Chapter 11
Swathes of people were pushed and shoved out of the exit at Dhaka’s Zia International airport in the heart of Bangladesh. The humidity was intense, the sand in the air settled in the cracks of teeth and lent the quotidian crunch most of the country’s people had become accustomed to. Clustered around the entrance of the airport were groups of the spluttering-engined Baby Taxis: bright yellow material stretched over and forming the roof of a vehicle that resembled a love child between a motorbike and a rickshaw. The Chakkarbatti’s from London ignored the pleas of the hundreds of crowded beggars wearing clothes at various stages of raggedness. They headed straight for smiling Uncle Manzoor who bundled them in to the 9-seater Lite Ace with air conditioning and they started the long journey to Sylhet by road. Mr Chakkarbatti had decided that this year, they would minimise their plane journeys after Mrs Chakkarbatti had read in Surma newspaper that planes were the second biggest risk to life (she had forgotten to come back to the paper after frying kebabs to read the next part of the article, which said cars were the first biggest risk).
It was seven hour ride after which a rub of the eyeballs would yield all manner of Nature on to one’s finger; dust, soil, bits of twig. The miles of paddy fields, bright forests, hip-clinging babies and armoured highway police all blurried in to one. Bottles of mineral water did nothing to wash down the dust that settled in the back of the Chakkarbatti sisters’ throats. Daisy Chakkarbatti sat elegantly back, reading ‘Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery of the External Genitalia: Vol II’, uninterested in the clambering rolling yelling country that flew by her half-open window.
They left behind the pokey flats of Dhaka and the tumbleweeded neglect of Old Dhaka and arrived in mini-London –Sylhet- where the only thing hungrier than a beggar were the stares of the local population. The smart college kids strode the streets, the street sellers worked out their cash-flows and the dry-fish sellers nowadays packaged their goods.
In Sylhet, cattle was tolerated on the roads, free to moo simply because it wanted to moo, and not because it was about to be run over, as in Dhaka. In Sylhet, everything smelt as it was suppose to smell; coconuts smelt like coconuts, whereas in Dhaka, everything smelt of smog and dirt. In Sylhet, it was the right of everyone to stare at everyone else, not suppress it, as they did in Dhaka. It wasn’t the Sprawling Metropolis, so extreme in its extremities that it could be aired on the 10 o’ Clock news without anyone blinking. It wasn’t a Mumbai where even the beggars could have their own blockbusters. It didn’t welcome foreigners, despite this Bangladeshi minority making up the majority of British Bengalis.
Strange Sylhet had somehow managed to surpass the phase of industrial development where high blocks of flats arose, and gone straight to huge mansions that spilled out, made as homes were meant to be; spacious, with verandahs and porches, nobody batting an eyelid if someone’s conservatory jutted out on to the main road; everybody here built illegally past their borders. Great houses, still painted with suna –lime paste (although as things became modernised, things had pushed forward to coloured suna; mainly pastel pink or green). Huge windows and elaborately designed air vents; mosaic floors and geckos on walls, impressive Air Conditioning contraptions and heavily padlocked fridges that were rarely used because of the nightly loss of electricity (and when the ‘current had gone’, the servants were called to fan).
In Sylhet, women didn’t shower naked; they left their petticoats on their bottom half while they washed their top half, and vice versa.
These parts of Sylhet housed the small concentration of ‘townies’. Away from the insolent tiny builds made for university students and those who came to the city with no heritage, the ‘townies’ weren’t village dwellers, nor were they neuveux riche. They were the discreet string pullers who were as deep rooted as the five rivers of Bangladesh. And as the Lite Ace approached the Chakkarbatti Estate, the pull of heritage and blood could be felt. The road quietened and all they could see were acres of land owned by their family. Just before the gates opened, they saw the hefty ideals of their dynasty around them, the weighty responsibilities that were shaping the country: the Chakkarbatti Abdul Ghaffur Islamic School, the shining million-windowed Sylhet Women’s Medical College and it’s multi-milion dollared vast array of rooms nestled inside along cold, hard clinical medical equipment that was void of dust or sand; there was the box-making factory, the poor people’s colony, a herd of goats, and miles and miles of empty green and yellow land. Fertility made the earth springy and the Lite Ace bounced around lazily. The huge gates opened and they rolled in to the middle of the Estate, encircled by a coliseum of a housing estate; continuous and non-segmented. It contained every other surviving member of the Chakkarbatti bloodline.
