Many Words for Water

Across the Naf River is Myanmar.

Bank of the Naf.

North of Teknaf town, afternoon has reached sleepy Hnila’s Old Bazar, a few hundred metres west of the Naf River. There’s not much activity: most people are probably taking a rest after completing lunch.

Sitting at the temple.

We’re sitting in a perennial building site that’s half-flooded. It has planks of wood to balance across to venture inside. It’s here the local Hindu community worship and a good number of them are gathered in the front of the building just beyond the gate. They’ve arranged plastic stools from somewhere to sit on. A fruit platter is being passed around.

“This is the southernmost Kali temple in Bangladesh,” says community leader Bipul Pal. “It’s the only Kali temple south of Cox’s Bazar.”

Hnila countryside.

The Naf River is narrower in Hnila. On its far bank the periodic watchtowers of Myanmar are clearly visible, about the only evidence of habitation along an otherwise wild bank. The common view of Myanmar to be heard in Teknaf’s tea shops seems to ring true here: “Myanmar has lots of land,” people say, “but little development.”

The southernmost Kali Temple in Bangladesh, Hnila, Teknaf.

Touring Hnila with local Hindu leaders.

The river wasn’t always the border it is today. In the British period then Burma was like Bengal under British administration; and the Teknaf Peninsula was primarily inhabited by Buddhist Rakhines. Bengalis by all accounts were rare. Hindus were rarer.

Canal. Looking towards the Teknaf Range.

“We are fifteen families,” concludes Pal after a moment’s mental count. “Hindu families in Hnila run simple businesses like dairies and tailoring shops.” At least one fulfils an administrative role with an NGO. “None of us is rich.”

The Kali protima in Hnila Old Bazar.

The financial condition of the small community means that completing the refurbishment of the temple, in brick and on a grander scale than the original structure founded in 1833, will take time. Progress is slow.

Altar at the Radha-Krishna Temple.

Proud of their town, before evening there will be a tour of  a handful of other temples, tin shed and dilapidated village constructions dedicated to other incarnations of God. At the Krishna temple there lives a solitary monk who teaches meditation and yoga. The temple keeps a cow and he offers fresh milk to visitors.

Hindu monk. 'There are many words for water.'

“What is important is what is in the heart,” he says, “Islam says ‘don’t steal,’ Buddhism says ‘don’t steal’ and Hinduism says the same. If there is love for mankind in the heart it doesn’t matter if you go to a temple, a church or a mosque. Some say paani, some say jol… There are many words for water.”

As can be anticipated Hnila’s Hindus revere all of the local temples but the historic Kali Temple is the community’s focal point. “We don’t know when we’ll be able to finish its reconstruction,” says Pal.

Members of the small Hnila Hindu community at the forever ongoing reconstruction site of the historic Kali Temple.

Where Santhal Wisdom Shelters

Suddenly in the forest there are faces...

A sal tree in Nawabganj National Park.

Perhaps it’s generally true that shade follows sunshine. Beyond Sitakot in Dinajpur’s Nawabganj the sal trees gather. Though geographically unlikely locals believe Nawabganj National Park might be the last remnants of the forest where Sita of the Hindu epic Ramayana lived in exile.

From field and farmhouse, the cycle van winds along the track into this darker but not-less-beautiful world. Beyond is Ashurer Beel, a picturesque waterhole favoured for picnics and famed for migratory birds.

Into the forest...

And suddenly in the forest are faces… not the middle-class motorcycle-riding ones of picnickers but curious, distinctly non-Bengali faces…

The national park keeps another history. Under its canopy, at its edges, the culture and wisdom of the Santhals finds shelter.

Alekutia village is home to 40 Santhal families.

Peeling jungle potatoes.

In Gabriel Hemrom’s leafy yard a little beyond the park boundary, in Alekuti village along the same track, women sit on the ground preparing date leaves for weaving. Another is busy with jungle potatoes, which are soaked in water for several days and eaten with molasses-like jaggery, known in Bangla as ‘gur’.

A well-constructed mud brick Santhal home.

