107 - Dhaka & Didion (Dhaka, Bangladesh)
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE… or cement your assholeship. Dhaka is a mess. It just is. Yes, I know saying it out loud isn’t diplomatic, but reality is reality. Disagree? That’s fine, but rebuttals from anyone who hasn’t spent quality time in Bangladesh’s capital aren’t worth a cat’s meow. Pack thirteen million people in a relatively small area anywhere in the developing world and see what happens. Too many people. Too many vehicles. Too much refuse in the street. Sprinkle dust over everything. Add abject poverty. Apply chaos theory. Welcome to Dhaka. It is flat, so there’s that. Still, getting around is a nightmarish mix of vertigo and asphyxiation, especially inside a CNG (autorickshaw). My advice? Find a sector with everything you need within walking distance and settle in.
Everyone (men, women, and children) hacks and spits with such intensity, I sometimes mistook the sound for a jetliner taking off. Folks don’t screw around. It happens everywhere (streets, restaurants, public spaces, etc.) and is often so pronounced, you wonder if you’re not inside a comedy skit. One gentleman stared me down as I passed, conjuring a phlegm demon at a hundred decibels, swishing it in his mouth, then pelting the ground to his side. Until he let loose, he never broke eye contact. I thought he was about to spit on me. He didn’t. Expectorating is a forgone conclusion, executed unconsciously and without malice aforethought. In that instance, he combined it with the usual ‘foreigner gawking’ integral to my everyday experience. It was hard not to laugh.
Want to escape the crowds? Good luck. That goes for pretty much the entire country. Imagine if half the population of America moved to Iowa, or if everyone in France and Germany migrated to the United Kingdom. B’desh is a giant floodplain with an endless network of rivers and streams. Real estate is tight. If not for the indelible friendliness of its people, I would’ve giddy-upped on outta there after the Sundarbans. But I couldn’t. For all the negatives, the place is endlessly fascinating. Hidden rewards, buried treasures. Bangladesh has a lot to offer, but you have to work to see it, be willing to polish the stone.
Tiger fever. I still had it. I wanted another go, but was unsure of the “where” and the “when.” My recent excursion was excellent, though not one I could repeat in light of expense and boat availability. I sent e-mails to the Sundarbans Tiger Project hoping to volunteer, but they were far too overwhelmed to accommodate Curious George. A volunteer with zero experience and zero training would’ve been more of a hindrance than a help.
So? Well, the Lonely Planet hinted at a fledgling tourism industry in the western Sundarbans concentrated in a small village named Munshigonj. The guidebook alleged the possibility of hiring local boats for day trips, but provided no details (how to get there, how to hire a boat, where to stay, etc.) To quote the LP—organizing the trip promises to be quite an adventure. What more did I need? I set my sights on Munshigonj.
For whatever reason, the west harbors most of the man-eating tigers. I was a little hesitant about showing up and asking, “Who wants to find a tiger?” Higher salinity levels, less animal prey, and extensive human encroachment are all plausible explanations for more hostility. With any luck, I’d connect with a few maualis (honey gatherers), whose occupational hazards include tiger attack.
*********
After my return from the Sundarbans, there was a lull. Lulls were important, necessary. Lulls gave me time to reboot, to refill the proverbial gas tank. They also gave me time to update the blog, distill my experiences, process and archive my photos. I spent a week retracing steps from hotel to restaurant with random course deviations here and there. I was solo again and occupied my time with writing and pondering. My restaurant/office of choice was an upscale establishment with Wi-Fi and overpriced, albeit delicious, food.
Many a time I questioned my devotion to chronicling experiences as they unfolded. It absorbed an enormous amount of time, time lost doing, experiencing, adventuring, etc. It was nothing to spend a week or more catching up after a sequence of escapades. Why? Why did I do it? I wasn’t making money, and only a handful of people followed my adventure. And yet I persisted.
I could’ve recorded my thoughts on paper or laptop without the added hassle of editing and posting, but once I started keeping records it became a necessity bordering on addiction. It forced me to become more attentive, more mindful. It forced me to ask questions. How can I describe this scene and the feelings it invokes? How can I best remember the places, feelings, and faces attached to this episode? I think it improved my short-term memory, caching details to bolster my writing.
Don’t forget. Remember, remember, and remember. I lamented often my failure to keep a diary on the road to adulthood. (Not sure I ever arrived, but that’s a rabbit for another hole.) What a treasure trove that would’ve yielded years later, much like this blog has done. And it’s not just about nostalgia. A record would contain wisdom only your former self can impart. What have I missed? What have I forgotten? What lessons have I had to learn and relearn? What’s the point of a journey if there’s no documentation, no after-action review? It pains me to consider all the lost memories from trips abroad before this ultimate fandango. I was determined not to make that mistake again.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect” - Anais Nini
I like to believe when I write I’m more me, more authentically myself. That could very well be self-delusional bullshit but perception is reality and all that jazz. When I write, I feel substantial, I feel real, I feel like a part of me is the me that’s supposed to be… me. I’m greasing my existential groove and living and reliving profound experiences. There’s a purity, a distillation of self involved in the process even if the words are contrived and disingenuous. For even false writing reveals, if only to the writer herself. Convincing myself to write was easy. Convincing anyone to read was a horse of a different color. Self-promotion has never been my forte. Self-immolation on the other hand…
Why do writers write? Does any writer really know? Maybe. Maybe not. I do know this—writing is creation, my creation. It might be a smoldering pile of donkey shit, but it’s my smoldering pile of donkey shit. Same for photography. My photos might be an uninspiring string of cliched travel garbage, but it’s garbage unique to me. Nothing can take that away.
A journey of self-discovery takes a lifetime… gag. (Clichés are clichés for a reason, but I cringe when compelled by precision to use them.) If you’re lucky, you’ll never finish the trip. It’s a Sisyphean task, one whose reward lies in the effort. Confucius was right when he wrote, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Of course, “job” implies income; I never found a path to financial stability before returning. I know now as I knew then, I could spend the rest of my life doing whatever the hell it was I was doing. Never had I been able to sit in front of a computer for nine consecutive hours, five days straight barely coming up for air. I loved it, determined to keep going for as long I dared. I paid a heavy price for my addiction, the debt is outstanding.
Why do I write? I like Joan Didion’s answer from her essay “Why I Write,” a title she borrowed from George Orwell:
“During those years I was traveling on what I knew to be a very shaky passport, forged papers: I knew that I was no legitimate resident in any world of ideas. I knew I couldn’t think. All I knew then was what I couldn’t do. All I knew then was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer. By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want to what I fear.”