Freedom

Sunset makes the Dhepa River in Dinajpur, shine.

Tell the river not to flow? I don’t think so. In Majadanga beyond Dinajpur Town evening is on its way. The sunset sky makes the river sparkle. She’s dazzling! Shall we be blinded by nature’s collaboration and call it improper? Shall we tell the river not to shine?

Or does it make sense to simply cross the bridge?

Through fields on the far bank tin houses with shared walls are lined up like soldiers. Trees are planted to beautify the all-too-logically arranged housing. Vegetables are growing, and guava. Something new is being tried.

“We lived as transients,” says 44-year-old Bokul, a Hindu. “Three years ago the government gave this land.” Together with Laili, 30, and Miss Maya, 24, she’s joined us in the shared yard. A small crowd has gathered.

The project is Manab Palli – the Human Village. It has 125 houses, 60 of which are home to hijras – members of the third gender – the remainder house formerly landless families.

“We’d stay randomly in somebody’s house for a few days,” says outspoken Miss Maya, a Muslim. “Before moving on…”

“Or on the street,” adds Laili.

Bokul, Laili and Miss Maya, at home in Majadanga.

In recent years the Social Welfare Department has been coordinating job skills training for hijras. Individuals can choose what they’d like to do: some hope to work in garments; others are learning to drive CNGs.

“We have no worries here,” says Bokul. “We have good relations. Everybody is nice to us.”

 “But it’s loud when the rain hits the tin roof,” says Miss Maya. “I can’t sleep!”

I mention that I like that sound. Everybody laughs. I don’t think people often disagree with Miss Maya. “Then what about when water comes inside?” she says adamantly, “Do you enjoy that too?”

I ask their full names but they’ve already been given. “It says Laili – just Laili – on my national identity card. You want to see it?” It was just a question but her answer says she’s had to defend her name. It must be strange to defend one’s name.

Oranges and reds, the radiant whites of their saris, the jewellery and painstakingly arranged hairdos – they take pride in their appearance – and they’re certainly not sparing with make-up. I imagine all the lipsticks and rouges packed carefully on shelves in sixty of those one-room homes. I wonder how they managed before.

“Things are okay,” says Miss Maya, “but we worry what happens when we grow old.” She applied unsuccessfully for a job at the medical college. “Sewing or office work,” she says, “I don’t mind.” Ambition they have. She’s completed agriculture training.

Houses at Manab Palli, the Human Village.

But for now they’re reduced to begging. Local administrators have asked them not to harass the public, and when they speak of it, it’s clear they’d like to follow the instruction. It’s not yet possible. “If there’s no food in our stomachs?” says Bokul.

Nonetheless Dinajpur locals say hijras in their district are less pushy. I’m beginning to understand: Dinajpur is a little tolerant. More than elsewhere, that society seems to be willing to try crossing the bridge.

The sky darkens; the river’s shine has left her. I ask if I can ask personal questions. I feel guilty. It’d be much better to live in a world where hijras were so accepted that there was nothing to learn from it. Personal lives are nobody’s business.

“You want us to talk in front of this crowd?” says Bokul. She has a point. After asking the onlookers to leave they open up. I’m impressed by their candidness.

“While growing up,” says Miss Maya, “I found that I liked to wear women’s clothes. I enjoyed male company. I wasn’t attracted to women.”

“At first I felt really badly about it. Then, as I started to express my feelings my mother started misbehaving.” Miss Maya’s home life deteriorated. There was anger. There was torture. It became intolerable and she left.

Life at Manab Palli, shared by formerly landless families and hijras.

It’s a common history. Bokul has no connection with her parents. They told her to get out – they never wanted to see her face again. “Nobody asks about us,” she says.

Only Miss Maya still visits her mother. She’s never invited to stay. I imagine the torturous thoughts that must plague her as she travels home. How could she not relive the rejection, not notice neighbours staring? There must be all the “what ifs” to haunt her. Visiting home… how much courage it must take!

“Parents spend too much on their children,” says Miss Maya, “For weddings they spend lacs. We don’t want that. We’re happy with a little, but we can’t even stay. They drive us away.”

Not knowing how to respond I feebly suggest their hijra community is a family. They’re absolutely unconvinced.

“We’re always surrounded by people,” Miss Maya continues, “but we’re alone. In this world we have nobody.”

“You’re never alone!” I want to say. But the words are cheap. So I say nothing and her statement just hangs there.

Nor is being alone a temporary state: “Suppose I had a good friend,” Miss Maya explains, “who loved me more than his parents. What would I do? People would tease him. People would say he was a hijra’s husband. If I really loved him I’d have to withdraw.”