Alekuti is home to forty Santhal families, Hemrom estimates. “Our ancestors are from a place called Dumka,” says the forty-year-old father of three sons. “But we were all born here.”

House detail.

As in Bangladesh, Santhals are one of the most populous minority peoples in India. Mainly they live in Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Jharkhand. Dumka is a district in the last of these states. There are also a small number in Nepal.

Nearby Ashurer Beel with boat and fish traps.

By tradition Santhals engage in hunting, forest clearing and farming.

The village’s forested location reflects the Santhali tradition of forest clearing and subsistence farming. They are also famed hunters, with bow and arrow. But in Alekuti, along with some small-scale farming, most earn as they can through cycle-van riding or day labour. It isn’t much of a living.

House painting. Santhals capture their history and daily lives in design.

“For the poor, food is always a problem,” says Hemrom.

In contrast to the dire economic reality of Alekuti, in India it’s not uncommon for Santhals to be living in cities and working in areas as diverse as medicine, engineering and the public service.

In Alekuti meanwhile, are traces of the well-developed, unique culture of which any Santhal can be proud. Most visibly it’s in the painted designs on the walls of their well-constructed mud-brick homes. By tradition Santhals present history and daily life in wall paintings, although the Alekuti examples are modest.

“Those who can paint do so,” says Hemrom.

Painting around an internal doorway. 50 - 70% of the villagers in Alekuti are Christian these days.

The forest nearby.

The Austroasiatic Santhali language, of the Munda languages and distantly related to Khasi, Khmer and Vietnamese, is sophisticated and well-studied. Its unique script, called Ol Chiki and invented in 1925 by Pandit Raghunath Murmu in response to deficiencies in representing the range of Santhali sounds in Roman or other Indic alphabets, has thirty letters.

Santhals are famed hunters with bow and arrow.

In general, the Santhals have preserved their language well; but in Alekuti it’s facing difficulties. “Our children used to study Santhali at the mission schools in Dhanjuri and Patarghat,” says Hemrom, “but now they only learn at home. We use our own alphabet but it’s explained in English.” Including Bangla, Alekuti relies on three languages.

The church in Alekuti.

Hemrom estimates that like his family, 50 – 70% of the families in Alekuti converted to Christianity some thirty years ago. The village features a small church attended by visiting clergy.

The remainder observe the old religion, which worships Marang buru or Bonga as supreme deity. It features a court of spirits to regulate aspects of the world, from whom blessings are sought through prayer and offering. There are also evil spirits to be protected from.

An old mango tree on the forest road.

Traditionally, Santhal villages feature a sacred grove on the edge of the settlement where spirits live and sacred festivals occur. In Alekuti neighbours participate in the rituals of both religions.

“We dance and sing in Santhali and in Bangla,” says Hemrom, “The children enjoy the festivals the most.”

In their political history Santhals can also take some pride. In response to land grabbing and enslavement, on 30 June 1855 leaders Sidhu Murmu and Kanu Murmu mobilised 30,000 Santhals to fight the British.

Sal tree trunk.

Caught by surprise, initially the Santhal Rebellion met with some success, but ultimately bows and arrows proved no match for British guns. Battles were akin to massacres. Many Santhals, including the two celebrated leaders, were killed; and subsequently the Nawab of Murshidabad used elephants to trample Santhal huts.

More recently, the Santhal community was instrumental in successfully advocating the creation of Jharkhand state in India, which was carved from southern Bihar in 2000. It was hoped that statehood for Jharkhand would allow better representation for the various minority peoples who account for about 28% of the state population. Santhals are the largest group.

Yet Gabriel Hemrom speaks of his heritage humbly. “Everybody likes his own culture,” he says.

Despite the current hardships of life in Alekuti, it’s not possible to be entirely pessimistic. Santhali culture has survived great hardship before. And, as when leaving the forest, perhaps it’s generally true that sunshine will inevitably come to replace the shade.

Gabriel Hemrom, 40, with his son Remechus Hemrom, 10.

Coal Street

Coal Street, Barapukuria Coal Mine, Parbatipur, Dinajpur.

