It's excellent for one to have an extraordinary ability to react. It helps a lot when s/he is vulnerable to hazards both in existence and impending. Not always. On occasions, and if one lives in this overcrowded, maddening metropolis, reflex or stimuli might cause him or her continued trauma. They might have to go through countless unpleasant, if not outright hideous, occurrences while on road. These people suffer a lot, but silently.
Many people can remain immune to the unbearably crass goings-on and sights around them. But many others cannot.
While scores of Dhaka-dwellers nonchalantly pass over heaps of garbage piled beside roads, or are least bothered about the city's terrible noise, a subtle kind of pollution galls some others. Apparently they are born with a sharp reflex. Dhaka's air and noise pollution is known. But how many of its citizens are aware of the insidious pollution loading the urban air with increased ferocity?
While walking by a footpath, listen to the bustle around you carefully. In a half-kilometre stretch you will hear the nauseating sounds from clearing stuffy nose and clogged throat at least five times. Some passers-by continue spitting right and left while walking by you. You should feel lucky not to have been spat upon. The most appalling experience that might await you is the dirty slang freely used by a section of pedestrians, the crew of a parked bus or street loafers. Their pervert male chauvinism comes to full force the moment they notice a lone woman waiting for a rickshaw or taking her child to school along the sidewalk.
Piquing women on the roads is nothing new in this city. Making indecent verbal sounds, resorting to vulgar gestures etc were never strange to Dhaka. But thanks to the city's sparse population and the veneer of respect and awe for women on the part of males, young ladies in the past could come out of home with enough ease. They could feel secure. The situation started changing all of a sudden, with the male youths turning wild and rowdy. Over the last decade or so, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that a lot of women and grown-up girls stopped moving along sidewalks. Yet in these hard days, how long can one avoid walking? Middle or lower middle-class women have to come out. No other alternatives: either use the sidewalk or board a rickshaw. The problem is, even keeping oneself hidden under the cover of a rickshaw-hood also turns out to be ineffectual. There are the Romeos, or hardened muggers, on the motor-bikes or aboard cars whizzing past. Finally, the whole business of coming out of home or not becomes a Hobson's choice. Women suffer their silent humiliation as part of sexual harassment.
Swearing aloud or using abusive and filthy languages is now integral to Dhaka's urban culture. Many ignore it and get along with their day-to-day life. Some turn their face around only to see a middle-aged man urinating in the open, least bothered about a flock of teenage girls coming from the opposite direction. Had there been any global index on urban incivility, Dhaka would undoubtedly have ranked at the top.
These bitter encounters aside, there are many others which are laden with the hues of the absurd. One may try to erase those from memory telling oneself that those were part of a bad dream. But no escape; the unsavoury experiences keep haunting the victims. Some occurrences are so disgraceful that those cannot be shared with anyone. A friend of this scribe once narrated an incident. While rushing to catch a bus for Gazipur in the New Market area, he was suddenly intercepted by a young man on the footpath. "Yes?", my friend stops, visibly annoyed and nonplussed. "I want to know something," the youth replies. "Go ahead, quick!" My friend keeps walking, taking the youth for a drug addict. "Chacha Mia, are you married?" The youth whispers to my friend, moving alongside him. This is the opening of the story. It sees a nasty, violent ending. My friend returns home, devastated.
William Congreve, the English Restoration Period playwright, has a popular comedy titled 'The Way of the World'. Given the incidents occurring in Dhaka which have elements of dark humour, they surely merit the title 'The Way of the City'. But due to their sickening essence, the everyday happenings in Dhaka are far from being a comedy. Their insidious and invasive nature spins a web of repulsion and horror. Some can feel it. Some can't.
shihabskr@ymail.com