Manu

The advantage of the Manu station ticket counter is it's very unlikely you'll have to queue.

I

The trucks are loaded and overloaded these days, heaped high, rice grain, cement sacks, bananas or livestock. It’s a lily. It’s a lotus painted pink on the yellow cabin door – or a serene mosque in ghostly green with attendant crescent moon. There’s an eagle landed on a branch. There’s a magpie robin. Every truck is a canvas.

Non-specific flowers trail along the metal panels above the wheels. There’s the driver. There’s the attendant shouting out things. Every truck is an optimist ready to tempt its fate and ours. These are spiritual, personalised, grumpy machines. There are deadlines. There’s no time to lose. In the diesel stench they rumble, shoot like bullets along the highway kicking up dust and nerves all across the country.

Those trucks carry more than goods of course. They’ve loaded up that history and carted it away. Who will think of Manu now?

The Manu station timetable.

II

Shanti Lal Robidas, Manu platform.

There’s lethargy to the heat by the Manu River in rural Moulvibazar. The shiny singular line of railway tracks from Sreemangal to the south reaches Manu station on a long curve through fields, with a little box bridge over a culvert up the line. Beside the larger bridge in red-brown iron that crosses the Manu grand trees line the rustic platform. The trees are the best hope for conversation.

It’s not that the Manu platform is entirely empty. The stationmaster has gone home for lunch but Shanti Lal Robidas, 60 plus, is there. He doesn’t much wish to speak though. He’s brought his shoe shining kit from home – over the tracks among the collection of tin shed stores they call Manu Bazar. He’s waiting for any passing shoes that might need polishing or cobbling. It’s an effort that seems futile. The Mail, the Jalalabad and the local Kushiara... three trains per day deign to stop. Perhaps his is more a psychological business, something to get him out of the house. It’s a ritual.

Robidas lacks that engaging effervescence it’s so easy to take for granted. He’s really not a conversationalist – shy and reluctant. It stands out. He’s not Bengali for sure. “Five to six years ago all the trains stopped here,” he says, coaxed out of him, “Business was good.”

It's not certain he knows where his family come from.

Perhaps his heritage came via the tea plantations. Those workers’ families were lured and tricked from all over India by the British – many are no longer sure where their roots lie. They brought cultures and now half-forgotten languages; from his demeanour one can sense that anachronistic binding sense of caste, most often out of place in Bangladesh. It seems as if he doesn’t wish to speak because he’s ‘only’ a cobbler and cobblers can’t have anything useful to say. Perhaps that’s not it – nothing is sure. If he said a little more we’d know. But it feels oh so rural India.

Later, two of his friends arrive. They’ve noticed the sight of strangers on the platform. Cautiously Robidas confesses he’s been the Manu platform cobbler since the East Pakistan days but otherwise his friends take over, verbally encroaching to speak for him.

“Manu was more developed than Kulaura Junction,” one says, “All sorts of goods passed through – rice grain, timber, fish.”

“There’s no excitement like there once was – no business, no people,” says the other.

There's talk of a flood maybe fifteen years ago when the rail line was closed for seven days. “Sometimes passengers slept and ate at the station.”

The guy in the orange shirt was very keen to be in the photos.

Suddenly there’s the long bellow of a horn. A train is approaching from the Sreemangal side, acknowledging Manu station with the sound as if sending a little “hello, hi” to a friend from a bygone era. Or perhaps it’s a greeting for the cobbler? For the few on the platform there’s some interest in it: the strangeness of change!

I watch the train close in; the others watch me watching. But there’s no slowing down for Manu, no pairs of shoes to comfortably alight to be polished or cobbled. With a rush of wind; with passengers sticking heads out train windows, waving, watching rural Bangladesh rush by; with platform tree branches momentarily waving back; with kids train surfing on the roof... change is as suddenly gone – over the river, across the bridge, into the future. That change is bound for the bustling bazaar of Kulaura Junction and the modernised skyline of Sylhet City – express.