Coconuts, jackfruit, fish, papaya and rice… there’s generosity to its geography. Bangladesh has a landscape that perpetually gives.

It’s the morning and I’m sitting in Saju’s living room. It’s not his Dinajpur Town residence but the old cottage in a row of old cottages at Phulbari’s Barapukuria Coal Mine: the place he calls home on workdays.

The housing strip is called the old staff barracks. It currently houses various employees unable to be accommodated elsewhere. Forty-three-year-old Md Shajiul Islam, Saju Bhai, is the mine’s assistant manager in the mechanical sector. He’s been working there for just short of eleven years.

The minor concrete laneway features cute front gardens of vines and fruit trees – papayas and mangoes – but the street has no name. Unimaginatively I’m calling it Coal Street.

Inside, from the thought-about check curtains, the spotless cane sofa set, the general order, you can tell Saju’s wife has been there. But she’s not there now – she’s in town. Breakfast is done and I’m sitting alone. Saju’s gone off somewhere, promising to be back soon.

It’s strange to be in Saju Bhai’s living room. For one thing there’s a guest house at Barapukuria, where the mine managers suggested I should stay. Foreigners usually do. There’s a club, a large pond and long tree-lined driveways – Barapukuria has those British-style trappings almost as though wishing it were a tea plantation.

But it’s better to stay in Coal Street. It’s more personal, more real.

The simple life in Coal Street.

It’s also strange to be there because I only met Saju a few days earlier. It was largely coincidental. Like many in Dinajpur I’d taken to spending at least a part of each evening at the enormous Boro Math – the colonial-era field not dissimilar to Kolkata’s Maidan. The Math is the town’s pride and wholly suitable for adda, the art of chatting.

Funnily enough we’d just been talking about how I might visit the mine when Saju arrived. It was Friday. He was home. Everything settled automatically and immediately, with no more effort than a ripened coconut falling. Hospitality is a second gravitational force in Bangladesh.

Unusually, as it happened I wasn’t at a total loss as to visiting the mine. A friend in Dhaka had seen on Facebook that I was in Dinajpur. He had a friend working at the mine – they’d once done a short IT course together and in Bangladesh any engagement that gets beyond a “hello, hi” holds significant risk, like a monsoon raincloud heavy and ready to burst, of becoming the start of a long friendship. My friend thought to ring me so I could meet his friend. It was only a matter of digging out the guy’s number.

I’d considered waiting but it all proved unnecessary and when I mentioned my friend’s friend’s name – Kamol Mollick, Saju said he was his next-door-neighbour.

Bangladesh is diverse and chaotic but somehow among the huge randomness of 160 million it’s often there’s some sort of contact or connection waiting nearby. It’s difficult to comprehend entirely how it works but there’s always that innate village-ness proximity lurking.

Saju Bhai.

Sitting in Saju’s living room I’m contemplating the previous evening – a small, strange thing in particular – a mobile phone charger. Off his own bat, Saju thought to enquire if my phone needed charging. When I said maybe it did, he sought the specific charger to fit. Someone on Coal Street had the right one.

It’s such a small thing but the charger seemed symbolic: the living room snacks before the dinner in the coal canteen (with apologies that Saju’s wife wasn’t there to provide a home-cooked main meal); the checking every detail for sleeping in the guest room – extra blanket on the side in case of cold snap, internet access… electronic repellent or mosquito net?

Bengali hospitality, is it culturally-genetically coded? There’s a genuine happiness from another’s happiness and comfort from the comfort of others. I’m wishing I could be more like that. I know for a fact I’d never think to ask a guest if their phone was alright.

I suppose I grew up in Australia. Much of Australia is ruggedly beautiful – there is hospitality too but it’s different. It arises more infrequently, less expectedly, from a harsh geography.

In between thoughts, a middle-aged woman with a round face and rounder body, in a pleasant green sari, wanders in off the street through the open door leading to the garage. I wait for her to say something but she doesn’t. She crosses the small living room right in front of me. I wonder if she’s a burglar. I wonder if I should disturb her at all, if, in Bangladesh, even a burglar might not expect to feel welcome.

