal care-giver, understands her perfectly. Mother is literally and metaphorically in the best possible hands. There are round-the-clock nurses and maids but it is my sister’s sublime touch that sustains and nourishes her. I am a side show, but mother is still thrilled to see me and asks if I have been served food to my liking. "You know I can't cook anymore for you," she says with a wan smile. I look away to hide my tears. Then I look at her and see the tireless woman who raised six boisterous, often rowdy and difficult children, while father, a doctor, was mostly busy earning to support the family. Father had passed away almost two decades ago. Mother’s eyes well up when I recall the things father used to say, a funny man, and her shoulder sinks into the wheel chair. “Sit up straight,” mocks my sister. “Stop being mischievous,” she tells her with a twinkle in her eye. We all share in the laughter. Another day followed by another unchanging night. Only time marks the passage of sorrow and a generation with a grace that I can only sense but cannot explain.

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I take a stroll along the shore by the Bay of Bengal. It is the Patenga beach of my childhood, as timeless as ever, boatmen plying the Karnafuli river and ship slowly moving toward the Bay. A
3-mile long tunnel under the Karnafuli is being built. When it’s completed in about 2 years, Chittagong and the outlying villages will be linked, and commerce will flourish, particularly the garment industry, and the economy will undoubtedly boom. Yet I can feel that something is being lost, that what was once unique is giving way to the commonplace and the mundane, that villages that were once a haven for restless city souls will be no more. The path forward is relentless, trampling beauty and peace in its wake.

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Inequality is stark in Bangladesh. With a population of about 165 million and a per capita income of $2000, there are 10 billionaires and over 23,000 millionaires, most of whom got wealthy through graft and political shenanigans. There are very few beggars but frustration and repressed anger among the general population are palpable. Who can exploit whom to get ahead seems to occupy the waking (and sometimes the sleeping) hours of many Bangladeshis. But I have also seen a proliferation of philanthropic organizations managed by the locals - young and old – whose only aim in life is to serve the poor and the destitute. My own family operates a hospital in our village in Chittagong where every Friday, my sister operates on about a dozen children afflicted with life-threatening illnesses. On the outskirts of Dhaka, I visited a
self-sustaining and sprawling experimental “Park” that serve the local village population with everything from schools and clinics to groceries and theaters.

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The natural beauty of Bangladesh is taking a hit from rapid industrialization, particularly from brick fields that continuously spew out harmful chemicals in the air to only partially meet the insatiable demands of the booming construction industry. But if you make the effort, and not worry about time, you can still discover the breathtaking beauty Bangladesh used to be known for.

Before bidding mother and my siblings good-bye, I save a day to do nothing but seek beauty even as it becomes more elusive by the year.