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| The river-and-sea promise is eternal. A cargo ship navigates the Sugandha River. |
“The promise of river-and-sea is eternal
– always loyal. Yet as the world has changed so the advantage of Jhalokati’s
trading geography is lessened. Evidence of past commercial success isn’t
difficult to find.
Along the town’s waterfront are godowns and stately homes
with a story to tell. In Nalchity Bazar lies the century-old grave of a Chinese
businesswoman. There’s the engineering feat of the Gabkhan Channel to admire.
The
future is less certain but trade is likely to continue to play a role of
significance in the life of the district and town of river-sea memory.”
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| Loading salt on the Bashanda River, West Jhalokati. |
1. How did she feel at first, when she
stepped off the boat? Was there a reluctant, deep sigh as her leading foot made
landfall; was she consumed with thoughts of what she’d left behind? Or was it
with determination and the quiet grin of a plan that she resolutely strode
ashore?
We don’t know much but we can assume
there was a boat. Even today Nalchity Bazar in Jhalokati District is most
accessible by local ferry across the broad Sugandha – the Fragrant River.
Besides, she’d come from some distance around a century ago and there was
certainly no aeroplane to account for that.
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| View from the Gabkhan Bridge, Jhalokati. |
Was it winter then? Did she step,
shivering, onto an unseeable riverbank that had without warning from some foggy
nowhere nudged the boat? Or perhaps it was spring, on a morning announced by
the cuckoo’s call when there might’ve been the red of polash or krishnachura
blossoms to lift her spirits. Those flowers are not famed for fragrance but red
is the colour of happiness for the Chinese. They might’ve made her feel
welcome.
Did she speak Bangla, not to mention Borishailla-Bangla,
and how did it all go, each day after that very first one? How exactly did that
Chinese woman manage to settle in Nalchity for some years, alone?
Because in the end it was Nalchity that
assumed a most important post in her life – her final resting place.
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| The century old grave of a Chinese businesswoman. |
Maybe it had become home. Maybe there
was no way to get home. Why her grave is there, there’s no way to really know.
Even her name is a mystery. It might do
as well to think it began with the initial ‘N’ – N. for Nalchity, N. for nomad,
N. for north... her ancestry at least came from the north.
On a part of her grave which is situated,
out of place, alongside the small but busy road next to Nalchity bus stand, are
two figures – an indecipherable Chinese character, or maybe not, and a second symbol
that resembles the Bangla ‘Na’.
She
was a businesswoman – common knowledge, everybody says so – and it could hardly
be a surprise.
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| Barge navigating the Gabkhan Channel. |
2. From the village road alongside the
Gabkhan Channel not far from Jhalokati town even today there are boats to be
seen – large cargo ships and a low-lying barge with some kind of goods beneath
its black tarpaulin. Two small-engine ferries are chugging passengers towards
the town side; the steamers plying the route from Dhaka to Bagerhat pass that
way.
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| Jhalokati held the promise of being a new Kolkata. |
Built by the British in 1918 the Gabkhan
is a vital east-west link for river transport in a region marked by deep,
navigable north-south rivers. The British must’ve recognised Jhalokati’s most
advantageous trading geography. Though the bulk of the bustle is gone, easy
access to the sea has long been the key to sustained, rhythmic activity.
And besides, it’d all happened once
before, hadn’t it? It was on the bank of the altogether less suitable Hooghly
that the behemoth of trade had once arisen – Kolkata.
The 1981 Government Gazetteer for
Bakerganj District which included Jhalokati notes that Bakerganj was a great
exporting district in the second half of the eighteenth century, with
boats arriving from all parts of Bangladesh to purchase rice in particular.
“The superior quality Bakerganj rice used to be exported to Calcutta which was
facilitated by easy river communication in comparison with other districts.
Rice was selling at 17 seers a rupee for best rice and 21 seers a rupee for
common rice at Barisal in 1875.”[1]
Jhalokati became one of the largest
river ports in the region, with trading products including timber, rice, paddy,
coconut and betel nut.
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| The only automatic rice mill in the region used to be here. |
From 1940 to 1975 as a navigation
landmark passing steamers could rely on the thick band of smoke rising from the
chimney of the only automatic rice mill in the region. The enterprise of
Shudhangshu Bhushan Das was enormous, located on a prime site of two square
kilometres at West Chandkati.
