Month: June 2023

The women of the AUW Boxing Club will not be erased. I don’t have permission to post their actual photos, but I did witness their ferocity, their determination, their joy.

Last week I attended the inaugural meeting of the Asian University for Women’s Boxing Club. I took some photos of the veteran boxers, the two coaches (one of them male), and the novice members, many in bright red hijab, but I couldn’t capture the exhilaration that carried the event. I also didn’t have permission to post these photos, so this will have to do:

Faculty sponsor with bespoke and outspoken tee-shirt.

Most of the women in this brand new club are Afghan. Some were celebrated boxers in Kabul before the most recent takeover by the Taliban. One speaker, the president of the club, alluded to the obliteration of women’s boxing–good lord, of women’s civic participation–in Afghanistan after the US forces left. She chose her words carefully, apparently aware that even from the safety of the AUW auditorium she shone as a fiery rebuke to the Talibs. Over the exuberant cheers of her classmates and the pounding bass of the looped club music, she whipped up the crowd with exhortations to take control of their own lives, to stand up to the threats of men. At the end of her speech–and before the thrilling demonstrations–she stared at the audience and said: “Suffering makes your life beautiful.”

A club with grit and heart and POWER.

Quite a declaration. From the comfort of my front row seat and my privileged male gender, I could think of a thousand ways suffering makes life ugly; even in a beautiful country like Bangladesh, all you have to do is step outside to be confronted with the debasing reality of poverty and hunger and sexism. But I don’t think the Boxing Club president was pawning off some “When-life-gives-you-lemons” pabulum on the student body. She and her “lady boxers” (her words) kicked and punched and pivoted with such laser-sharp intensity that whatever the driving force that motivated them might be–anger, excitement, despair, self-defense, vengeance–these women used it to transform their suffering into something extraordinary. Beautiful, even.

I walked home, grateful as could be to have been in the presence of such perseverance. Even the (insert expletive) humidity couldn’t dampen my spirits.

Two clubs sponsored Pride at AUW: The Queer-Straight Alliance and the Art Club. Evidence of their vibrant collaboration above.

That very same week, AUW held a second Pride event. As the resident psychology instructor, I’d been asked to facilitate a conversation in which students wrote their “confessions” on an index card. Once these cards were collected, I was to pluck them from a fishbowl and read them aloud. I said I thought this was a bad, potentially unethical idea. Where were the resources in case a student revealed something desperate? Confession implies sin; do we want to conflate LGBTQ concerns with sin? (No.) I’d been double-booked and would have to run to another workshop at the other campus before the hour ended; what if I left a student in the lurch?

My concerns were duly noted and then dismissed.

Awaiting the LGBTQ deluge.

Fortunately, the faculty turnout nearly matched the students’ attendance and so my leaving early wasn’t a problem. The balloons, a nice touch, outnumbered the human participants; they exploded at random from the heat, insuring that no one dozed off. My ethical concerns also deflated after I figured out a way to screen the “confessions” before reading them aloud. The context differed from LGBTQ life in the West, but the worries expressed on the index cards sounded familiar: Most students feared rejection by their families and their friends. In Bangladesh, religion, culture, and politics all conspire to make gay people ashamed of themselves on a deep, fundamental level–not so different from the American Right’s cynical strategy to revile gay folks with insinuations about “grooming” and “psychic crises” in children who happen to find out that some of their classmates have two moms or two dads.

(A cruel, narrow-minded strategy, if I do say so myself. Suicide rates for LGBTQ teenagers in the US have increased over the last three years, due in part to the relentless hectoring by religious fundamentalists and their political bootlickers. Some stats from The Trevor Project and NPR: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096920693/lgbtq-youth-thoughts-of-suicide-trevor-project-survey.)

Think about it.