Stillness easily returns to Manu. Stillness has made itself comfortable there.

Express train passing by Manu station.

III

Manu was once a busy, commercial station.

In Kulaura there’s talk of a Manu River lined with godowns. Especially it was a port for fish and chingri shrimp sent by rail from Chandpur, Chittagong and Noakhali. Those goods got down at Manu to board barges on their way to market. In its heyday Manu was a commercial station with three rail lines, five station buildings and twelve staff working eight-hour shifts such that always a minimum of three were on duty.

Upstream is India, the Tripuran town of Kailashahar and beyond, oddly enough, another little train station called Manu. Indian Manu is on the Lumding – Agartala rail line opened in 2008.

Downstream is Moulvibazar town. But while these days there are river barrages on both sides, not to mention the border, in all likelihood it’s primarily the trucks that did the damage. With the ease of highway transport they packed up that history and carted it away.

Manu platform and the Manu River.

IV

Md Badal Rana, stationmaster.

In the evening Manu is deserted. Only stationmaster Md Badal Rana, 35, sits in his office, several ledgers in front of him. There are six columns he needs to complete each day with the amount of whatever meagre takings he’s collected. There’s no need for signalling work.

“I’m alone,” he says, “The station is only here for the bridge. The river is here. I have twenty-four hour duty.” His manner is gregarious, clearly pleased for the company. It’s the sort of thing to take for granted – there’s no doubt he’s Bengali.

“The trains, including the expresses, are many,” he says, “but the line is only one. Often trains have to wait at Sreemangal or Kulaura Junction. Today the 6 a.m. train came at 11 a.m. and the 11 a.m. train came at 2 p.m.” It’s his personal phone he uses to find out where a train is when passengers come. “The worst thing is when people have to wait a long time.”

“It’s a poor area,” he says, “People work as rickshaw drivers and such. They don’t buy tickets much; and the Kushiara comes first – it’s a local service where you buy the ticket onboard.” It costs ten taka to travel 24 kilometres, 12 taka for 31 km and 15 taka for 41 km.*

The tracks towards Kulaura Junction.

Rana likes the locals. “Hindu or Muslim, they are good, simple people. We have nice adda, chatting, together. Everybody knows me. I’m invited to all the pujas and weddings. They all have my mobile number and I spend too much money returning calls to sell tickets. Sometimes I sell long-distance tickets to Chandpur or Dhaka.”

It took Rana some adjustment to get used to his Manu posting, which he took up in 2011. “There is no food system here. No rice. And I don’t like coming at night. After 10 p.m. there aren’t people around but if a train is arriving at 1 or 2 a.m. I am here. What will I do if people come?” At the least, with the help of a local councillor he managed to have the tube well fixed. It was broken for thirty years but now he has drinking water.

He points to the broken ceiling above us. “What if a woman was sitting there and it falls?”

*US$1=80 Bangladeshi taka.

Manu station, Moulvibazar District, Bangladesh.

Manu was once a station of 5 buildings and 12 staff.

The station. Manu. Moulvibazar.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: Manu

Stillness makes itself comfortable in Manu.

The trucks have carted away the history.

The Leisure Club

Even in the rain, Feni town is busy.

Beyond the Sonagazi Weir in Feni district three unused windmills add feature to the landscape of the tidal zone. There, the wild lawn served easily as football pitch for town dwellers. Meanwhile, at the lake on the nearer side was swimming and boating.

The 2011 winter picnic of Feni’s Oboshor or Leisure Club, was a lucky day. I won second prize in the raffle – dinner plates. It was the best result since first prize was a live goat!

Stretching back to the British era, the culture of clubs is well-established in South Asia. Clubs can be status-oriented and expensive; Oboshor is different.

“Our society suffers from a cancer,” Oboshor’s Vice-President Mominul Hoque wrote in the club’s publication, “We never learnt to admit our faults. People like to boast. We wanted Oboshor members to believe in taking responsibility for mistakes.” Oboshor is non-political, committed to Feni and a belief that all are equal.

