Moving around: Old Dhaka

Many of the narrow streets barely allow for a cycle rickshaw to pass through. Across Dhaka rickshaws have been adapted to carry all manner of items. They move through the traffic quickly and easily. Trucks are only allowed into the city at night.

Beautiful baskets and tins are balanced with ease on peoples heads as they walk along. I liked their structure and the fullness of the form of the yogurt pots.

The brushes are made from the coconut tree. The detailing in the use of the tin cans, to hold all the strands together, replaces the more complex platting with coir, the forged metal ring and the pinnned tin strap. Inventive recycling but also the loss of a traditional skill (coir work/ forged work). The stacked papers are hand made paper bags made from recycled newspapers, craft skill and labour is cheap which allows for this.

Drawn lines in the sky

Behind Hindu Street: Old Dhaka

All along Hindu Street there are small alleyways and stairways leading to courtyards and living spaces behind and above the shops, most of them are so small in size that I had to turn my shoulders side ways and stoop to move through them. Behind the shops was a wealth of visual treats; surfaces, colours, structures and shapes.

Here people were stacked on top of each other in small enclosed communities, with shared wells, washing areas and shrines.

The pigeon breeders use bamboo grids on tall poles to give their birds a place to roost, high up and away from the cats.

Friday - A day of rest for Muslims and a trip to Old Dhaka

Saw and spoke with Seth on skype last night for the first time which was wonderful, it was good to hear his voice and see him too.

I feel deprived of sleep at the moment. I am tired at around 7pm Bangladesh time, then wide awake between 10 – 12pm. I seem to wake at 4-5 in the morning. Feels like my body clock is running on a mix of UK and Bangladesh time. Its impossible to try to sleep during the day the noise is overwhelming. Yesterday I was suddenly conscious of how the high noise levels were affecting me. When walking through town I was conscious that I was rushing because of the loudness of the street.

Having struggled to sleep this morning I decided to start to record the sounds I hear. The crows start first, then the occasional street sellers calling, beggars calling for alms, the swish of the reed brushes sweeping across the pavements. The tinkle of the rickshaws and the honking of horns all start off gently and slowly building to a constant fill of shifting pockets of sound from across the city.

I was going to go back to the museum today to draw but Owen suggested a trip to Old Dhaka to see where the Britto 1 mile sq project took place. He had shown us images of the area, the old Portugese, Armenian, British and French houses and the spice warehouses. The place would be quieter on Fridays, so we decided to go to Shakhar bazar and start at Hindu street make our way along the bazaars, to the river and the spice warehouses and then up to 'Beauty Boarding' for lunch and to see the historic gateway that Mahbub had used for his film 'The City Gate'.

The place was a labyrinth of shops and stalls demonstrating different wares, crafts and skills. Interestingly the streets in Old Dhaka echoed what happens across the whole city, different areas specialize in specific tasks, products or crafts; parts of the city specialize in cycles, some in recycling, metalworking, jewellery and goldsmithing, truck and car parts, basketry etc etc…. The day in Old Dhaka was a visual feast.

Took a CNG to Shakhar Bazar. Owen negotiated with the driver…. For him to use the meter would cost us an additional 30Tk (80Tk). All the motor rickshaws in Dhaka city used to run two stroke petrol engines but they have been replaced by the CNG (Natural Gas) rickshaws to reduce the pollution levels.

The CNG’s are caged, I was unclear if this protection was for the interests of the passengers or the driver. I think that there it would be interesting to see how good CNG drivers are at the computer games Seth plays, their sense of space and timing is quiet special, I have only seen 1 accident since I have been here although the daily death toll in the Dhaka district is apparently high (mostly when people get onto or off of the buses, which never stop completely nor pull over to the side of the road).

' Riding in a CNG Rickshaw'

This was the metal repair man, who had set up shop outside Shakhar Bazar, I was draw to the silver (plastic) sticks which he melted with the heat from the flame. They filled the holes in the predrilled sheet of steel which he used to demonstrate how his product worked.

Hindu street

Boys outside a Kite shop, wanting to have their photo taken.

This man made wedding braclets from shell. The shells are sliced into rings, then filed to produce intricate designs. I liked the wooden rest that he works on- it reminded me of a jewellers bench peg. Used to support the work, it was held together with string. A very dusty job.

A simple shop/ workshop which made and sold wedding decorations and wedding hats made from ‘Schola’, a light weight wood sometimes called' Pith'. The limited space means that the work each shop does is very specialized, using limited resources, tools and materials.

I was interested in the way the hats were made, I had seen some less glitzy examples in the museum and liked the way the fins of material created form – a bit like Anthony Gormleys ‘Angel of the North’. I also liked the matt-ness of the material. There was a special quality to the stencils they used too.

Rickshaw ride

Typed up some notes and then walked our way to the north of the area called Dhamondi. Visited Gallery Drik, a photo gallery and commercial photo-library showing the work of Bangladeshi photographers. Pursued by a young man, desperate to sell a book about ‘The magical wonders of the world’ I declined whilst he continued to assure me that I was missing a great opportunity!

Visited The Bengal Foundation Gallery of Fine Arts and viewed the exhibition ‘A Pilgrimage for Peace’, work by Kazi Giyasuddin. Beautiful blues and detailed, intricate surfaces built up of layers of images, each almost hidden beneath the other. The images reminded me of looking down from an aeroplane, at a landscape, through clouds. Watching as it faded out of view then reappears.