A perennial question arose: In light of these students’ bravery–the fact that they showed up in a room to discuss identities and behaviors that are illegal–how should this faculty facilitator address his own identity? More questions followed: Does my coming out model courage or does it crowd out the students’ experiences? Does it make the discussion all about the teacher and his need to self-disclose? What are the legitimate risks to sharing one’s homosexuality in Bangladesh? Which boundaries should remain in place?

I blanched and, instead, used the pronoun “We” (i.e. “How do WE address the judgment implied in the statement, ‘You don’t look gay'”?) as if I were straight out of the House of Windsor (pun intended). Not that Bangladesh needed another royal family member to call the shots, but there We were, dispensing noblesse oblige with our fingers in the fishbowl.

We found this on Wikipedia: “Throughout his life [King] James had close relationships with male courtiers, which has caused debate among historians about their exact nature.” Indeed. (And, yes, King James was from the house of Stuart. I looked it up.)

While we’re on the subject of royalty and its post-colonial after-effects, Bangladesh inherited its criminal laws against homosexuality from the British Indian Government in 1860. These anti-gay laws are still on the books, to devastating consequence.

Xulhaz Mannan, editor of the Bangladeshi LGBT magazine Roopbaan, was killed in his apartment in Dhaka along with activist Tanay Fahim by religious fundamentalists in 2016.

Coming out as LGBT–or even as an ally–for a Bangladesh citizen involves terrible risks. Imprisonment, estrangement, violence and murder (see above), suicide: Bangladeshis face these threats daily if they try to live openly. Coming in and coming out as a know-it-all-Westerner overlooks that reality. I wanted to defy the shame that can keep gay people like me in the closet, and I also wanted to tread carefully before running to my next event.

What a tightrope. And a compromise. Here’s to the brave LGBT students and their allies, both in the US and–especially–in Bangladesh.

Thanks to Bonni Allen for the headshot and to Nabila Afroz for the poster and the mid-session tea. I made it on time to this really enjoyable workshop.

I can’t exactly vouch for my mental health here (it’s hot and that makes me fussy; did I mention that?), but the improv workshop after the Pride event was an unmitigated blast. Here’s hysterical proof:

Modeling contemplative mindfulness with some students.

Time winds down. I’ll be in Dhaka for the Eid al-Adha holiday and, the following weekend, in Cox’s Bazar to give another improv presentation. Been feeling torn in two. I’m excited to return to summer in Saint Paul and I finally feel useful and connected here. People have faced worse conundrums.

Places and portraits, while I’m still in Bangladesh:

The entrance to Shilpakala Arts Academy, where I’ve seen plays about Che Guevara, post-partition East Pakistan, the liberation that turned East Pakistan into Bangladesh, the origin of the Bangla language, and gift-giving gone awry, courtesy of O. Henry. All of it in Bangla.

Monsoon approaching Chittagong. Photo from the roof of Thames Towers.

Early morning construction worker in Chok Bazaar.

Same morning, different profession.

Kindly gentleman at the former British Railway offices.

Coconut vendor, just before the rain.

I took too long trying to get the iPhone to focus.

Knife sharpener, stopping on his daily rounds through the neighborhood.

Friendly AUW canteen worker. He won’t give me seconds, but he does so with a smile.

Buddhist monk and Pali professor. He moved the footlight to create these shadows.

This gentleman invited me to join him in calisthenics at a nearby park...

…and so I did. (Hello to Karen Connelly who has taught me the benefits of bilateral stimulation and to Katy McEwen who has worked thanklessly with my midline dysfunction.)

Aquarium storefront on a Monday evening in Chittagong.

Eid al-Adha approaches. A doomed fate for this poor creature; his sacrifice will feed a few. When I left the building this morning, the only other animal on our street was a goat. By this afternoon a huge bull and two more goats had joined them. Lowing and bleating behind every garage gate, now. Haunting.

Beautiful Bengal.

Post a comment if you’re so inclined. I like comments.

Listen to me! (Wild-eyed foreigner at the University of Chittagong.)