Oboshor members relaxing on the rooftop beside the clubhouse.

The club originated several years ago in a broken, straw house, a kupri ghar, in Feni bazaar. Initially friends used to gather for adda. In the course of daily conversations, horizons grew.

With the decision to formalise into a club, larger premises were sought and current president, Alal Uddin Alal, offered the rooftop of his unfinished commercial building. To this day reaching the clubhouse involves negotiating a construction site’s dark stairwell. It’s can’t be imagined Oboshor is up there.

Meanwhile, the club’s aspirations took shape. “We wanted to make a better society,” Mominul Hoque explained. To this end, Oboshor created the Nobin Chandra Sen education scholarship, with the hope that if even one of its recipients should succeed the project will have been worthwhile.

Each winter the club donates warm clothes to the needy and has presented sewing machines and rickshaws to struggling families. But the club is also about having fun.

I didn’t know much of this when I was offered the chance to join. “How much does it cost?” I asked.

“It’s free,” the club president said.

“What are the criteria?” 

“Just one: good character.”

Spice alley, Feni bazaar.

A shop selling shutki dried fish, Feni Bazaar.

Shops in Feni Bazaar.

The Ibrahim Store

Government Dighee, Monpura.

“How will we stay in contact?” asked 29-year-old Salman Hossein Saju, who said he was a fish businessman – which sometimes means politics. He has 125 coconut palms and twice took me for refreshing green coconut water, for daber pani at his place.

Others preferred the “Will we ever see you again?” version. I’d known them for four days. I suggested we could stay in contact by phone but Saju needed a demonstration. He snatched somebody’s mobile from the tea shop table and gave it, before putting his phone to his ear to commence the skit by way of example of the real calls that would occur.

Think quickly! You’re in the company of islanders now.

“Hello,” he said into his phone.

“Hello,” I said into the one he’d given me.

“How are you?”

“I can’t hear you – network disturb.”

“Climb a tree,” he said. I did that.

“Can you hear me now?”

The crowd at the Ibrahim Store, a tea shop in Badher Bazaar on the small island of Monpura, Bhola District, in the Bay of Bengal, were delighted with the ad lib performance.

Keora forest in Hazirhat town.

There were a few trial runs – Feni, Kurigram, Jamalpur – I’ll tell you about those later; but in Monpura I really considered I’d begun a new journey, to the 64 corners of Bangladesh. Monpura was the first easy notes of this flute song.

It seemed as well to consider a Monpuran beginning. Any journey starts with small steps within sight of home. From Monpura one can see Hatiya, where lies the village that adopted me years ago. Monpura is the final stop before Hatiya on the Dhaka launch. I’ve passed by many times, taken tea at the ghat at dawn. I’ve always wanted to visit.

By motorcycle the island can be covered in two minutes, west to east. North to south it’s about 20 kilometres. Life is a struggle for most of the probably 120,000 islanders, farmers and fishermen – yet, as is small-island inevitable, everybody knows everybody and in Monpura goats are left roadside during the night. There’s no anticipation of thieves.

I’d arrived for Durga Puja, thinking it would add festivity to my setting out. There would be Ma Durga’s company in the first four days and it befits: ultimately all journeys start with mother.

Yet to be a truly Bangladeshi journey… well, starting out without completing tea doesn’t have much Bangladeshi sense to it – that’s what led to the Ibrahim Store.

The keora forests make Hazirhat unique.

After I sat, the crowd of ready-to-meet well-wishers gathered. They watched me jotting notes – taking to pen and paper because electricity only runs from 6 p.m. until after midnight. I heard one villager on his mobile telling the caller, who must’ve enquired of his whereabouts, “There’s a foreigner here. I’m watching him.” He said it so matter-of-factly, as obvious an activity as watching TV.

By tea shop account it’s rare to find a foreigner – apart from the Nigerian who’d arrived three months earlier for a football tournament, a bideshi might arrive every five years – and usually only stay for a day.