It is said the factory siren could be heard from
as far away as Barisal.[2]
But in 1975 the factory went bankrupt
and the site is barely recognisable – it’s a parcel of open land hosting a few
families of squatters.
By the riverfront in town meanwhile, are
the ghats and godowns, which are still used. The laneways beyond are littered
with car-tyred trolleys for ship unloading – on a Friday the scene is draped in
an eerie quiet, as though symbolising the passing of a much busier trading era.
There are decorative mercantile-looking villas, most often wanting a little
attention.
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| Laneway near Jhalokati's waterfront |
Traders once grew affluent in Jhalokati
aboard that dream ship of history that stowed the promise of Jhalokati becoming
the next Kolkata.
“We have the Koli but not the kata,”
the locals say and it’s true – those days are gone but there’s still a lot
going for the nowadays clean, petite town.
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| Captain and boat engineer Dalilur Rahman with his ship that brings salt to Jhalokati. |
3. Boat engineer Dalilur Rahman’s voyages
are not at an end. He travels to and from Kutubdia Island near Cox’s Bazar three
times each month bringing salt aboard his locally crafted vessel. It’s a 3,200
maund cargo when full and profit runs at 15 – 20,000 taka per trip.
Salt also reaches Jhalokati from
Moheshkhali Island and the coastal regions of Chittagong. It’s a year-round
product with a peak season from February until May.
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| Speaking of the peril of pirates. |
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| "10-foot waves in Boishaki" |
The journey’s principal peril is
pirates, Rahman says, and the sometimes ten-foot waves in the Boishakhi month.
He’s been robbed three times in his twenty-five year shipping career.
His cargo is brought to one of the
several salt mills still in operation along the bank of West Jhalokati’s modest
Bashanda River. Until 1950 salt was refined by hand; before the diesel engine
took over.
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| Unloading salt in West Jhalokati. |
There’s an up-plank and a down-plank
from ship to shore. In the sunshine a parade of stevedores in lungee and
gumchha carry salt in rough sacks on their heads towards the mill door. Each
sack weighs about 74 kilograms. Unlike with N., there’s no uncertainty over how
they step – it’s a kind of shuffle, a waddle under the weight’s strain – and
they walk fast.
On the boat meanwhile is the salt
measurer known as Dalim. He works as a koyel,
as they call it on the wharves, calculating quantities; and with his additional
responsibilities he can earn up to 3000 taka per day when a ship comes in.
“I’ve had many jobs,” he says, “I sold nuts on the street and rode rickshaw,
but I always earned less than 20,000 taka per month. This job is better.”
In the mills the salt is cleaned with
salt water, dried for a few days and iodine is added before packeting and
reloading onto market-bound ships. As the stevedores bring the neat sacks of
finished product – of either fine or coarse salt, they are handed a small stick
to drop into a basket beside the wharf. It’s a novel way of sack counting.
But the salt trade isn’t as straightforward
as it once was.
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| A salt mill in on the banks of the Bashanda in West Jhalokati. |
4. Back at the Channel is the iconic
Gabkhan Bridge: the pride of Jhalokati. It’s the highest bridge in Bangladesh,
designed to accommodate large ships passing beneath. Ironically, the bridge
also symbolises the rise of the road transport age.
“The industry is very competitive in
transport costs,” says Salauddin Ahmed Salak, president of the Jhalokati
Chamber of Commerce, “People used to come here to buy salt but now they don’t
need to because of transport.”
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| Carrying salt into the mill. |
Jhalokati still has upwards of ten salt
mills and several small-scale flour mills – Salak recently purchased Gazi Salt,
the largest mill. But he’s kept busy actively seeking out consumers for his product.
“There are salt mills in Chittagong,
Narayanganj and Chandpur,” he says, “Jhalokati is now third or fourth largest
producer.
We used to supply North Bengal and the Khulna belt but now there is an
ultra-modern mill in Khulna. They’ve installed an electric machine imported
from India and can whiten the salt using gas, which consumers like. It’s not
possible here at present.”
Another problem is that salt is
purchased in bulk, transported by road to Faridpur and on-sold in counterfeit
packets that take benefit from established brand names.
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| Salt production in West Jhalokati. |
Despite Salak’s prediction that the days
of Jhalokati’s famed salt being used for household cooking will discontinue, he
is optimistic.
“The future is in industrial salt,” he says, “used in medicines
and leather processing.” It doesn’t need the fine, white texture of its
domestic cousin.
Besides, for all the value of the
Gabkhan Bridge, Jhalokati still takes the advantage of river-and-sea.
