Bangladesh was in many ways unexpected, and a long-term stay in my discomfort zone [The 10 worst things about living in Bangladesh]. But there were things I enjoyed at the time, and I’m surprised how much I’m still missing them!
- Lightning storms
Lightning storms in Bangladesh are a whole different scale from what I had seen before. Given the country’s layout – all the rivers, lakes, streams, canals, paddies, on a flat-as-a-pancake geography where the tallest thing in miles would be a human standing – they are also extremely dangerous. Every year, hundreds of people are killed by lightning storms, with many ripping stories like when a whole wedding party perished as a lightning struck their boat.
But as long as you watch them from the safety of your house, the storms in Dhaka are hyper-spectacular. The sky turns a deep, angry black, yet a single bolt can cut through the whole horizon, lighting up the sky in electric white. It’s the only place where I could see lightning jumping from cloud to cloud, wandering through the sky like a living creature. From childhood, I loved counting from flash to thunder, each second standing for 300 meters distance – but before Dhaka, I can’t recall the count ever being 1 second. Or less than one second – flash and almost simultaneous bang. Not just any bang, but an earsplitting, horrifying boom. Even in the safety of your house, it could curl the blood and make you step back from the window. The lightning and the thunderclaps, the downpour and the high wind, the beauty amped up by menace – I loved thunders in Bangladesh. Since returning to Europe, storms, sadly, just feel too tame here – a good thing, for sure, just not for the viewers’ dramatic pleasure.
- Alcohol warehouses
Such was the sheer romance of buying alcohol in Bangladesh that I certainly didn’t contemplate giving up the vice. Bangladesh being a Muslim country, consumption is very low, and you wouldn’t find alcohol in ordinary shops or restaurants. To buy alcohol, you need a special permit, a sheet of paper called “license”, valid for three months. Apart from bureaucratic hiccups and delays, it’s easy to get it if you’re a non-Muslim foreigner. Once in possession of such license, you can go to an alcohol warehouse to buy the stuff.
Many warehouses are straight out of a Bond movie – high fence, thick metal doors, armed guards. By the time you park your car in the courtyard, you feel every bit as villainous as a minor arms dealer. A clerk will check your passport and license; then you can wonder around the actual store, which is a large museum-style room with many (on a good day) types of bottles showcased behind glass walls. They could be hand grenades or tactical nuclear weapons, the way they are carefully enclosed. You make a list of the booze you expect would get you through the next 3 months, pay the (surprisingly reasonable) price, and leave. Downstairs, discreet carton boxes will be carried to your car’s trunk – you may have a quick look to verify you have all what you paid for, then the large metal gates slide open, and off you go, pleasantly tickled by the experience and looking forward to your glass of red tonight.
- Bats in the park
Dhaka is overcrowded and bursting at the seams with concrete. Public green spaces are extremely limited, making the very few parks an absolute treat. My favorite was Gulshan Lake Park, a leafy fenced area with a long(ish) circular walk, a small playground, two little lakes with a bridge, and a small army of gardeners keeping it neat and clean. Though it meant staying exposed during peak mosquito hour, I liked walking there just after sunset. In the twilight, the sky above the park would be full of bats – tiny black bats flitting all around in the air, perhaps catching mosquitos (so I hoped), perhaps just enjoying social life, or whatever bats like doing in the dusk. They danced around in eerie silence, their squeaks inaudible for the human ears, and seemed completely oblivious to the 17-million-and-counting bustling megapolis around them.
- Full-time nannies
It’s not only that a full-time nanny would be completely affordable on a normal expat salary in Dhaka, though it already felt like a miracle after the cost of childcare in Europe. The value for money was a mindbogglingly good deal, knowing all along that with paid holidays (and expats normally had a lot of holidays), bonuses and nice working conditions, your nanny is also getting a good deal. A good deal in Bangladesh, of course, but a good deal. This also meant that with a bit of luck, you had an excellent pool to choose from – nannies were often passed from one expat family to the next, so they spoke very passable English, knew a lot about foreign habits, and had a long experience in child-minding. As our family language was not English, my son learnt English from his nanny, and spoke with a cute Bengali accent (also using her original ways of speaking, like “close the lamp”) for a while. Such being human nature (and irritation levels in Dhaka) that at the time, I was often more focused on the negatives – and it’s true, Bengali nannies treat kids with a great deal of indulgence. Our nanny behaved as though my four-year old was the boss, catering to his every whim, which was fine as long it involved building a “swamp” of pillows and playing “swamp-dwellers” for two hours straight (a feat that would almost certainly kill me), but less fine when it was about giving him as much chocolate as he wished, or not putting him to bed on time because “he didn’t feel like it.” But on the whole, she was a lovely nanny, and while Dhaka weighed me down in every other possible way, having luxury childcare arrangements afforded a peace of this corner of my mind that I had never known before.