After a busy, gratifying week of teaching, I thought I’d return to the lobby of the Radisson Blu to celebrate the start of the weekend. I found a cushy blu(e) chair underneath an air-conditioning vent and sprawled out with a cappuccino and Pema Chödrön’s latest book, How We Live is How We Die. Neither the book nor I is a real barn-burner; I fell sound asleep to the whispers of Muzak and woke up 15 minutes later with a billion mosquito bites.

Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist nun, would suggest I work with my sleepy posture rather than resist it. Also, I might try befriending the mosquitoes, as they have much to teach me about easing into discomfort and receiving unwelcome gifts as opportunities for wisdom.

I love Pema Chödrön. Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the sense she wouldn’t judge me for seeking escape in a climate-controlled hotel lobby. I also think she’d empathize with my (continuing) realization that there is no escape, that our propensities for suffering will accompany us no matter how far we travel or how cushy our chair.

A mosquito harborage.

The quality and quantity of suffering expand and contract, though. Complaining about mosquito bites in a posh hotel lobby feels indecent when, just outside the Radisson’s metal detectors and guarded front gates, entire families live on the street. In those threshold moments the crush of, well, everything is irreconcilable: the listless babies, the mirrors-on-a-stick checking for explosives under the chassis of a Mercedes-Benz, this Westerner whose iPhone costs more than some of these people will earn in a lifetime. Meanwhile, at school, there’s the Afghan student, separated from her family by 1,500 miles and mountains of red tape. The refugees from Myanmar who have to drop the class because to stay in Bangladesh will annul their asylum in Thailand. The posters by the elevator pleading with students to stop cutting themselves when the trauma presses too hard on their nervous systems.

Witness and breathe, a simple and oddly vexing task. This seems to be one of Pema Chödrön’s gentle suggestions. Every moment holds its own birth and destruction. Suffering dissolves into joy; joy dissolves into suffering; suffering dissolves into joy. We’re crossing thresholds with every step. Resistance solidifies our illusions; our shared illusions can bind us together.

I’ll stop with the bumper-sticker sentiments. Pema Chödrön explains this better.

Signs of resilience pop up everywhere as well, some of them literal:

Good idea.

The exuberant cast of AUW’s Little Women. (We did improv; as an alumnus of Louisa May Alcott Elementary School [class of 1971], I think I didn’t disgrace the school or the author.)

5:00am football players, known to one and all as “We Brothers.”

What to do with all this? I don’t know.

On Wednesday, I read my students the riot act for cheating on the last exam. They responded with blank stares and one or two tears. For some of these women, having a university degree will spare them lives of breathtaking uncertainty and despair. For many of them, asking a friend for help makes perfect sense, especially on an exam (for the record: I reserve the last 20 minutes of every exam for class discussion about the material. I think this teaches them to ask the right questions). When I tell these students that the point of the exam is to understand the material and not just to tick off a box to get a diploma, I’m sure I sound naive. “Professor Sir! You don’t understand!”

It’s just a test. That diploma means the world.

Multiple choices, if you’re lucky. (Eyes on your own paper, please.)

Fortunately, dedicated people like M.K. Jatra exist. I’ve mentioned our collaborations in previous entries. His goal–as a theater artist who uses dramatics to alleviate suffering–is to create a mental health center at the University of Chittagong. He enlisted my help last week as the visiting (White) scholar (yikes) to co-present a 90-minute PowerPoint presentation on Expressive Psychotherapy to the university’s administration and faculty.

Words can’t capture what exactly happened. I’d say, “You had to be there,” but even then the mystery would remain. I think our presentation was a success, but a fish doesn’t know it’s wet. Judge for yourselves:

M.K. Jatra in a rehearsal room at Shilpokola Academy, Chittagong, Bangladesh.