Daisy and Jaya were absorbed for the first few days, their every need attended to, ogled by the servants who genuinely thought they had arrived from the Heavens, and that London was in the sky, for that was where it’s citizens came from. Jaya spent the first few days sweating and feeling uncomfortable around the ever-present handmaids and ‘boys’, staring mutely wherever they went. But soon enough, the novelty of the Londonis wore off, along with the awkwardness the sisters felt at ordering about yet another set of new servants (the household staff turnover was high, such was the affluence of Sylheti underdogs). They spent the first four weeks doing the rounds with relatives, being overfed, judged, scrutinised, smiled at, pitied, revered, desired and uncomfortable, and unsettled, having to hop between their maternal and paternal homes, each side regarding the other much as a divorced couple would see one another –maintaining a solid distance but respectfully ushering the children over at the due time.
It was during her time at the paternal Chakkarbatti estate that Akram Kashif -who had already carved Jaya a refuge in the form of a sitar- again put himself in a position to shelter her from the onslaught of familial pro-marriage harassment. He was waiting on the porch one night, handing a pan of his mother’s famous pilao rice to Grandma Chakkarbatti (their acquaintance had begun 10 years ago in the way that all Sylheti townsfolk knew each other). He watched Jaya walk straight past him, her eyeliner smudged and her hair messy as she ended the day warring in the battlefield of familial networking. He watched many of these foreign girls come to Bangladesh, fill themselves with resentment, give up, and take the next flight back home, not to return until they were married. He had heard about the Londoni Chakkarbatti summer visits and was curious to see why these educated girls submitted to these visits here in the middle of monsoon season, where even the locals could hardly stand the weather.
He watched a mass of hair and a highly stylized Indian suit walk by him and flop straight on to bed inside, kicking off her heels so they slid across the polished stone floor, raise her head and exclaim dramatically ‘O Allah! Somebody sort out my Death Prayer! I can’t handle this heat!’, before collapsing theatrically in to stillness. The servants laughed and ran to her, massaging her calves and legs and forehead. She tittered; Akram smirked. She was probably ticklish.
(Grandma Chakkarbatti was watching this, as she had watched many men before look upon girls of a marriageable age, and she deemed that this was a worthy one. The flicker of his eyes was respectable; veiled, but curious.)
‘Allah bless you, soldier,’ she said, and ran a hand over his head. ‘Go; and come back tomorrow.’
Akram didn’t question the request and as the words of Elders was, effectively, gospel in this estate of Sylhet, he cancelled all of his military appointments the next day to oblige.
At home, his big frame settled on the prayer mat. His lips were still, his mind cautiously curious. Above his head were the words of Rabindranath Tagore roughly printed on a cheap poster over a blurry picture of a forest somewhere and a waterfall: “Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of habit”.
Akram Kashif, his conscious clear, his strategic thinking in place, smiled to himself. He was not one for melodrama. His wide jaw covered in a shadow tha
t he had to shave twice a day became loose now, the tension of the day gone. He folded his hands in front of him after he finished off his prayer and sat in front of Allah.
‘If she is right for me, and I for her, give us the guidance to follow your will.’
And he wiped the prayer over his face, down to his chest, and hoped that the Rifle Division would have enough practice weaponry to continue their schedule without him, and that Grandma Chakkarbatti would enjoy the vat of korma he was taking her tomorrow.
Jaya paced the lamba kuta –The Long Room- which seemed to have been purpose built for the hereditary habit of pacing in this family. She felt tense; the result of her degree was out tomorrow. Although it seemed that the vast strength of the estate was enough to absorb any potential disappointment, the endless sound of the weak ceiling fan and repetitive barking dog in the distance reminded her of the mendacity of routine British life which was –although safe and tangible- full of these everyday stresses that made her break out in to aortic rashes.
