Back from the Brink

Bulbul Ahmed Chowdhury knows what it's like to lose everything.

Bulbul Master knows how it is to stand at the precipice and stare into the abyss. He’s been to that dark place where all seems lost, with little left to lose. He survived.

Thanks to the great blessings of a singular friend who forced Bulbul to pull himself back; with the truly remarkable support of Dinajpur’s rural Kalikapur community who accept Bulbul while being aware of his past, the man’s life eventually returned to take on that everyday rhythm most take for granted. In such circumstances, otherwise modest achievements really shine.

Bulbul Ahmed Chowdhury, approaching fifty years old, rents a room in a house across the laneway at the back of the government high school. He pays 500 taka per month rent with 100 taka for electricity. As he never had the chance to marry, he lives alone.

Bulbul is popular with the other families in the house. They knock on his door to say hello if he’s been inside his room for too many hours. They make sure he eats with them. 

These days, Bulbul spends his time in the classroom.

In the wider community too he has respect. Many are grateful for his help given to their children as a tutor. Bulbul’s students are reputed for impressive exam results. 

“This is my family now,” he says of neighbours and the community.

Yet it’s with difficulty he pulls on his trousers every day. Since his second stroke in 2013 that simple task requires effort.

Nobody could have predicted such a life for Bulbul Master. As a young man he seemed to have the world at his feet.

The youngest of five sisters and three brothers, it’s undeniable that Bulbul’s life suffered a major setback with the early deaths of his parents. But being a landlord’s son, when assets were divided after his father passed on while Bulbul was in Class 10 he found himself proprietor of 11 acres of land. It easily generated enough income to fund his education. He lived with an older brother.

As a student of Dinajpur Government College, Bulbul was meritorious, popular and rich. He was vice-president of the student union and passed both HSC and BA commendably. Teachers and peers expected a big future; but before college was done he’d made an error of judgement.

“A friend gave me a bottle of Phensydil,” he says, “We were eight friends. We all took it just to see how it was.” Phensydil cost 28 taka in 1988.

With the invincibility young adults inevitably feel, it must’ve seemed like no big deal. “After the first one, we slept all day,” he says.

In Kalikapur, nobody dwells on Bulbul's past.

As is to be expected, the friend circle took Phensydil again after that, now and then. They experimented with marijuana and alcohol. Some never became addicted. Bulbul wasn’t so fortunate.

“I was broken hearted,” he says, “I was really devastated by the loss of my girlfriend. After taking Phensydil I could forget all the pain. I was feeling cool and calm. It wasn’t really for fun I took it. But it became difficult to control.” 

Within six months Bulbul was consuming Phensydil once a day. If he didn’t, he couldn’t function. Once he thought he should give up but found it impossible.

By the end of 1988 Bulbul had sold the first acre of land for 25,000 taka – a low price even then. These days a quarter acre might sell for 8 lacs. 

Meanwhile his required dosage rose, reaching two bottles per day, taken four times at half a bottle per dose. He was a chain marijuana smoker and usually consumed a bottle of alcohol a day.

Inevitably his family came to know. “They were angry and told me to stop,” he says, “which made me frustrated.” They saw him sleeping all day, awake all night and incessantly listening to music.  By 1994 his family no longer knew what to do. They threw him out of the house. He hardly cared. Bulbul was furious they did not mind their own business.

After two strokes, Bulbul does his best to carry on.

Even then, with income from his inheritance Bulbul wasn’t entirely destitute. But in the following years, as he continued to sell portions of land to fund his addiction, circumstances worsened. His last plot was sold in 1999.

As a consequence of his first stroke Bulbul doesn’t remember much of those years. But he started begging. People saw him roaming Dinajpur town. People saw him on his knees in the street, touching other people’s feet. Still he did not accept he had a problem.

Of course for addicts, once they’ve lost their families, there’s very little chance of ever turning lives around. 

This time however, Bulbul was lucky. There were many people in Dinajpur who knew him. Perhaps only they could properly understand the devastating loss of potential. 

One day in 2006 a cultural activist and senior student from his college days, Sultan Kamal Uddin Bachhu, passed him in the street, potentially as he’d done many times before. But on that day he decided to stop, and take on the work of an angel.

Bachhu picked him off the street and sent him to rehabilitation. Bulbul was so unaware by then he could hardly object. Much of the treatment money came from Bachhu’s own pocket but he also raised funds from former classmates and well-wishers. 

“At rehab there were many addicts who were not like me. They were used to stealing and snatching. It was difficult to spend time with them. I really felt alone,” Bulbul recalls.