Miss Maya has been to India. She stayed for two months, singing and dancing to collect money. “Nobody stops us at the border,” she says. She especially liked how Indians called her mashi, aunty, rather than hijra. “But Bangladesh is my homeland.”

Bokul, Laili and Miss Maya!

Thinking of the traditions of hijras attending weddings and the blessings they are thought to bring to the birth of a child, especially a son, I ask if they have any special culture. The answer is a resounding “No.” 

Miss Maya says young hijras need no advice. “One day they’ll see us and join us.”

I ask what’s best about being a hijra. “Freedom,” Miss Maya says. “We can talk to anybody, eat anywhere. What others think, I don’t care.”

Let's cross the bridge!

Family expectations, society’s expectations – as I leave I think how everybody faces such dilemmas, albeit less starkly. The freedom to be true to oneself, they have that, at enormous cost.

I wonder about another type of freedom: acceptance. They should have that too because hijras are a beacon. They’re frontrunners, canaries in the coalmine – their experience is an indicator of how free society really is. Life is hard at the top of freedom. But ultimately, their freedom is ours too.

The regimented housing: it fits. From somewhere hijras need to summon a soldier’s bravery. Night time on the river: it’s telling. Nature is a promise to keep. It’s never an improper collaboration. 



This article published in Star Magazine, here: Freedom

Banglafornia

California started as an idea. Photo: Ron Eagle.

California. The first known mention was in the 1510 romance novel “Las Sergas de Esplandián” by Spaniard Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. In the novel, California was an imagined island populated by black Amazon women, without any men. West of the Indies, California was the closest thing on Earth to paradise. California started as an idea.

A street in Dinajpur.

Moulvibazar. I’d taken the opportunity to wander the Kulaura back blocks – my last evening. The dark, dog-legged roads wound through fields interspersed with Londoni mansions. What percentage of rooms in those homes was unoccupied at any given moment? I’d taken the opportunity to be alone: not an easy feat.

It was a usual highway-side shop in one of those under-construction buildings. It could’ve been a mechanic workshop or a hardware store. But TV was showing cricket and cans of Danish condensed milk lined shelves along the far wall. There were maybe five customers.

A Californian rickshaw wallah, San Diego. Photo: Ron Eagle.

I ordered tea, sitting on the bench by the door – and the finale to my solitude lasted approximately thirty seconds: inevitable Bangladesh! The man covered in sawdust started the usual run of questions – where I was from, what I was doing – that deshi curiosity that sparkles with genuineness, as common as water.

After a minute of talking he said with a big smile, “Please let me pay for your tea. It would make me happy.” I gently refused several times to no avail. An invitation to visit the furniture workshop across the road followed. Ah, the hospitality – I know, I know, it’s everywhere...

Meanwhile there was genuine regret when the tea wallah didn’t have my cigarette brand. He felt the need to explain his stocking arrangements – why it couldn’t be available.

Meanwhile at the bus stand the ticket seller thought to say, “If any stranger gives you food along the way, don’t take it!”

Moulvibazar. In days we’d made a tiny shard of history, her and me. The way things go.

A street in Dinajpur Town.

They spoke in Sylheti and I’m going to miss it. With the scraping over the ‘kh’ it felt delectably Arabesque – I couldn’t speak it of course but the simple sentences mostly found their meaning, if I couldn’t always identify every word.

Sylheti language seems to carry urgency – perhaps languages do when you can’t understand them clearly. A basic ‘hello, hi’ sounds terribly important. It’s so important that there’s no time to open mouths much or bother pronouncing every syllable. I was thinking it would be an ideal language for farewells at train stations, you know, that movie scene when the train starts moving and the friend on the platform starts running to keep up with the window where the passenger is. In Sylheti it seems they could say so much more in those final seconds.

And any Sylheti aboard the Titanic probably narrated the entirety of their life story in the last moments before jumping onto the lifeboat. Well, ahem – first impressions...

On the several occasions I was asked about Sylheti I’d taken to responding, “Eta haglami bhai! Noakhaillar Bangla sobche shondor!” “It’s foolishness! Noakhali has the most beautiful Bangla!” The first part got them laughing, particularly the haglami which should be paglami. The second part got them started... but... “jaitanno, khaitanno,” it always sounded more like a Sylheti trying to imitate a Noakhali accent than the genuine article.

Dinajpur. Maybe it’s better to look forward? It’s time to head west to a new idea. It’s time to find my Banglafornia.

Dinajpur sunrise.

I’ll be heading for the sunset across the great plain right to the end. There’ll be miles of road to cover, hours of tar disappearing under wheels. There’ll be rivers to cross and excitement. It might take a while to get there. It may be hotter – perhaps there’ll be palm trees.

A San Diego trolley car waits for rickshaws. Photo: Ron Eagle.