She walked through the curtain in to her cousin’s room (there were no doors needed for the unmarried members of the family) and watched as she began her weekly ritual of clearing the precious steel wardrobe. The ‘Steelor Almari’ made by the famous ‘Malik Metal Steel Co’. Those unforgettable ones that had so many locks, one could be forgiven for thinking they had millions of pounds in them; but when opened, turns out they’re just clothes meticulously folded, with full deodorant bottles from foreign countries (as opposed to the empty ones in the showcase cupboard. The showcase sported a titillating variety of family heirlooms, consisting of empty deodorant bottles from 10 years ago and other relics of the 50’s which were given as treasured presents from Londoni visitors -obviously bought in bulk from Poundland.)
The comforting smell of stiff cotton and mothballs wafted out of the steel casket. The sound of thick hollow tin clanging and scraping as each drawer was meticulously and preciously cleaned filled the room. Jaya watched carefully. A chicken strolled through the room, and stopped in the middle, cocking its head as though chartering its domain and watching what the girls were doing, before slowly strolling back out. The heat beat down on the estate and the multifarious teems of Colony Children dipped their toes in the meek stream outside the gates, getting empty packets of Lays stuck between their toes. The mechanical whir of the tube light filled the air, permeated only by the occasional squeaking of a gecko.
Jaya sighed. What was there to do but loll? Loll, and build resentment from the locals over how inactive they could afford to be, adding to their already tainted image of the Lazy Londoni’s? She couldn’t bear the staring whenever she left the gates, and was already outstaying her welcome by floating in and out of everyone’s houses so often.
So joining Daisy sunbathing on the roof seemed to be the worst idea (her aunties would pinch her in disapproval every time she got a shade darker here).
Daisy lay on a bamboo mat, still as a corpse, wearing a salwaar kameez with her sleeves rolled up only to the elbow, and trousers rolled up, respectfully stopping at the knee. Her Ray Ban sunglasses reflected a fat white sun and palm trees, a bright blue sky and a few vultures.
Jaya blinked, sighed, rolled up her trousers and lay next to her.
‘Dad’s going to an Islamic congregation for a few days with all the boys. This place is going to be so empty.’
‘Mmm. Dadu Chaks has invited a boy round to come see you.’
‘I know.’
‘Good.’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘Asides from the fact he has a forehead big enough to land a plane on, he seems fine. Unintrusive, but capable of looking after Abba’s estate and providing when he’s called upon.’
‘Thought so. Listen: do you think Abba and them lot are going to extremist terror camps?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shut up. No seriously; maybe they are.’
‘They’re going to a 40-day Islamic excursion like they have been doing every year for the last 30 years, whereafter they come back in optimum mental health, soft as pussies, which is when we always identified was the perfect moment to ask for some pocket money. They are far too lazy to plot anything even as remotely at militant as upturning the soil in the small patch of unpaved garden we have,’ Daisy adjusted her Ray Bans. ‘Why are they taking so long with my coconut?’
‘All these years we’ve thought they just go and do this congregational invitation to Islam, you know. But maybe it can be a meeting point for extremists…’
‘Not any more than your average shopping centre.’
‘I bet you some of them are extremists… Tablighi Jamaat are organising it. I bet you some, right, meet up at these places and start plotting together.’
‘They’d get outpreached by the rest of the hippy Muslims at that place. Tablighi Jamaat are criticised for being too modern by us, and we’re so laid back we practically blend in with every other British nonce. God forbid. You know,’ Daisy flicked a butterfly off her knee, ‘what’s actually happened is that we’ve had our religion hijacked by the ignorant, and our cultural identity not so much hijacked, but raped, by the intellectuals.’
‘Things change, you know. Maybe back in the day it was all peaceful but now, everyone’s a terrorist and it’s slowly giving ideas to everyone else.’
‘And you have that on whose authority? The emotionally constipated ignoramus smooth talkers on the TV? Jesus, I wish they would just get a proper job. They’re making us doubt our own people.’ She sat up and viciously puller her glasses on top of her head. ‘Aiii Russell!’