A driver picked me up outside the Asian University for Women immediately after my psychology class on Wednesday. It takes nearly an hour to get across town to the University of Chittagong; I was enjoying the air conditioner and the reassuring restraint of a seat belt. I couldn’t hear Jatra in the back seat due to the endless horn-honking, but we seemed to have found an amiable silence that suits his temperament and my language deficits. About ten minutes into the trip I noticed a siren on our tail.

“That’s weird,” I said to Jatra.

“No,” he replied.

Jatra didn’t seem concerned that we were scheduled to begin in 30 minutes and that the car, wedged between two screaming three-wheel taxis, had been at an impasse for at least ten. The siren blared even louder, to no real effect. We finally broke free and passed a student demonstration celebrating technology (oh?) before creeping through one of the few traffic lights in a town of eight million (at a railroad crossing) (thank god).

The siren pursued us. That’s an understatement: it felt as if we had become the siren. Like one of those European ambulance sirens that sounds like Hell’s on fire.

You’re going to be late!

After nearly 45 minutes of full-volume, pulsating alarm I wondered why the driver hadn’t pulled over. I undid my seat belt and turned around to see if I could lay eyes on this persistent traffic cop. Nothing unusual appeared in the rear view mirror. I whispered to myself (although no one would have heard me if I’d shouted at the top of my lungs), “Where is this a–hole?”

Jatra picked up on my confusion. I pointed at my ear and said, “Siren?”

He, in turn, pointed to the roof of our car and twirled his index finger. He moved his head in tandem.

“Really?”

He nodded.

The sound was coming from our car. Our car had a siren on its roof. We were the siren.

“Why?” I asked.

“You are an important person and we have to get you to school on time,” he said. And then he laughed, even louder than the siren itself.

We got there.

People stand on ceremony in Bangladesh. Before Jatra and I spoke, the Vice-Chancellor and four other administrators addressed the audience for nearly an hour. I had already blurted out my resumé in 90 repetitive seconds, so I stared out at the crowd from our red leather chairs and occasionally asked the Vice-Chancellor to explain what was happening (“They are speaking”). By the time Jatra and I had moved down to the floor to do our PowerPoint, the administrators had left and we had 15 minutes to talk about mental health and the need for sympathetic and systemic responses to crises.

Jatra introduces our presentation.

I jumped in, explaining how mental health centers have begun to expand at universities in the States to address anxiety and depression and addiction and suicides. Serious stuff, worthy of many more minutes. I flipped to Jartra’s Expressive Psychotherapy slide and, as planned, said, “And now Professor Jatra will talk about his area of expertise.”

“No,” he said. “You do it.”

The remaining seven minutes were a blur. I voiced every thought I’d ever had, some of them germane, some of them just multi-syllabic. When I finished we got a hearty round of applause followed by Jatra’s deft handling of the question-and-answer session. Then we had lunch.

“Are you happy?” I asked on the drive home.

“Oh, yes,” he said. Apparently our talking points would be featured in the the student newspaper the following morning. Apparently there may be a mental health center at the school in the near-enough future.

M.K. Jatra. A man of few words and much influence.

All in all, it was a peculiar but glorious day. Jatra has been a good companion here in Chittagong. Last night he and his wife took me to a Bangla production of O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. I had a great time; amazing how relaxing it can be to let go of language and just focus on faces.

Speaking of, here are some more photos from my early morning walks and various rambles. I asked permission, of course:

Security guard guarding himself from the sun outside AUW.

Early morning Chatteswari Road.

Some step forward.

Rickshaw driver, stopping for tea.

Brooklyn comes to Chittagong at GEC Circle.

Audio tech at University of Chittagong.

No smile, but free tea. Very gracious.

Chok Bazaar. 5:00am.

I took part in this:

Kudos to the brave faculty and students who arranged this evening. Not an easy place.

Finally: I love South Asian windows.

Thanks to Pema Chödrön for the guidance.

Leave a comment, please. I’d be much obliged.