The idea of California has changed. It’s like, bikini roller-blading women on beachside strips rather than Amazons. There are surfer dudes, like, listening to groovy music. Everyone is attending, like, thrice-weekly therapy sessions and injecting botox. They “do” lunch and liposuction. People say “like” a lot according to the preconceived California cliché.

Dinajpur is a thought to explore. So what do we know? Well, there’s the distinct disadvantage of high expectations. You see, I’ve hardly met a person from Dinajpur I didn’t like. They seem so straightforward and thoughtful: I’m expecting sincerity on the whole. I’m thinking there’ll be a bit of Santali culture, a dollop of archaeology. Thinking there’ll be a tolerant blend of Hindu-Muslim and not expecting language troubles.

The Dinajpur idea is so strong that in Dhaka when a rickshaw wallah says they’re from Dinajpur I don’t bother pre-negotiating. You just expect fair price, said once, money in hand not looked at. Indeed on the handful occasions where it’s not proved true, I must confess I’ve been known to criticize, “But how can you make trouble? You’re from Dinajpur!”

But is it really like that?

And yeah, okay, so Dinajpur’s a bit more northwest than California would be. It’s really more of an Oregon. But hey, who knows anything about Oregon?

Lily More, Dinajpur.

Will a Californian rickshaw wallah take his money without looking at it?

This article is published in The Star magazine, here: Banglafornia.

VF Traveller: Atomic Itching

VF Traveller takes Village Flute beyond Bangladesh and out into the world. Here, aspiring and established writers and photographers can present a village that is special to them, in their language, from their perspective, from their neck of the woods...

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Featured village: Belene, Bulgaria. 

By Sellek Daniel

In English and Bulgarian. / На английски и български.

The mosquito infested Danube is not the place for swimming. / Пълна с комари, реката Дунав, не е място за плуване.

Socialist Party party. / Купон на Социалистическата партия.

Atomic Itching

Belene, Bulgaria.

May 24^th, 2014.

Under the summer sun, by the Danube River, lies a town that has been the victim of political failures and plain lies: Belene. This place used to be known for an island where a former concentration-camp was established to keep the “enemies of the nation” far from the communist party’s eyes. Now it is recognized for a controversial project started by the same political party: a nuclear power plant.

The ordinary, "everyday-ness" of the town couldn’t feel more distant from its ominous fame. There are gardens where tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers grow, kids play in the streets and many pensioners go about their routines without much care. The only conspicuous absence is that of older students and middle aged workers who have left in search of a better life, like many others before them.

NEK local HQ / Местния щаб на НЕК.

Gergana Ivanova (not her real name) is one of those who unwillingly left her home town due to a lack of opportunities. She graduated with an electrical engineering degree on the conviction that she could go back to work at the nuclear power plant. That was not going to happen. The construction of the Belene NPP started in 1987 and was stopped and restarted on several occasions, depending on the political weather and the mood of the government of the day. This has meant that after more than 25 years of work there is nothing really working on the site.

“That used to be a creamery” said a man who, while I was looking at one of the several abandoned buildings, passed by on a horse-drawn cart. “The communists destroyed it. They made good cheese” were the last words I could hear from him as he pulled away too far to hear more of his pro-democracy speech.  

The ghost Russian enclave. / Анклават на Руските призраци..

In the past the town was divided by religious denominations: the eastern-orthodox and the roman-catholic denizens lived in separate boroughs along the river. Today they’re closer and even tighter in relationship thanks to their dislike for “the reds”. That’s the situation until the socialist party comes around to give free beer and music the day before the European Parliament elections. 

Biofuel. / Биогориво.

But the truce doesn’t last long enough to help the former rulers as they are defeated at the polls. Not even the promise to restart, once again, the construction of the nuclear power plant helped their plea.

Walking through the city, passing by old iconography, old advertisements, old people and old promises, a feeling of despair starts to grow in the presence of the innumerable mechanical eyes that guard the city. Lots of surveillance cameras sprout from walls, columns, beams, anywhere that can bear their weight. It is rather an odd find for a town where almost nothing happens. 

Maybe it is just the custom, though it is not easy to forget that in this town a high-security prison and a Nuclear Power Plant in the making share both mayor and name.

Big brother in Belene. / Big brother в Белене.

As night falls, hordes of mosquitoes invade the town, attacking from the river, exchanging blood for the imperative need for scratching. These animals give the decision of installing a prison on an island in the middle of the river a sadistic touch. But while Belene’s inhabitants have to live with this micro-violence all the time, anyone with a choice leaves, looking for higher ground. That is the story of the ghost town by the prison, a residential complex built by Atomstroyexport to house employees working on the project, the same people who after the suspension of tasks have left town. 

Belene NPP 'Energy for the Future' ad. / АЕЦ Белене "Енергия за бъдещето".

