Pretty fly

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.  –Vicktor Frankl 

Who knew that art could be fun?  The things I'm
learning about myself in Dhaka...... 

For all the people that live here, Bangladesh sometimes feels very lonely to me.  A large part of saying sane is finding ways to stay within the norms that doesn’t force too much of an individual compromise.  Choice and freedom make all the difference; yesterday I had a meeting where we were comparing starving and fasting—the activity is the same (not eating), but one a demonstration of individual agency, whereas the other is an unfortunate circumstance.  I’m entering that phase of life here in Bangladesh where I know fairly well what’s required of me.  The question now is, given these expectations and circumstances, who will I be?  To what extent will I let the circumstances dictate who I am, and, if I find that who I want to be is simply not possible here, do I have a responsibility to go elsewhere?  At the very least, I think keeping an eye on the impact that my environment is having on me is crucial.  Remember that, “wear sunscreen” graduation speech that everyone knew once upon a time?  One point in there was, “Live in New York, but not for long enough to get hard.  Live in San Francisco, but not for long enough to get soft.”  I’ve thought a lot about these concepts—how different environments bring out various sides of a person.  Dhaka brings out my competitive side; the city feels like it functions on a huge chopping block and you are always just one step away from getting thrown in the pile.  Most days, I love that.  It makes me feel totally alive.   Too many days in Boston I felt like I was sleepwalking and worried that my brain was rotting from a soft diet of calm and order.  Not an issue here.  My friends in Boston, who I saw last month, said that I’ve become more “ambitious” since I moved.  Perhaps. Somehow, the sky feels closer on this side of the world.

At a bahr, with  other ambitious Hahvahd smahties. 

But long shadows can still dim the brightness. This last week, I got tired of proving that I wanted to be here.  The never-ending questioning of “how much longer are you here?”  started to get old, especially as I’ve now watched enough of my Bnagladeshi friends leave or prepare to leave the country enough times to feel that it's not fair to treat the bideshis (foreigners) as the only ones who might leave in the near future.  I sense many people keep me at an arm’s length, but I’ve gotten impatient with it.  I don’t have to be popular, but I want to be judged for who I really am versus what people think I might be like.  And similarly, the phase of doing things to say that I have has also ended.  I did pohela boishak (Bengali new year) celebrations at Dhaka University.  I ate panta bhat (day-old salty rice with really tasty fish and other sides).  Yesterday I went to the bazar (market) to buy fabric and took them to a tailor to get clothes made to my specifications.  I can honestly say that I’ve thrown myself into life here and am happy with what I'm building.  So when people sum me up in a blink of an eye and assume that they know everything about me, or that I’ll be gone in a hot minute, I can no longer hear it as an innocuous question, and increasingly I can’t just swallow all the things I want to say and murmur something polite through a clenched smile.  I wouldn’t have thought that one question was so meaningful, but if people don’t really buy into the premise that I’m here by choice and with dedication, I question whether they will be able to see me at all.  If it’s worth trying to close the gap between us, or whether the arm’s length relationship is where we belong.  One of the exceptions to this, my BFF, listened to one of my stories and said, “You are getting really angry, aren’t you?”  There are grains of truth in this.  Luckily my apartment has a nice punching bag and I got nice new gloves in Boston, so an easy outlet exists.  Not that this does much to change the attitudes of others.

I am easily amused by small frogs.

Another outlet is to get outside of the social bubble here in Dhaka and flee to the quiet calm one can find in much of the country.  Last week I went back out to Srimongal, which I’m adopting as my bari (home village) for the time being. II stayed next to huge cha bagan (tea garden) and woke up early each morning to walk around in its stillness and overwhelming green.  Crayola should have a color called “Bangladesh green;” seriously I think that the shades here somehow brighter.  Boston felt like a pastel version of landscape for the first few days.  One morning while out in the tea garden, there was a massive rainstorm.  I took cover under a grove of rubber teas—these provide the shade that tea bushes require and another source of income. And pretty good refuge from a storm.  In a few months, the landscape I admired will be entirely covered by water.  Definitely making another pilgrimage.  I may even have a work excuse—BRAC has a small community radio program outside Srimongal that runs a variety of local interest shows.  I’m hoping to find room for “innovation” there (seems easy enough).  In the meantime, they have let me visit twice, but this last time, they required payment for the hospitality: I had to record a song.  A year in Bangladesh has taught me to be ready to sing on a dime.  But rarely does the opportunity come with a studio, nice equipment, etc.  I was a little intimidated.  I picked “Leaving on a jet plane” because John Denver is so well liked here, and one of the women in the studio told me afterwards that it’s one of her favorite songs.  They told me to do another one.  I thought to myself, “Here’s your chance to say what I want to the people of Bangladesh (ok fine, people within 17km of the radio station).  What is it that you want to say?”
 Can you guess? Most of you won’t be surprised. Obviously I considered Taylor Swift (“Mean” seemed like a reasonable option). Not an angry punk song, sappy love song, or a call for world peace, but a statement of defiance, happiness, and challenge:

“Don’t bring around a cloud to rain on my parade.
Get ready for me love, ‘cause I’m a comer.
I’ve simply got to march, my heart’s a drummer.
Hey world, here I am. . . .”


It felt great to get it out there, to lose myself in a song and not worry about boundaries, rules, formalities for a split second. Focus on the lyrics and the melody, drift away. Dhaka has not made me hard anymore than Boston made me soft. And it’s the same sky, even if it does seem a bit closer and the sun a bit harsher. Luckily I’m no Icarus!