Tuesday 19 May 2009

Lines composed on Day 1 of Dhaka traffic:

Bangladesh, with its colours, sights and sounds. Dhaka, never far from a car horn, whistle or bells, a shout, scream, curse. The city's life blood is its many inhabitants, travelling through the hundreds of veins that make up the hectic and dangerous roads.

The hoards of people pressed against the iron gates of the airport, waiting for brothers, sons, fathers to come out with bags of chocolates from the Middle East. They work there and come back home now and again to see their family.

We leave the airport and pass by hundreds of people lining the streets where they make their living. Shops selling all sorts, an old man feeds sugar cane through a mangle collecting the juice to sell, small children are bullied by the bigger ones scouring the rubbish for bits to sell.

Stopped on the road, surrounded by cars, the heat rising. You hear a light tap on the window from a fingernail, then a hand, then a fist thumps, getting your attention. A lonely mother surrounded by her children, she carries a limp babe in her arms. Tured, the baby has been carried around the streets as an object of sympathy so her mother can feed them, or just feed her, or take drugs. No one knows. Then the eye contact, they have you, every thing

STOPS

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