- Conference food
After years of Western conferences and meetings with nothing but water offered, or at most a thermos can of vile coffee, Bangladesh hospitality was a welcome surprise. If you had a meeting with a local official, from the smallest functionary to the President himself, you would be offered a delicious tea, and a small plate of assorted sweets and biscuits. Conferences could not be imagined without proper food, typically involving not only lunch, but morning snacks, lunch and high tea. As Bangladeshi people love conferences, and regardless of the foreigners’ (real or totally non-existent) expertise, love inviting expats to their conferences, I had my fair share of sitting at white-clothed tables in cavernous, overcooled halls. The food was often the saving grace of the day. Spiced milk tea, all kinds of fried dough, chocolate or vanilla biscuits for elevenses; a sumptuous lunch, most often a big plate of chicken biryani, with creamy mishti doi for dessert; and the high tea, which could be quite a grand affair, with more fried dough, sweets and fruits. A custom I’d happily import to Europe.
- Monsoon cleaning
Monsoon in Bangladesh starts somewhere in June, and ends in September. How rainy? In the peak rainy months of June-July, it rains more in Dhaka than in the whole year in the Netherlands (which is famously not an arid desert, either). On a really wet monsoon day, Dhaka streets would be submerged in water, and the wettest Northeast would get literally inundated.
Yet the monsoon season, forgive the pun, has its silver lining. Dhaka’s heavily polluted air is washed through and through by the monsoon downpour, and the tortured lungs can finally breathe. Dust and grime are also washed away (except when the sewage system gets waterlogged, or the rivers of blood on a rainy Eid al-Adha). On very rainy days, even construction works would stop, and the traffic would diminish, bringing noise levels to a more tolerable level. It’s so hot and humid that it may be impossible to towel yourself dry after a shower, but once you’re used to walking around in a warm, wet envelope of mist, it’s not unpleasant. And contemplating the monsoon rain from your window can be extremely soothing – a world of blue and grey and green, with dazzling red patches of flowering trees, and the splattering sound effects (no wonder “heavy rain sound” is such a hit on YouTube). Oh, glorious monsoon!
- Golden green Bengal
“My Golden Bengal” is the national anthem, evoking mangos, paddy fields and banyan trees – very nice indeed, though a lot more abundant in the days of hymn-writer Tagore than today. But in spite of all the riotous construction and environmental disaster, Bangladesh can still produce those “Golden Bengal” moments. Even in Dhaka. Just after the monsoon subsides around mid-September, when the air is still clean and new, in lucky, sunny moments, the world around you could suddenly turn all shades of gold, but above all, golden green. Trees would shine their golden green foliage, lakes would glitter in golden green, and the ugliest city street would suddenly feel magical. It can produce awe, but also dangerous levels of wistfulness – if only Dhaka could look like the Emerald City of Oz often!
- Paddling in your swimming pool
Should you aspire to have a rooftop swimming pool, you may tick off that dream in Dhaka. Then again, you may not – it could be prohibitively pricey, even on expat salaries, or, as it happens in Bangladesh, you could have a rooftop swimming pool, but it may be in disrepair half the time. Some hotels and expats clubs also have swimming pools, though, and if you’re lucky enough to have regular access to one, you can have a whale of a time. In 7-8 months of the year, the weather is warm enough to swim outdoors, even if the pool is unheated; in a heated pool, you could swim outdoors almost any day of the year. Certain months have particular charm for swimming. The hot, dry months (April to June) because in the heat you can lounge for hours in the lukewarm pool, cooling your limbs and drinking coconut water; in the cold months (November to March), you could take a quick plunge and then a long, hot shower in the changing room. But I best liked swimming in the monsoon months, when it feels almost the same being inside the pool as outside – you’re just dressed differently. I liked swimming in the monsoon downpour, when the warm rain was the same temperature as the warm pool water, and the pool felt much bigger in the grey-blue realm, almost like an ocean. Also, the pool could be quite empty in this season, as many expats left Dhaka for the summer holidays – I could really imagine that I had my own swimming pool!