Australian thinking cap on: it’s strange. Bangladeshi thinking cap on: it is as it is… and I’m smiling a Bangladeshi smile at the thought.

I’m slightly pleased when I see her open the fridge door. It’s surely not usual for thieves to primarily target refrigerated foodstuffs no matter what the cultural context. She seems to be loading various vegetables in her arms. She’s taking the lids off plastic containers in the freezer that might contain fish or meat.

I wait to see what happens next.

Arms fully loaded she turns back toward me and as she finally starts to speak I notice a few teeth missing. “Is your home far?” she says.

By this stage I’m almost certain she’s no criminal. What I don’t yet comprehend is that she’s cooking my lunch. She looks after Coal Street when wives are away. She leaves as unceremoniously as she entered.

Koi fish, shing fish, chengra fish, tiger fish, a not-sure-of-the-name fish and turtles… Kamol’s house next door features an aquarium and when I met him on the previous evening there was some talk of its inhabitants. He’s thirty-five, an assistant manager, electrical sector who was also batching that day – his wife on a home visit to Khulna. His twin girls normally tear around the little street, so I’m told. Coal Street must have been missing their noise.

Friend of friend equals friend… Friend of neighbour equals friend… I was doubly qualified and it was no small feat to persuade Kamol not to make tea. In any case, word had travelled Coal Street and there needed to be a visit across the road to Sattendra Barman’s house – he is also an assistant manager.

Friend of neighbour equals friend… Friend of friend of neighbour equals friend… With his wife at home, all hope of not having tea was lost.

She was once supposed to study in Australia but at the last minute she couldn’t go. It might have been good for her career but I wonder if it wasn’t a happy twist of fate.

I know, yes I know… Australia is the dream country, I hear it often. Yet it can only be from taking the little things – the important things – for granted; from assuming it all just continues on the other side of an ocean. Life in Bangladesh can be a struggle, of course… but Coal Street… who is it that would need to leave that? Big house, flashy car… what I’ve never properly understood: Why?

Later that morning I visit the mine. There are known-people to wave hello to as I do the rounds.

And afterwards there’s feedback from Mr Mollick via my friend in Dhaka. “I only wish I could have done more for him.” I should have let him make the tea.

Could the Bangladesh government perchance, or the Barapukuria Coal Mining Company perhaps, not send some foreign aid to Australia to teach Bangladeshi hospitality methods? I wonder. Feeling guilty: at my place will have to do better than coffee and biscuits… will need to think about other people’s mobile phone batteries.

Coconuts, jackfruit, fish, papaya and rice… sorry for distractions… I’m supposed to be writing about coal…

The distraction of Coal Street.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: Coal Street

Sea Dreaming

Ramsagar is the largest man-made lake in Bangladesh

 I

They’re slightly odd, those human choices: we’ll survey the scene in front of us much more readily than we’ll cast our minds inwards; we’ll champion the future while neglecting the history which cooked it; we’ll focus on the upwards achievements more than those of the downwards variety. Yes, in the human sphere most often it’s the sky which rules the ground.

We know the first person on the moon for example – conspiracy theories aside – but not the one who reached the greatest ocean depth and resurfaced to tell of the ride. We know the planets – can name several of the stars and Everest, but hardly the trenches where the seafloor falls away just as remarkably. While we’ve barely discovered the fish and life forms of the great depths, is what I’m saying, we’re pondering if there’s bacterial life on Mars. We tend to look up.

Architects and engineers are hardly free from the fever: forever they conspire to construct taller towers to support longer spires. We celebrate that. We reproduce pencil-tall building images – now on Instagram, once on postcards. But which building has the deepest basement? Which tree has the deepest roots?

Yet in Dinajpur there’s a series of impressive constructions of the downwards type to challenge the human predilection for heights. The grandest of them all lies in village Tejpur.

The start of evening catches Ramsagar tank in Dinajpur, Bangladesh.

II

The rhesus macaque at Ramsagar.