‘He’s probably siphoning off some of the juice for himself,’
Russell hurried out and presented the coconut. Daisy took it, bounced it about in her hands for a while, and realised it was half empty.
Jaya smirked. ‘Poor guy. Tell him not to do it again; if he does that with Dad he’s going to get laid off.
Daisy dismissed the servant with a wave. ‘I think it’s best to not address the issue; hugely vulgar situation if you ask me.’ She pulled her glasses back on and retracted to her favourite position of a comatose upturned salamander. Jaya sighed and lay back too. The palm trees rustled in the afternoon wind, which brought with it a new wave of polluted pungency. The cobwebs on the bananas quivered, lines of red ants marched up and down the trunks and bright orange furry caterpillars stuck to the leaves. Cars beeped in the distance, the ‘peeech’ of people spitting out pan which hit the pavement with a smack filled Jaya’s ears… ‘peeech’ ‘poooosch’ ‘shmoch’ ‘thlump’… everbody was excreting something; pan, phlegm, piss, poo… all joining the open sewers which skirted around the city’s roads, accompanying everybody’s route to work or relatives or lovers or cafes. The Azan echoed out across the skies, and the slow sluggish movements of men in lunghis could be seen from the Chakarbatti roof; masses of men moving towards the mosques, winding through the alleyways, stumbling out of colonies, cycling out of the university, skipping out of college doorways, pulling themselves out of dirt ditches, and in the few squares of empty sand, they were climbing out of the many piles of hand made red bricks and sliding down pipes of bamboo and clumsily clambering down stacked sheets of corrugated tin in a city that was eternally Under Construction…
A vast sea of torn vests, saggy lunghis, safari suits, nylon satchels, rubber sandals and tufts of jet black hair made their way in to the doorways of the mosques but even then, the penniless and godforsaken few tringed on in the streets, looking for patrons, madams, customers and fools. The roads were never quite empty, there were no such things as pavements so the traffic and pedestrians were constantly in each others ways, interloping, colliding and parallel. There was, in all, a scruffy existence in Sylhet, where there was no order, where adolescents had no time pull swooping fringes in front of their faces and adults couldn’t spend time putting on public displays to validate their existence to the world. Jaya sat on the rooftop looking down thinking she had betrayed Britain, by enjoying this city t
hat was so diametrically opposed in every sense –from the width of the blades of grass to the smell of the air- to the country her consciousness had climbed in to bed with.
Bangladesh was a definite kind of place: if you were born in the colonies, you would stay there; if you were a girl born on the streets, you would get raped and prostitute yourself; if you were poor, you would beg and steal and go from house to house asking for rice grains and be happy when someone local would die to feast on the culinary alms the family would distribute; if your daddy was a clerk, you too would be forced to sit through hours of extra-school tutoring only to become a clerk and disappear in to the teeming crowds on the streets, if you were educated at a local university you would become a corrupt politician or an honest judge, and if you were highly educated and spoke any other language, you would go abroad. Yes, the system was safe and secure. Everybody knew the status quo, whether or not to address people as afne, tumi or the lowest tui. It was written in people’s faces; social mobility was like jelly and people were stuck in it; even if the entire structure wobbled, people would still be there, floating in exactly the same place.
Nothing but nothing could piss off the masses more than being preached to and the sniggers behind the backs of self-righteous rehabilitated ex-pats was short-lived entertainment. Nobody had time to fix anything here –survival was an unforgiving occupation. The Moneyed Moralists from far away lands would always, always, go back home at some point.
The afternoon sun became cooler, and Jaya slunk inside and slunk in front of the computer:
‘Kully,
Hope everyone’s ok. B’desh is cool, not as bad as last year. You should totally come here soon; the electricity only goes for about 20 mins a night so it’s not all bad. We came from Dhaka to Sylhet by road; my god, what a difference. You know how the Dhakiyan people think all Sylheti’s are tramps? I know why now.
There are still shitloads of rickshaws, whereas in Dhaka there are none. You should see these new road signs in Dhaka, lol, they’re the red triangular signs and there’s a silhouette of a rickshaw saying ‘no allowed’! lmfao! So funny man.