- Off the beaten track
One of the uplifting things about living in Bangladesh as an expat is that by definition, you are off the beaten track. The tourism agency’s former slogan, “Visit Bangladesh before others come”, is still very apt today. Bangladesh regularly features on the world’s least visited countries list – in the bottom ten, if you check per capita arrivals. As a result, almost anything you do, even if you just walk fifteen minutes to your workplace, is fairly much off the beaten track. I remember once meeting this burly, tattooed Canadian backpacker at Dhaka airport – he was taken aback by the taxi prices, so I offered him a ride to the expat area, where he was supposed to meet a fellow Canadian. Sitting in the car, he told me how his wife and daughters back home were worried about him, and considered his trip to Bangladesh a high-risk, unusual adventure. All this from a big globetrotter guy (he’d also told me about his romps in Central Africa) – it felt a bit surreal. I assured him that Bangladesh was extremely safe – except the road traffic and the dengue fever, ok, but still generally safe.
If you leave Dhaka, the off-the-beaten-track feeling triples – you could genuinely be in places which hardly any expat had visited before. It is not always pleasant, as there is little attention as yet to environmental or cultural heritage, and you may need to travel through a lot of grime (fascinating in its own way) to find a very ruinous ruin straight out of Indiana Jones, or nice spot of idyllic countryside. But the hardship of getting there is exactly what makes traveling in Bangladesh so memorable. A few years later, looking at my own photos can feel like paging National Geographic (not the photo quality, mind!) – I marvel at the mere fact of having visited such places.
- Kudos and a bit of perspective
Spending a few years in Bangladesh will grant you enough “third world credentials” to get you through the next forty year of job interviews. Employers will automatically assume that you are a resilient and adaptable person; new acquaintances will think you’re worldly-wise, sturdy and brave. OK, they might also think you’re a total idiot, but they would probably keep that to themselves. Thinking back how badly I coped during most of my time in Dhaka, I wonder if any of these opinions are well deserved (except the idiot part). But even if I haven’t earned real bragging rights in the department of mental hardiness, living in Dhaka has certainly given me some perspective.
Evidently, living the life of the cream of the top in a city of 17 million poor people will give you a strong feeling of privilege – but that’s not fully what I mean. In Dhaka, even the “happy few” lack very basic human necessities. Yes, all the money in the world can buy you some clean air (just stay close to your air purifier), some clean water (buy bottled), some quiet (you won’t need to live right on top of a main road). But much less affluent people would normally have access to a much nicer environment in Europe than the rich in Dhaka. Some of our needs may be different (I certainly marveled at the lifestyle choices of some of the rich Bangladeshi – I mean, who needs to order half the menu just to try it, or upholster the sofa in silk?), but I don’t imagine that a calm, clean and inviting environment would not feature on most of the human wish lists. Beyond the acknowledgment of individual privilege, valid even in moments when I felt most miserable in Dhaka, the perspective I’m thinking of is much broader. Looking at virtually any country in Europe, I was struck by the realization how the magnitude of problems in general is just so much less daunting. I remember telling a friend from Eastern Europe, who had severe anxiety over the climate change impact on her country, how little she needs to worry – they have decades before it gets really bad (as opposed to Bangladesh, where it is already causing huge issues in the coastal areas), multitude of resources (not just in terms of GDP, but also in terms of still not degraded natural resources), and most importantly, space – they have 20 times less population on a comparable size of land. I often felt that with the troubles of Bangladesh are like the famous Greek monster’s heads – you can cut one off, but another two will grow in its place. Even the best Platonic government with the best-laid plans of the world could fail there on the long run. So whatever political and societal calamities I see in my part of the world, I’m more confident in the expectation that we’d overcome it somehow – because, frankly, who couldn’t kill a monster if it only had one head?
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