There were many restrictions. Each day was regimented with prayer, class and rest. It was painful even to kneel during prayer when withdrawal symptoms took over. “If you did something wrong the punishment was severe.”

Yet slowly there was progress. “After three months,” Bulbul says, “my brain started functioning. It was the first time I realised what I’d become. Finally I knew I had a big problem.”

Only after six months did Bulbul feel his addiction gone. He was cleared to leave but Bachhu insisted he stay a further three months. 

It’s very difficult to break addiction. Even with the best care few succeed. Nine months after rehabilitation Bulbul had a relapse. Fortunately Bachhu understood it on the first day Bulbul returned to drugs. He was furious – and this time, unlike with his family’s anger years before, Bulbul was receptive. “I never took drugs again,” he says.

An important part of recovery was that after his relapse, Bachhu sent Bulbul to live in a multi-faith ashram in Belbari village, away from former friends and influences. The ashram asked no questions – simply he stayed there. 

For the next three months Bacchu sent pocket money for food. It was then that Bulbul, at last, was able to start contemplating a future.

Being the son of a well-off family he felt options for basic work were closed. He didn’t feel he could run a small shop for example; besides, there was no seed money. 

By the end of 2007 he’d decided to try tuition. He went door to door. A few families agreed. “I built good relations,” he says, “They’d ask me to stay for dinner. They never asked about my addiction.”

When his students started performing well demand increased. “The community really started to look after me,” he says.

By 2010 it was no longer practical to conduct classes in private homes. He approached the high school principal for permission to use classrooms after hours. The principal agreed.

These days Bulbul has 120 students and employs a junior tutor. For the future, he hopes to build a fully-fledged coaching centre. In particular he wants to provide classes to the disadvantaged – he already teaches one class from the impoverished Harijan sweeper community without charge.

A popular tutor, Bulbul's students have a reputation for excelling.

In sharing his battle with addiction Bulbul hopes to encourage young people to have the strength of mind to avoid drugs. “If friends are taking drugs,” he says, “they need new friends. Drugs destroy families.”

To parents he says, “Try to understand your children always. Maybe they’re suffering from a romantic break-up like I was. Maybe they have some other tension that makes them especially vulnerable – and if your children are taking drugs please send them for treatment early. Never be ashamed to get help. Anger won’t work. Locking them up at home won’t work.”

Sometimes Bulbul visits Dinajpur town. His friends beyond his drug-taking circle meet him; and occasionally he sees the others with whom who tried Phensydil on the street. “I avoid them,” he says, “Some are still addicted.”



This article published in The Star Magazine, here: Back from the Brink

In the Brahmaputra's Realm

The view across the Brahmaputra to Char Parbhotipur, Kurigram.

Boat to Char Parbhotipur, Kurigram.

In the city, with the toys and trappings of building and car it’s easy to misperceive a gap between humankind and nature. It’s easy to don the twin myths of security and control. But in the Brahmaputra’s realm a day is still a day.

In the promise of new land the perennial kans grass, the kashphul, congregates. It’s beauty. See the thin, hearty reed stems in dusty green? Along the banks of the shifting sand shoals including Char Parbhotipur in Kurigram, the kashphul makes the most of opportunity and establishes its camp. It is at home in its burgeoning river-island colonies. See the long spike of the kashphul leaf?

Kashphul and rooftops, Char Parbhotipur, Kurigram.

Shining, soft and velvety is the kashphul wildflower. It beckons to be snuggled like a puffy pillow on a winter bed, the blossom field a lamb’s wool blanket, seemingly ready to challenge with a show of enthusiastic coolness the harsh sun of autumn’s midday. It’s to tickle the cheek; to set the heart dancing. The kashphul invites with its seasonal charms.

Mohammed Abu Taleb hardly considers the kashphul as he strides up, in bare chest and blue lungee, from the shoreline. The spring in his step has arrived with the unexpected sight of visitors. His hair and beard are white. Has he been catching fish?

Mohammed Abu Taleb with family members.

Into the earthen compound he’s scratched out of the landscape he steps, into the yard made for a family of more than ten individuals. With a broad kashphul smile, abba, father, is returned home.

Society is not diverse in Char Parbhotipur. There isn’t an established bazaar and just one small primary school; similarly it is for the kashphul which has no intertwine companionship of the sort familiar to jungle mahogany and vine. They are frontier dwellers, unlikely denizens of unsure land, both strong and somehow accustomed in their vulnerability to the river’s mood swings. 

Wind wanderer, current rider, with not the width of paper between the kashphul and nature’s choices: from the poverty of sand they rise.