It’s slightly odd, there’s a monkey in that tree and you’d hardly expect to see him here. Friend says, “Maybe he escaped from his cage?” I say, “Maybe he’s a rhesus macaque?” But the Assam macaque looks similar and come to think of it, maybe he’s a she? But for the picnickers to enjoy there’s a half-zoo over the long mound of grass-covered tailings to the right, so friend’s cage-escape theory holds some merit.

To the left is a large rectangle of water. Yes, you’ve guessed it: we’ve reached Ramsagar. It’s the most famous of Dinajpur’s seven historical tanks and the largest manmade lake in Bangladesh. It has a water surface area of 77.90 acres – not to be sneezed at. Certainly those who dug it out by hand couldn’t have taken it lightly. “Nobody knows its depth,” friend says.

As I understand it, convention is that a monkey on a branch doesn’t look inward in quite the contemplative way a human can. They may be better attuned than us to hunger, exhaustion or thirst. Convention is that a monkey, regardless of location, can’t be expected to think in any historical way – which is not to say he doesn’t know where he was on the day before yesterday.

Yet there’s one thing that monkey does: in equal measure he looks all around. You can watch him as he shifts attention from further up the branch to across the water, from the treetop to the ground.

Would the human perspective be altered if we spent greater hours climbing trees? Would the imagination of “progress” be aimed equally at downward feats?

The water of Ramsagar still lives up to its crystal-clear reputation.

  

III

There’s a sign which says the water body was excavated by the local king Raja Ramnath in the mid-eighteenth century; though I have doubts that monarchs personally spent much time with a shovel in hand. It’d be interesting to know how many hundreds or thousands of people were involved in Ramsagar’s excavation.

The sign says construction continued for five years – presumably at its peak during winter months and resting for the monsoon, if contemporary pond construction methods are anything to go by. And when it was finally done, the tank that by the mid-twentieth century was renowned for fishing, boating and picnics, it took the name Ramsagar – the Sea of Ram.

Of course this “Ram” refers to Raja Ramnath while the “sagar” is most commonly attributed to its impressive size. But couldn’t it be, just as easily, that the “sea” title reflects the sweat and effort of the workers having dug the entirety of seventy-seven plus acres… enough to make the tailing-hillock to hide the half-zoo from which the monkey escaped his cage?

Surely if you’d been involved in digging out even one acre by hand you’d be calling the result a “sea” too. Matasagar, Anandasagar, Suksagar… all seven tanks are “seas.”

And then, when it was finally complete, did Raja Ramnath say, “Okay, that’s one down and only another six to go?” I’m taking the liberty to assume Ramsagar came first – but being the largest it might rather have come last.

But what was it exactly that induced him to consider such a flurry of downwards construction? He had a palace. He completed Kantaji Temple. It’s not as if he had an aversion to buildings. The answer is simple: water. People needed clean, pure drinking water.

But of course I’m not suggesting that the escapee macaque appreciates any of that.

Ramsagar was constructed in the mid-eighteenth century by local king, Raja Ramnath of Dinajpur.

IV

Nowadays Ramsagar is a National Park, an oasis for Dinajpuris and people from beyond. The fresh air, with water yet clear enough to easily spot a hand-sized crab, Ramsagar is for family and friends; the snack stalls and tea stalls are straight ahead don’t worry, just up there by the tank’s far end. 

If you take the time to soak in the scene it’s quite the place to be inspiring – for while the parkland beauty must keep us looking out, the serenity is enduring enough to coax a looking-in. And while the future is, as always, ever beckoning, you’ll forget that, at last, to consider the magnificent achievement of the past. In that place the upwards focus of many-a-where holds no sway, not against the downwards accomplishment of Raja Ramnath’s day.

Yes, at Ramsagar it’s the ground that rules the sky, capturing indeed its very reflection. Over chotpoti and a cup of tea you’ll realise that they’re slightly odd, those usual choices of human perception.

And if you’ve travelled up from Dhaka in this day and age, you’re surely as delighted as that monkey who escaped his cage. So then: What’s the tallest building in Dinajpur town? The answer: “Who cares? Look not up, but down.”

Ramsagar: a wonder construction of the "downwards" variety.