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It’s been more than two weeks since the Bengali New Year on April 14th, making it not nearly as new or exciting as it would have been if I had managed to post something about it in a more timely manner. In the spirit of celebration, however, let’s just pretend. Put on something red and white (and throw in some yellow, if you’re more courageous), and imagine that you’re ringing in the new year with outdoor cultural programs, family visits, and lots of eating—all on a festival appropriate 100 degree day.
We started our morning in an upper-middle class manner with our boss from Save the Children, Shahana Apa (because of her age and professional seniority to us she is always addressed publicly with “Apa,” which means older sister). After Shahana helped me re-tie my sari (I thought I had done pretty well on my first attempt, but she completely rehauled it), her driver navigated us through an hour and a half of Dhaka holiday madness traffic. In the name of some logic that none of us quite understood, random streets across the city had been blocked off to help reduce traffic congestion. The result was constant winding through jam
packed back streets with most traffic headed in the same direction as us: Ramna Park, Dhaka’s central park and the site of the Pehla Bhoishakh (first storm, or New Year) mela (fair). We crawled through intersections stuffed with cycle rickshaws and cars, the more adventurous braving the mid-day heat to walk to the celebrations.
At least the people watching was good. As per tradition, women were decked out in all manner of red and white saris. The more conventional saris like mine, a present from a Bangladeshi friend, were of primarily white starched cotton, with red borders and large folk art motifs in red and yellow. Evidently the common motifs change with each Pehla Boishakh, and this season was the season for large red water jugs and fish. Mine also featured yellow kites, contributing to an overall “I am wearing an oversized child’s bedsheet” effect. There was plenty of gold jewelry and serious makeup to complement the fancy saris, and in some cases it appeared as though women had even managed to convert their boyfriends, children and husbands into accessories. Particularly fashionable families wore outfits cut from the same red and white fabrics, while the more avant garde preferred
less traditional but more eye grabbing coordinating outfits in yellow or green.
By the time we reached Ramna Park (or as close as we would get to Ramna Park in the car; we would have to walk another mile or so on the closed off streets) the crowds had actually thinned out. I thought the several thousand strong march of red clad Bangladeshis was quite impressive, but Shahana informed us that the real crowds happen in the morning. From as early as 5 AM, families head for the park to stroll in their new clothes, watch performances, sing songs, and picnic. We were part of the late crowd, but still managed to catch the essence of the day’s festivities: face painters wandered the streets, offering to draw red water jugs and fish on your cheeks; paper mache vehicle-sized creations sat abandoned in the middle of the road, where they had been left after a morning of processions and parades; hawkers sold everything from fresh green mango with chilli flakes to purses.
Our wandering was somewhat short lived. After a little over an hour of shuffling through the crowds in my stiffly wrapped sari, I had drenched my sari
blouse in sweat and gotten over the initial novelty and fun of being the white girl in the sari (other people didn’t seem to get over it, and one group of Bangladeshi boys yelled enthusiastically “Yes thank you! This is the Bangladeshi culture!” as I walked past).
Ultimately we were all too happily whisked up in the air conditioned car and transported back to Shahana’s flat, where there was a huge and fantastic Pehal Boishakh meal waiting for us. Traditionally the day’s meal should involve something called pantha bhat—rice that is boiled the night before and left to soak in water before being served in the morning. Clearly there is some symbolic significance that must justify eating soggy rice on a major national holiday, but in any case Shahana spared us non-rice-eaters the tradition. She did, however, make 4 different kinds of fish to appease the gods of Bangladeshi custom. Lunches with Shahana are always epic affairs, and by the time we made it out of her apartment it was already 4 PM.
The day’s celebrations, however, were hardly over. We had originally promised our time to Hena, who is, among other things, the woman who cleans our
house, my favorite person in Bangladesh, and the friend who gave me my first Pehla Boishakh sari. I was worried that we had caused a delay in her own plans, and that she and her daughters would be stuck at home with her useless husband as the holiday passed them by; thankfully, when I called Hena to apologize for being late I discovered that she and her two little girls were already at our house, happily waiting for us to arrive and the celebrations to begin. When we finally reached home, we found them in their festive red and yellow salwaar kameezes, contentedly parked in front of our TV. After Hena fixed a rose in my hair and the little girls Rohima and Johora ate everything they could get their hands on (they are particularly fond of chocolate), we set off for another mela (fair).
This mela was slightly less traditional—a Bangladeshi rock concert sponsored by MTV India. The crowd was 95% boys between the ages of 15-30, and needless to say Hena and Parendi and I (toting the girls on our shoulders and therefore meriting even more confused looks from the Bangladeshis) stood out a bit. We stuck
it out for a few songs until a brief riot broke out at the entrance (they had run out of tickets and weren’t letting anyone else in), and we decided we were tired of moshpits full of Bangladeshi boys anyway. It had been a long, hot day, but wouldn’t have been complete in its spectrum of experiences had we not then proceeded to Hena’s house. It was just a few days since Parendi and I had returned from our tour of sanitation in slums in Mymensingh, and I suddenly felt myself being returned face to face with urban poverty.
Hena’s house (where she and her husband and her two daughters sleep) is the size of my bathroom. I know this is my common frame of reference, but I can’t help but think that the space I use to shower, brush my teeth and go to the bathroom is the same size that a whole family can occupy to cook, clean, eat, play, study, and sleep. When it rains half of Hena’s packed mud floor floods. When her neighbors recently decided to expand their house into her space, her shack lost some of its structural integrity and is now slanting
to one side. The walls are constructed of various combinations of bamboo, loose boards, and plastic. All I could think about was how absurd it is that domestic violence can happen in these shacks when literally a 5 house radius can hear you if you’re having an argument. Sadly Hena is testament to the fact that it does happen, and nobody says a thing about it.
It was a strange way to end the holiday. We were dragged down alley ways that were no more than two feet wide in pursuit of the various relatives and friends Hena wanted us to meet. The paths are so dark and narrow that I stepped in a bucket, a puddle, and an old cooking fire in the course of 2 minutes, and almost caught my sari on fire twice (most people cook in the space just outside of their doorway, instead of in their miniscule shacks). We met Hena’s father, his father’s second wife, Hena’s mother (who lives just doors down from Hena’s father, who left her many years ago for no particular reason), and the 3 nieces and nephews of Hena’s who have been rejected by their original families and left
to live with their destitute grandmother. Everyone was welcoming—especially one of Hena’s nephews, who was abandoned when his father divorced his mother (again, for no particular reason) and the mother ran off; he took my hand and led me through the tour of the slum, not letting go until he had found us a cycle rickshaw to take us home. To add to the day’s heat exhaustion there was also the emotional exhaustion of trying to process these lives so different from ours. Typical, I suppose, of Bangladesh, to sober a day’s celebration with the reminder that poverty is real and everywhere. But also typical to show you that poverty of resources does not translate to a poverty of spirit and everyone (regardless of economic status) loves a good holiday and the chance to look forward to a new (and hopefully better) year.
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Rashidul Hasan
non-member comment
Shuvo Nobo Borsho :)
Thanks for the writing. Nicely portrayed the day of Pohela Boishakh. There are lots of issues behind this poverty in Bangladesh but let's not just focus that and enjoy the joyous moments of the day... Thanks :)