Nevertheless, not everyone is as pessimistic. The NEK (National Electricity Company) still has advertising on the project at the entrance of its building located in the town centre, and in the same area the Worley Parsons office is working. 

Both companies are still waiting for a new government to review the project. Both companies are waiting for a bit of populism to go their way and so, they continue scratching their bitten skin as they build the slowest progressing NPP in the world.

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The Danube River at Belene, Bulgaria. / Река Дунав при Белене, България.

The new socialists. Vote for us! / Новите социалисти. Гласувайте за нас!

Атомният сърбеж

Белене, България.

24 май, 2014.

Под лятното слънце, край река Дунав, се намира един град, който е бил жертва на политически провали и всекидневни лъжи: Белене. Това място е известно, заради бивш концентрационен лагер, установен на един остров, за да държи "враговете на нацията" далеч от очите на Комунистическата партия. Днес градът е познат заради един спорен проект започнат от същата политическа партия: Атомна Електроцентрала Белене.

A church, Belene. / A църква, Белене.

В града, всекидневието не може да се чувства по-отдалечено от неговата зловеща слава. Има градини, където домати, краставици и чушки растат; деца играят по улиците и много пенсионери се занимават с рутината си без много грижи. Единствената видима липса са  по-големите ученици и работниците на средна възраст, които са напуснали града в търсене на по-добър живот, както и много други преди тях.

A church in Belene. / A църква в Белене.

Гергана Иванова (не е истинско й име) е една от тези, които неохотно напусна родния си град, поради липса на възможности. Тя завършва електротехника с убеждението, че ще може да се върне за да работи в централата; това несе случи. Изграждането на АЕЦ Белене започва през 1987 г. и е било спряно и рестартирано няколко пъти, в зависимост от политическия климат и настроение на правителството в момента. Това означава, че след повече от 25 години работа, нищо не работи наистина на строителната площадка.

"Това беше една мандра", каза човек, който, докато гледах една от няколкото изоставени сгради, премина върху теглена от коне каруца. "Комунистите я разрушиха . Те правеха добро сирене" бяха последните думи, които чух от него, тъй като той се отдръпна твърде далеч, за да чуя още от продемократичната му реч. В миналото градът е бил разделен от религиозни деноминации: православни и католици са живели в отделни квартали по поречието на Дунава. Днес те са по-близо и дори обединени във взаимоотношенията си благодарение на тяхната неприязън към "червените". Това е положението, докато социалистическата партия не се появи наоколо, за да даде безплатна бира и музика в деня преди изборите за Европейски парламент. Но примирието не продължава достатъчно дълго, за да помогне на бившите управници, тъй като те са победени на изборите. Дори и обещанието да се рестартира, за пореден път, изграждането на централата не е помогнало на тяхното искане.

Belene still waits for its power plant. / Белене е все още чака своята централа.

Разхождайки се през града, минавайки покрай стари иконографии, стари реклами, стари хора и стари обещания чувството на отчаяние започва да расте в присъствието на безброй механични очи, които пазят града. Камери безчет поникват от стени, колони, греди, върху всичко което може да понесе теглото им. Това е доста странно откритие за един град, където почти нищо не се случва. Може би това е просто обичай, може би не е лесно да се забрави, че в този град, затвор и АЕЦ споделят както един кмет, така и едно име.

Under surveillance. / Под наблюдение.

Когато нощта пада, орди от комари нахлуват в града, атакувайки от реката; те обменят кръв за наложителната необходимост за чешене. Тези животни дават, на решението за инсталиране на затвора на остров в средата на реката, един садистичен усет. Но докато жителите на Белене са принудени да живеят с това микро-насилие през цялото време, всеки, с възможност за избор напуска, търсейки по-висока земя. Това е историята на призрачния град в близост до затвора, жилищен комплекс, построен от Атомстройекспорт за разполагане на служители, работещи по проекта,същите хора, които след спирането на задачите са напуснали града. Въпреки това, не всички от тях са толкова песимистични. НЕК (Национална електрическа компания), все още има реклама по проекта на входа на своята сграда, разположена в центъра на града и офиса на WorleyParsons работи в същия район. Все още са в очакване на ново правителство, което да преразгледа проекта. Те са в очакване от малко популизъм да желае техните гласове за да продължат да чешат ухапаната си кожа докато изграждат най-бавния АЕЦ в света.

Old socialist insurance company ad on a building. / Стара реклама за една застрахователна компания.

Welcome to Belene! / Добре дошли в Белене!

About the author & photographer: Sellek Daniel, currently works with Agentur Schwimmer in Bulgaria.

За автора и фотографа: Селек Даниел, който в момента работи с Агенцията Швимер в България.