Living proof that anti-sweat iontophoresis may become the greatest medical/electrical advance of the 21st Century. I hope I don’t sweat to death before its unveiling. Also, there’s a green-and-yellow foot next to my face. At Dhaka University.

A caveat to start: Things are looking up. My students keep me on my toes. I’m getting lots (and lots) of improv work. The monsoon has arrived and, for three seconds this afternoon, I thought, “Wow. A breeze!” Oh, and this: I broke down and bought processed cheese slices. I don’t regret it. And sure, I enlisted half of Chittagong to help me find contact lens solution (it’s only sold at “optic stores”); together we overcame the traffic and language barriers and found an optician who sold me some saline solution.

Bangladesh continues revealing its beauty:

Beautiful Chittagong as seen through the rain and contact lenses.

The red sun from the Bangladesh flag, symbolizing a new day and an end to oppression. Chittagong University arboretum.

“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet.

Where the walls aren’t succumbing to climbing vines and crumbling damp, the murals work their magic:

Challenging the mind/body split.

A student interpreted: “It’s in my blood.” (Apologies if I misremembered.)

Beauty and birds. Chittagong University.

I’ve also been having a lot of Type Two Fun. Here’s a definition from the internet, a perfectly reliable source:

Type II fun is often hot, wet, muddy, or uncomfortable. Examples of Type II Fun include hiking, trekking, camping, kayaking, or going on some other grand adventure. It’s only fun in hindsight. Type II Fun refers to the type of adventure that you “want to have had”, but don’t necessarily “want to do.”

Kids playing soccer at 5:30am in a nearby park. This is Type One Fun.

I had two days of wonderful Type Two Fun at Chittagong University this week. M.K. Jatra, an expressive psychotherapist, invited me to join him for some workshops and lectures. I agreed, only to find myself (happily) baffled by the cavernous gap between my expectations and reality. Two thoughts eclipsed everything else.

The first, and most obliterating: “What is happening?”

Secondly: “I can’t wait to write about this.”

I’m not sure I’ll be able to capture the experience, but man alive: it was Type Two times Two.

Some fragments, photos, and captions to illustrate:

We don’t know each other and I’m not sure why I was a guest at the international law lecture. I learned a lot. For instance, both Bangladesh and the United States declared a “Unilateral Declaration of Independence.” We left West Pakistan and England behind, respectively.

A sobering prelude to the Type Two experience:

After listening to this international law lecture–which explained Bangladesh’s deeply traumatizing extrication from West Pakistan–I was invited to lunch in the faculty canteen. The talk hung heavy in the air, at least for me, a relative novice to the topic. Bangladeshis take pride in the sacrifices they made to gain independence; memorials to brave martyrs grace nearly every traffic circle and public park. Universities in Bangladesh keep these wartime memories vivid with sculpture and mosaics and commemorative posters shellacked to the sides of dining halls and dormitories. This makes sense: the genocidal horrors of 1971 targeted the academic community with chilling precision. I couldn’t help but look at these current professors and their families and think about their compatriots, killed in their beds as retaliation for seeking independence just two generations ago. As a teacher I feel free to say this: academia can certainly be fusty and arcane, but sitting with these professors in the context of their recent history made me proud to be associated–however remotely–with them. The stereotype of the bumbling, ineffectual professor brings out the brute in many of our politicians (who often are the beneficiaries of the Ivy League educations they cynically disavow). They relish the role of the playground bully, stoking violence against anyone whose power isn’t physical. The students and professors in Bangladesh showed courage as their country emerged from the bloody fight for independence. For a moment, apologizing for being one such bumbler felt like an affront to these brave souls.

Lecture finished.

Nope. (The Bangla actually says, “Dear Girlfriend.”)

Bas-relief on the wall by the Catholic Church in Chittagong. Bangladeshi citizens during the Liberation War of 1971.