Not much had changed about Sylhet other than electricity. The roads still have that knack of the fast movement, bikes and goats darting everywhere, but slow progress of traffic in general. Still see the usual sights of a poor skinny black little rickshaw driver carrying ten fat Bengali women shouting at the driver for not avoiding the breaks in the road cuz it irritates their fat rolls… ha!
We got some posh Dhakhaiya bloke renting one of dad’s flats; everybody acts really conscious around him. He says he can’t sleep cuz he can hear rain on the tin roofs at night; don’t think there are any tin-roofed houses left in Dhaka. Snobs.
What I like about Sylhet is that servants are still servants; they still walk about in trampy clothes and play cards with us on the car roofs. In Dhaka the servants ride motorbikes and have their own mobile phones; some of them even have a uniform. It’s weird.
I’m so fucking bored. You don’t understand. Even went shopping yesterday; hailed down a baby taxi –you know one of those with the loud farting engine that vibrates all the way up your vag, ha ha!- and you feel like its going 100 miles an hour but actually you’re only going at 5. Cost us 50 taka for a 25 minute ride; getting a bit expensive these ends.
And then of course there are our friends the mosquitos, who don’t seem to follow the rule that mosquito repellent is supposed to repel them. All our aunties still maintain that Daisy and I get bitten more because British blood is sweet, and that Bangladeshi blood is salty, which is why they don’t get stung. Bitches.
You know what I like most though? Everyone’s stopped asking us to bring stuff for them from England. No more requests for Primark sandals. People wear their Bata sandles with pride now; for some reason they’ve stopped hankering after bideshi goods which is pretty cool. The sewers, on the other hand; they’re still open and men are still squatting and peeing in to them openly. So disgusting. I’ve been on the look out at the Plaza for the gay prostitues in colourful lunghis; I think I spotted one guy; he was standing against the wall of the 100 taka store, itching his balls and chewing pan. He was really skinny and had perfectly groomed hair, a bit girly looking, and his lunghi was made of satin. Must’ve been gay. His shirt was all open and he was sweating, and wearing thick sandals, so I thought maybe he has to wear something a big straight-looking or he’d just get beaten up right?
Anyway, I’ll tell you what was a proper experience here: the clothes shopping. The girls keep on staring at us funny, really patronising, cuz we’ve been wearing these clothes which they can tell are ready-made and that shit doesn’t go down well here, lol. Honestly, Sylheti girls and their clothes.
I’m going to the Plaza now, will try and spot some more gays.
O, and by the way, you know what we spoke about at G-A-Y? Well, you’re probably not surprised, buy my grandma has already invited a guy round for me to meet. Daisy approves. Will let you know how it goes. He’ll probably just be another freak of nature though. Although, tbh, after things finished with Eleven, I don’t really see any point in stalling getting married.
I miss you guys, and the weather, the roll-ups, and Long Island Iced Teas. Mmmm!
J xxx’
Akram decided to wear trousers to the Chakarbatti estate today. He wore his badge of Army Service on the right lapel of his blazer, cringed, and instead wore a thin cotton v-neck jumper which he thought was respectable but also showed an effort. He wasn’t interested in looking like those types on American TV; they all looked like homosexuals. This girl (the very thought of her made him shy) probably wasn’t in to men who straightened their hair or looked effeminate. Perhaps she wouldn’t appreciate the fact that he was a masterful rifle shooter, or that thousands of the Bangladesh National Army took his word as their command. But that wasn’t important; he hoped she could see his character. He hoped she was respectful of his humble family. He sighed and hoped that he could aquire her father as his own. He missed a paternal role model.
Akram Kashif who once spilled saffron over a tree stump had hardened himself to the loneliness only a breadwinning son could understand. But like an ache that had long been neglected, a day of rest reminded him of the pains. The girl he had seen humorously collapse on to a bed and treat servants as though they were friends, who had springy limbs and a lazy walk... she wouldn’t demean his penchant for Bruce Springsteen, Chomsky or Top Gear. No; she would probably find them predictable, but she wouldn’t make him feel bad for them. She was a Chakkarbatti; she would judge, but accomodate. It was in her bloodline.