Like the kashphul, the households are rising from the sand.

Char Pabhotipur has been in the world for about seven years, Mohammed Abu Taleb says. He was among the first to set his family there, three years earlier after their former place of residence on another shoal was returned to the Brahmaputra. It is not his land and he pays no rent; yet it’s known he lives there. His is one of the two hundred families that call Char Parbhotipur home.

See the strength and vulnerability in his body? He’s thin but has the muscles of day labour. Cheerfully he tells of his striving, to the fields of Feni to plant rice, to megacity Dhaka for day labour, to the fields of Dinajpur for harvest. Wherever there is work he will go and I suspect he enjoys travelling, even while carrying his day by day thoughts of family and shoal – surely the weightiest item in his luggage.

There’s not the width of paper between his family’s future and nature’s choices, he knows.

Kashphul makes wild sugar in the summer months.

In the summer months of Boishakh and Jyoistho the finest secret of the kashphul arrives. Of course the reeds are harvested for fences, for thatch. The kashphul can make paper too. But in summer it’s the promise of wild sugar that drives the harvest, with the new stems chosen, the horizontal earth-aligned stems that are best for the task. The vertical stems which grow later aren’t sweet, Mohammed Abu Taleb says.

Back at the house the stems are crushed by hand, covered with cloth and squeezed, boiled, squeezed. The syrup is black and a little less sweet than cane sugar. All the same the kashphul gift is an essence of sweet, sweet river-life.

Rofiqul and Jolku with goat and sheep.

Meanwhile Rofiqul walks with Jolku, who is bringing home his one black goat and one white sheep from grazing. They’re passing through a white kashphul short-cut, quite usual, unremarkable, and they’re holding one black umbrella to shield from the Brahmaputran sun.

Meanwhile Nasib Uddin who has already reached seventy finds no time for his retirement. With a basket of the gourd vegetable that’s called kadoa in Kurigram he is crossing the char by foot, basket on head, in the hope of a boat. Char Parbhotipur has perhaps as its singular advantage proximity to the mainland bazaar of Jatrapur. It’s only twenty minutes across the water and his vegetables will sell there.

Nasib Uddin is taking his gourds to market.

Nasib Uddin tended his kadoa crop for two months before the first harvest, he says, and for the two following months it will yield, he will collect the gourds as they mature. It’s innovation to grow vegetables on Char Parbhotipur – the next small step of settlement. With the proceeds in Jatrapur he will buy the daily food for his family, rice in particular. He has 15 kilograms to sell on that day, at a rate of ten taka per kilogram. It means survival.

Meanwhile Ambya is waiting for her husband. Part of her thatched home is on stilts, where they can retreat with their belongings when the water comes in. The mud floor, inside, is rough and still wet from rain or river flow.

Ambya is waiting for her husband.

Winnowing and pounding.

Storage area on stilts.

Ambya's kitchen.

Mohammed Abu Taleb’s family has gathered to speak with the visitors – women, young men, children – all ages, colourful clothes – they share in common one kashphul smile, open-hearted and curious. They show a kula, a rice winnowing tray filled with the dried young jute leaves that will make a dish, give meaning to rice, partly because it is all they have to show. And they offer a glass of water because it is all there is they have to offer. There isn’t even tea.

And it’s funny, you know, the kashful smiles – of a brilliance barely known in the city. When asked if his family faces any problems Mohammed Abu Taleb says automatically, surrounded by his full-of-love family and driven by the excitement of visitors, “No, we are fine.” And it’s funny because they are fine, more than fine – in that one singular moment, except… to ask a little more…

Kashphul beyond the fence.

“Well yes, the tube well for drinking water is far….”

“Well yes, there are no sanitary latrines…”

“Well yes, there’s no medical centre…”

And he shows us the mud line half-way up the fence beside his house: “Oh and the house floods, but only about three times per year.”

The kashphul have no city hang-ups. They need no manicured garden or balcony pot; there’s no service charge and they pay no rent. The kashphul has no reason to deny that their existence is simply a fragile, passing phase – it’s about sharing ground in this day and the next – to, in congregation, enjoy the sun and feel the rain.

The waterline, three times a year, at Mohammed Abu Taleb's house.

There’s not the width of paper between the kashphul and nature’s choices – yet from the poverty of sand, just above the Brahmaputran waterline, they rise.

Aminul Islam the boatman is waiting. The river is waiting. Hurry up! It’s time to go.

Aminul Islam is waiting. It's time to go.

This article published in Star Magazine, here: In the Brahmaputra's Realm