Life goes on, somehow. The present moment pulled me out of my rumination, as always. I’m sharing some snippets of conversation that shook me out of my pondering and into the Type Two Fun I mentioned above. Internal monologue included, as necessary:

To the gracious student server in the faculty canteen:

ME: “I’m a vegetarian, so I’ll have the rice and dal.”

GRACIOUS STUDENT SERVER: “Yes! Have the mutton, too!”

ME: “No, thanks!”

GRACIOUS STUDENT SERVER: “Okay! Then fish for you!”

With the husband-and-wife faculty members, trying to understand their soft, clipped English while standing by the generator underneath a decapitating ceiling fan:

HUSBAND: “Our son is in the United States for graduate work.”

ME: “That’s great! Where?”

WIFE: “Estrogen replacement.”

ME: (to self) “What?”

Walking into class with my laptop to give a lecture:

PROFESSOR: “Do you have your PowerPoint lecture ready?”

ME: “Yes.” (I hate PowerPoint presentations, for the record.)

PROFESSOR: “Do you have your adaptor?”

Me: “Yes.”

PROFESSOR: “There is no projector.”

Theater students, released from the tyranny of the PowerPoint presentation.

On both visits, Jatra introduced me to many illustrious faculty members (“My name is Jim. Nice to meet you!”) (“Why are you here?”), got me endless cups of tea (only once did I confuse the sugar with the salt), showed me how to eat a local pome fruit using the husk as a spoon (“Jim. You do it wrong”), and signed me up for eight more workshops, all of which were cancelled by the time we left campus.

I finally got to fire up the infernal PowerPoint. Three slides in the load-shedding began.

Headline from Al Jazeera News: “Bangladesh suffers long power cuts amid worst heatwave in decades.” Not sure my slide deck would have alleviated any of the misery. We improvised instead.

Later in the afternoon, I had an audience with the Vice-Chancellor of Chittagong University. A powerful woman with a bemused, regal presence, she chuckled as I confronted a plate of orange slices. In many Asian countries–Bangladesh included–most people eat with only their right hand. The left hand is considered unclean. I could live here until Time is Done and never figure out how to peel fruit with just one hand. As an elegant host, the Vice-Chancellor allowed me space as I threw citrus around her tasteful sitting area.

My grandmother lived a few blocks from the Parent Navel Orange Tree in my hometown of Riverside, California. My dad and grandfather sold smudge pots to keep the citrus from freezing during cold snaps. My high school colors, in honor of the orange groves, were orange and green. I let my people down.

Admittedly, these are small (fusty) moments, worthy of a chuckle I suppose. We all survived these cultural misunderstandings with good humor and tact. Bigger forces were at work, though. Before catching the bus back to the AUW faculty housing, I asked Jatra why he hadn’t joined me in my lectures and workshops. He had been interpreting for me, but with his extensive knowledge and experience in art therapy he really should have been leading the classes himself. He gave me a shrug, so I asked again:

Over tea in the faculty lounge:

Me: “Why don’t you conduct these workshops? No one knows who I am here. Really, you should be in charge.”

Jatra: (touches my arm) “Yes. But you’re White.”

It’s not over.

Of course.

His truthful response sent a chill up my spine. I didn’t sense any resentment, but what did I know? I’d been dense. I was grateful, too, that he trusted me enough to share this hard–and obvious–reality. We sat quietly for a minute. It would have been easy to brush off the remark, say that he was mistaken and that racism is a thing of the past. Instead, we agreed to be co-presenters next week when we return to Chittagong University to talk about art and mental health. We spent most of yesterday morning compiling a joint PowerPoint presentation to accompany our talk. This collaboration feels better, more just, although I came to find out that Jatra is a stickler for font size and has intransigent, furious beliefs about color choices.

I still hate PowerPoint.

The light breaking through at Chittagong University. The brutalist architecture tries to contain the encroaching natural world. A fascinating duel.