Observations were made I didn’t hold my pen properly – I never mastered that in childhood. Observations were made I had good health since I could drink several cups of tea without relieving myself. “When we drink two glasses of water,” said Saju, “we must leave at least one behind.”

There were many questions – do I speak Bangla? How old am I? What is my salary? Do I know Ricky Ponting?

Word spread of my Hatiyan history and it proved easy to relate to. After the 1970 cyclone – the most devastating to hit Monpura, the most devastating ever recorded worldwide – only those with the strength to cling to trees survived. There weren’t any cyclone shelters. “There were no women left,” said Mohammed Hasan, 34, sitting to my left. He’s a high school teacher: social science. “They brought new wives from Hatiya by boat.”

It’s another reason for Monpura to be a good start – the regions affected by the 1970 cyclone have a special relationship with the birth of Bangladesh. The failure of the Pakistani government to properly respond was an immediate factor that combined with longstanding issues to push the independence movement.  In a way, Bangladesh itself once took tea at the Ibrahim Store, on its journey. 

Keora tree roots in the mangrove forests of Hazirhat.

The Hatiyan wives in turn brought their language, which mingled with the Barisal-Bhola based Monpuran Bangla version. There was discussion – of the Hatiyan penchant for pronouncing ‘p’ as ‘h’ and light-hearted criticism of the unusual, Noakhali-style sentences that the wind blew into their heritage. Bujjenni? Do you follow?

Monpura was affected by the 1991 cyclone and Cyclone Sidr, but the sea didn’t rise like in 1970. Water is more dangerous than wind. In 1970 one woman was found floating at sea, unconscious, seven days later. She survived.

I asked how many Monpurans go to shelters these days. Hasan suggested about 40%. People don’t readily leave their homes in times of peril.

As we chatted there was a signal 3 in place for the Bay; but Cyclone Phailin chose to take the introduction of Odisha. In Monpura it brought a welcome breeze.

I discovered another commonality with Hatiya: most betel leaf and nut is ship-delivered from the gardens of Bhola. The man opposite helpfully suggested it wasn’t wise to drink tea soon after chewing betel since the limestone paste, the chun used on betel, when it mixes with the tea’s sugar, forms stones in the stomach.

I was curious about Monpura’s main town, Hazirhat, which might be the most attractive hardly-a-town I’ve seen in Bangladesh. Hazirhat features large tanks and, more uniquely, stands of keora mangrove forest in the middle of town. At night the forest stretches are pitch black; in the daytime buffaloes wallow – before and after is the settlement.

Badher Bazaar used to be a small islet, Hasan said. People used to cross by boat to Hazirhat. In 1978 then Barisal District Commissioner Nasir Uddin Khan commenced work to close the river. The result is really praiseworthy. It’s in the name – Badher Bazaar means Dam Market.

An old man contributed his story of giving Pakistani soldiers, in 1971, fruit mixed with unbearably hot spices; and there was a strange tale of a Bengali called Kissinger who went to Australia and took two litres of ‘milk’ from a bullock.

There was discussion of marriage: in Monpura almost all are married by age 16. “We are lucky if we live to be 50,” said one villager, forlornly, “so we have to start early.” “But the government says it’s better if we marry at 20,” said another.

Hasan said Monpura’s dogs are descended from a large variety introduced by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century – though the dogs looked no larger than usual. I have doubts Monpura can match the 3,000 years of distant Sandwip; more likely it is a younger landmass like the 150-year-old nearby Hatiya.

“The Portuguese found such abundance – fish, milk, rice – they were astonished,” Hasan said. From it came the name Monpura – because their mon or heart was touched.

Yet the mon in Monpura isn’t difficult to find. It’s everywhere, even in the Ibrahim Store. Philosophy, humour, history and wit – I’m contemplating a new theory – controversial – that the best adda or chatting in Bangladesh is on the islands.

But Durga Puja is not in the Ibrahim Store. Even a journey that starts with tea must inevitably progress to the first step…

Monpura, Bhola, Bangladesh.

This article published in Star Magazine, here: The Ibrahim Store