We also made a brief visited to Aarong, a crafts retail outlet which sells items from across Bangladesh. There were some beautiful textiles, with stunning colours and detaling. Head is still swimming from the time change and I'm getting frustrated at not being able to absorb what I am experiencing visually and make decisions about what I see.

Took my first rickshaw journey, from the Aarong down to Hatirpul (Elephant Bridge). I understand that the drivers don’t own their own rickshaws, they rent them from a company each day approx 80tk), the cost being based on the quality of the rickshaw.

After negotiating a price it was clear that I should have checked that both the driver and the rickshaw were up to the job. As the wheels on my side wobbled with the weight and the driver struggled with the clunking peddles of his tired machine I began to wonder if I might have been better to walk. The rickshaws are surprisingly high and as we began to gather a pace the journey became a scary delight, nervous laughter took over and images of fair ground roller coaster rides came to mind as I held on for dear life as the rickshaw either swerved to avoid the potholes or hit them full on - they have limited suspension. Moving through the traffic on the rickshaw was great, for what seemed like the first time, with hands firmly clamped onto the shaking machine, I was able to actually look. The height allows you to see much more, without the worry of what you might be stepping on or into. (The pavements are not the best kept areas, open sewers run alongside them, often they are ‘uneven’ with giant holes and broken concrete slabs tilted at odd angles to catch the unwary). There was one near miss on the rickshaw as we approached a junction - the driver had decided that he wanted to keep the ricksaw moving, rather than break and have to go from a standing start. We swung from a minor road into a bigger line of traffic with the persuasive force of a truck or a bus – which we were clearly not!

Hatirpul - somehow it keeps moving.

Morning song

Woken to the conversations of car horns, tuc tuc beeps and the caw of crows. I had been so tired I slept through the anticipated wake up song of the call to prayer. From the window I can see rickshaw street sellers, preparing vegetables for sale, placing cauliflowers, mooli, tomatos and beans on their barrows flicking them with water to brighten their colour and keep them fresh in the growing heat. Men watering plants in their roof top gardens, preparing for the day. Jasmin cooked a type of parata and fried some grated carrot, courgette, onion, chilli and coriander for breakfast - wonderful food. We started slowly, still sluggish from the flight.

Pulak met us and we walked to Britto Arts. Crossing roads takes courage, Pulak indicated that the use of an outstreatched arm and full hand were the tools to use to stop the traffic, although this seemed visually out of proportion to the wall of metal that made its way toward us, with a bit of side stepping and a final scurry it seemed to work! I decided that eyes in the side as well as the back of my head would be useful on some of the busier junctions. Traffic cameras haven’t yet reached Dhaka so a traffic officer with a big stick tries to keep some assemblance of order on the larger junctions. The thought of steel toe-capped shoes also came to mind when walking along the streets dodging the rickshaws which came very close to my open toes. So many things to see and my eye being caught by all manner of things: the street stalls, small 1 room shops, hand painted bill boards, colourful cycle rickshaws, It was all so visually busy and at the same time having to look everywhere for traffic, it was difficult to stop and see things and at the moment I am uncomfortable taking photo’s of what I see …

At the Britto offices we met some of the members of Britto, Mahbubur Rahman, one of the founder members and Riaz a painter who also works in the government conservation department restoring paintings.

They are organizing an all night show, 'odd space', a live video link project with another arts organization in Vancouver and one in Karachi. Britto is one of the few arts venues in Bangladesh working with digital media.

Riaz took us on to the national museum where we met Keya another Britto member.

A dusty museum – lots about the natural geography, geology, flora and fauna of the country. But then the most amazing craft displays showing the basketry and textiles metalworking, boat building and carving from across the country, illustrating the cultural mix and ancient history of the country. Exhibitions moved through to the more recent painting and literature and the historic events of the freedom movement, the partition of India, the formation of East and West Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

There was a vast amount of information and too much to hold, so we made the decision to visit again with sketchbooks and pencils, unfortunately there is no photography in the museum.

I’m conscious that all of the Britto members are increadibly well traveled and experienced undertaking residencies and placements around the world. Feeding and informing their practice.

Enroute to the museum we passed the daily news pasted on a wall available for all those who can, to read.

There were also many markets and street sellers, the display and colours are wonderful.

We had a brief look at the studios at the art school and saw the work of graduating MA students.

Students talk of their study as 4yrs programme, due to national strikes and opportunities to intermit and take other projects, sometimes the study can take considerably longer.

We found somewhere for lunch and sat and talked over Lunch learnt a bit of Bangla ‘Dhono bad’ - Thank you’, ‘Tham Koto’ – How much? ‘Eta koto’ - how much is this? ‘Boro’ - Big, ‘Choto’ – small. As we left the restaurant I became aware of the sound of the ricksaws, the cacophony of noise had gone for a while and we had relaxed, to the quiet. Then, coming out of the restaurant for a brief moment there was a flow of rickshaws as they drifted past and the tinkle of their bells was like a river glistening in the sun, for a brief moment the horns of the cars had gone, a river of rickshaws.

We went to the house of Mahubub and Lipi and spent time talking and eating till the small hours. Walking through Dhaka at night, the air is still full of a mist which seems to desend with the fading light, a mixture of the fug of pollution from the cars and what seems like of building dust - the city is constantly being built and demolished and re-built, building materials are delivered directly to the sites and the dust fills the streets, the fine powder hits the back of your throat and is the constant dryness on the lips. Its surprising the plants and trees survive with their thick layer of grey powder, it gets everywhere and coats everything.

At night the rickshaw drivers use no lights and they weave their way down the roads dodging the potholes.

Shower and bed.

Arrival

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.