“It costs
60 poisa per kilogram to transport flour from Chittagong by boat,” Salak says
by way of example, “By road the cost is 1.5 taka.”
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| In the salt mill. |
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| Refining salt. |
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| The Chinese grave in Nalchity Bazar |
5. Meanwhile across the Sugandha in
Nalchity Bazar the locals are quick to gather around her grave, eager to share
knowledge of the Chinese woman, N. She’s clearly been the subject of many hours
of adda – there can be few places in
the world where local heritage is the source of such curiosity, as it is in
Bangladesh.
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| It looks like a Bangla 'Na' and perhaps a Chinese character |
One onlooker volunteers, “I’m 86 and the
grave was here before I was born.” Others tell of an unsuccessful grave robbery
in 1983 – the would-be thieves were caught by a night guard. Across the road is
the field known as China Maath, China
Field, and any enquiry will likely meet the response that it is her land – still village-recognised a
century on.
But where did she come from? “There were
some Chinese who lived in South Bengal, centred in Chittagong, since the Ming
Dynasty 600 years ago,” says Li Haiwen, Lecturer of Chinese Language &
Culture at Dhaka University’s Institute of Modern Languages. Alternatively, she
may have arrived from Kolkata where, by the early twentieth century there was a
prosperous China Town full of Chinese grocery stores and restaurants. China had
even established a consulate in Kolkata.
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| Worth its weight in salt! |
“It was a tradition that early overseas
Chinese lived on business,” says Li, “She must’ve been rich to buy land in a
foreign country. It would’ve been almost impossible for a girl to marry a local
rich man at the time.”
The majority of Chinese emigrant families
came from South China and her grave is in the South Chinese style, where the
philosophies of feng shui, literally
‘wind-water’, were enlisted in order to promote harmony between any construction
and the natural environment around it.
“In the past Chinese people paid as much
attention to the dead as to the living,” says Li. “Graves were built as
carefully as houses. The position was important and should receive good
sunshine. As we all know, sunshine makes people warm and healthy, especially
the elderly. Since Bangladesh is located in the northern hemisphere like China,
the headstone should face south.”
“The grave can be called an ‘armchair’
type,” Li continues, referring to the semi-circular wall at the northern foot
of the grave, which represents an armchair. “It would make someone feel safer
and more comfortable to sit in an armchair than on a stool. It was thought to
be the same with the dead.”
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| The Gabkhan Channel is part of Jhalokati's trading geography. |
Although it is generally believed she
left no descendants, current upazila nirbahi officer Abu Hasnat Mohammad Arafin
speculates she might’ve had a son or daughter who left the district after her
death – who else constructed her South Chinese style grave?
There is speculation too about her
trade. It certainly wasn’t salt. Local suggestion includes chillies, tamarinds
or unprocessed rice.
Arafin considers she might’ve traded woven mats, the
quality shitolpati for which
Jhalokati is renowned, perhaps clothes or other handicrafts – sending goods to
Kolkata.
Yet the most common guess is that she
traded in betel nut, shupari.
“Betelnut is next to rice as far as
income out of the betelnut trade is concerned,” reads the Bakerganj District
Gazetteer. “Betelnuts are collected in October and the trade continues for a
considerable portion of the cold weather. The chief seats of this trade were
Dulatkhan, Mehendiganj and Nalchiti. The Mugh [Marma], the Burmese and even
some Chinese used to come to Nalchiti to purchase betelnut for Arakan.”[3]
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| Taking a break at a salt mill. |
Perhaps N. arrived in search of betel
nut – from Arakan. Maybe she hitched a ride on a large balam of the Marma. But what was it, then, that made her
linger?
N. might have spent some years alone in
Nalchity but it is hardly likely she was lonely. Upon acquiring even a
smattering of Bangla she must’ve been rather busy answering the many questions
about China and perhaps-Arakan.
I’d hazard a guess she had many well-wishers,
because, a good century after her death with the local enthusiasm concerning
her grave, she still does – and there can be no armchair surely, to make a
deceased as contented and comfortable as that.
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| The quiet of a Friday near the Jhalokati ghats. |
6. The busiest years of flourishing trade
in Jhalokati might have gone. The town might have exchanged its
haggle-and-bustle cloak of yesteryear for a more understated and sedate mode of
dress. Yet the promise of river-and-sea remains and for Jhalokati District trade
will no doubt continue to be a welcome companion.
