Heathrow – Dehli. Dehli – Dhaka. I didn’t get a window seat, I love flying ……The wonder of being able to look down at the landscape, seeing the flat patterns and lines of the fields and roads connecting and crossing spaces, the clusters of texture that make towns and villages. I put it down to coming from East Anglia, a flat landscape without the opportunity to climb a hill to survey your surroundings and assess your position. I didn’t manage to get a window seat, so only managed snippets of things, as we came in to land at Dhaka there were glimpses of paddy fields and tall chimneys surrounded by piles of red bricks, lakes and pools and what looked like lines of dry river beds that stopped and started.
Thurle and I were met by Pulak, artist and member of Britto arts who kindly collected us from the airport and took use to where we will be staying in Dhamondi,The evening light was a pink haze and as the sunset we heard the call to prayer from the mosque opposite the airport. The journey from the airport to the center of Dhaka is 10km ….It took two hours! Traffic was a solid 4 'lanes’ of vehicles inching their way along weaving and dodging across lanes to get where the need. I use the term ‘lanes’ very loosely, the road is ‘four trucks wide’ would be more accurate – there are no lanes nor any concept of a lane.
Repeated crunches and scrapes meant that the buses were panel beat to submission rippled surfaces looked as though they had been repainted so many times that the paint looked as thick as the metal beneath, even the new cars have transfer stickers along the side which somehow anticipate the stripes of scatches and scrapes they are soon to receive.
Buses barging buses and the occasional CNG rickshaw (Natural gas powerd Tuc Tuc) caught in the middle or nearly being toppled because it was in a lane that a truck wanted to be in.
The drivers are brave and panel beaters must have a constant stream of work.
With the traffic moving very slowly we started to learn Bangla from Pulak - ‘Lak Benna’ – I don’t need.
We arrived at the flat in one piece and there we met Owen, another Britto member, who first came to Bangladesh as a cultural manager with the French embassy. In France he worked for cultural organisations and spent time in Denmark where he studied the Danish language and eskimology, he has worked with children and engaged in various activities such as radio journalism and translation. Whilst in Denmark, he made a radio reportage on Greenland's urban youth:
An excellent fish curry, dhal and rice cooked by Jasmin, the house keeper, a brief look from the roof terrace and walk around the block to find a large bottle of water ended an exhausting 24hrs. Sleep.