That’s about it. I saw a riveting production of Oedipus Rex at a local arts school. The actors spoke Bangla so I had to rely on my recollection of Sophocles from Mrs. Bishop’s English Honors class at Riverside Polytechnic High School. Our 1974 production involved standing in a straight line and shouting the chorus’ words in unison. If we redefined the play, it was by accident and not for the better. In this Bangla version the chorus moved around the stage like a wave, constantly crashing into Oedipus and threatening to drown Jocasta with each terrible revelation. Gripping.

The chorus takes a curtain call. Oedipus Rex, 2023.

And I have many more portraits ready for the next blog. Here’s a teaser.

M.K. Jatra in front of poster for Oedipus Rex. He clearly has taste; I think our PowerPoint will be all the better for it.

Here’s to all the teachers out there. Please send comments. I beg of you. In the meantime, another quote by Rabindranath Tagore, the Bard of Bengal:

“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.“

Rabindranath Tagore: 1861-1941.

Just after 5:00am on Chatteswari Road.

I remember many swim practices where a song would get stuck in my head, pursuing me up and down the lane for the entire two-and-a-half hours. The more insipid the song, the fiercer the chase (“M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E,” for instance. Or some song about a three-hour tour). Despite recent postings to the contrary, I think my ear worms are getting a tiny bit more sophisticated. Lately, these lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s “Barangrill” have been tailing me:

And you want to get moving

And you want to stay still

But lost in the moment some longing gets filled…

(Thanks, Joni Mitchell)

The smile and the hand are at odds.

I can’t stay still. It’s too hot to keep walking. Joni Mitchell gets me.

Bangladesh is suffering under a persistent heat wave (91F in Dhaka at 10:30pm last Thursday night); I’ve been getting up earlier and earlier for a morning walk to beat the heat and clear my head. It’s still a (pleasant) shock to leave the cool of Thames Tower and step out into the smoke and haze of the morning. By the time I’m on the main road the crows are sifting through the piles of coconut husks, cawing at each other to set their morning boundaries. The men walking past acknowledge me with a booming, “Good morning!” The women avert their gaze. Today marked the first time a dog took offense at my presence. I tried to remember if I absolutely should or should not establish eye contact. I blinked. He wagged. We parted ways.

The monkeys in Dhaka left me alone, what with all the cables to coil.

These morning walks do fill some longing. I feel a weird sense of accomplishment just finding my way back to the apartment. Everywhere I look something catches my eye; the photographs fail, but I like the challenge of trying to capture (ha!) the proliferate world here. To echo Ms. Mitchell, getting lost in the moment takes me out of the desire to control time (six more weeks; three more exams; a month’s worth of dental floss, maybe).

Some moments for you:

Sunrise at Chok Bazaar. Dennis has been accompanying me on FaceTime. I hold up the phone and show him what I’m seeing. When he saw the sun rising he snapped the photo on his phone. So, a picture in Chittagong taken by someone in Minneapolis. What next? Flying cars?

Me, in Chok Bazaar, sloppy at 5:15 in the morning. In the mirrors of a modern bank…

Parked.

Early morning ISKCON temple in Chittagong. Haribol! (Hi, John.)

Stairs and shutters at the Chittagong ISKCON temple.

Looking at a tea warehouse through the multi-tinted windows of the Asian University for Women on Chatteswari Road.

Some Bangladeshi men have obliged me by letting me take their pictures. Public life is patriarchal here (the prime minister, however, is female); approaching a woman on the street for a photo would be intrusive. Hence:

CNG driver in Dhaka.

Henna!

Cycle rickshaw driver outside the Alliance Française.

Happy student emerging from the reading room at Dhaka University.

Entrepreneur along the fence at a nearby park in Chittagong. He offered to check my cholesterol levels.

Cycle rickshaw driver in matching lungi, shirt, and collapsible hood.

Criminology graduate student and CNG driver. Excellent impromptu tour guides, both.

Chai? Cha? Tea? This gentleman serves them all.

100 degrees Fahrenheit at Dhaka University. He’s looking at the canteen where I bought a Mountain Dew for the first time in fifty years. It’s still gross and perfect.

You’re hot? I have fur.

And finally:

A crowd gathered at Dhaka University. A consensus emerged: I should pay for a cycle rickshaw to see the campus (I walked).

Oh, and this interloper:

Sitting for lunch at the Sikh gurdwara on the campus of Dhaka University. An oasis of quiet in crazy Dhaka. “Kindness as their deity and forgiveness as their chanting beads. They are a most excellent people.” Guru Granth Sahib Ji

As you’ve guessed, I spent last weekend up in Dhaka, roaming around and trying to immerse myself. My roommate Reza (who still lives in a separate apartment; not sure when AUW will move me downstairs) kept me company on the nine-hour, double-decker bus ride last Thursday evening. We talked about movies–he’s a cinematographer–and food and our families. I asked him about adda, a Bangla word I’d learned in Kolkata. Here’s a definition, courtesy of a BBC report:

“We are not expected to produce something out of an adda,” Aditi Ghosh, head of the linguistics department at University of Calcutta, told me. “It is a kind of unplanned mental exercise where we not just talk about ourselves and our families, but we go beyond that. It is about ideas and events happening all around us.”

An adda in Kolkata.

If two people can form an adda (Is it a noun? A verb? Both?) I’d like to think Reza and I did. I commented on every passing object (“Look at that tree!”) while he incorporated these observations into discussions about art history and politics and Bengali society. We talked about load shedding and the upcoming fuel crisis. I groused about the Christo-fascism that is eroding human rights in the US. He told me about “September on Jessore Road,” Allen Ginsberg’s poetic lament for the refugees of the 1971 War of Liberation.

“Millions of fathers in rain/Millions of mothers in pain/Millions of brothers in woe/Millions of sisters with nowhere to go.” Ginsberg’s poem on display in the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka.

Reza handed me his phone so I could read the poem off the tiny screen as the bus headed toward Dhaka. How do societies recover from such horror? Where do they start? We talked about this, about how the generations that fought this war are still with us, if they survived. We talked about Ginsberg and censorship and the dangers of denying the past. The mood shifted as we stopped at the requisite roadhouse in Cumilla (everyone has to get off the bus; everyone is heartily encouraged to eat). Reza ordered dal and rice and Pepsis to share. We chatted some more and almost missed the bus.

Nothing was solved, not even this less complicated question: “Why do people take offense at other people’s vegetarianism?”

Lots of okra in the dining hall. Might just drive me back to beef.

In high school my insightful friend Sarah coined the term “houseboat person.” I think this is akin to people in an adda. Think of this as a kind of geometry proof by way of explanation:

Friends are people who sustain us.

Houseboat dwellers are people who can live easily in close quarters.

Friends who can live easily in close quarters are houseboat people.

Time will tell if Reza and I will be houseboat people, but I was very grateful for his easy, unforced, interesting company.

Waterscape, waiting for a boat. Dhaka.

As for teaching, a student of mine came to office hours and gave me good talking-to. That morning, nearly half the class had arrived late and I had pleaded with them to make a better effort at being on time. She said, “They were raised in military dictatorships. You have to be firm!” Below is videotaped evidence of my iron-fisted pedagogy:

This video raises more questions than it answers.

The students at Dhaka University were eager to tell me about their own history with certain types of dictators, how authoritarianism tore their worlds apart. If I can do them remote justice, I’ll include their observations next time. An object lesson for us in the States, for sure.

Joy Bangla. On a wall at Dhaka University.

For now, I’m ending with another glimpse of Joni Mitchell and her song “Good Friends”:

No hearts of gold

No nerves of steel

No blame for what we can and cannot feel

Good friends, you and me…

Much love, whether we’d survive on a houseboat or not. Send me comments; we’ll create a digital adda.