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Published: June 14th 2008
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Kairul claims he is 18, but it is highly unlikely that he is over 15. His waist is not much wider than the bicycle seat that he hovers over, and his legs are barely long enough for him to reach the pedals while seated. He spends most of his work day peddling standing up.
His pre-pubescent looks aside, Kairul’s boyish curiosity and fascination with the world also give away his age. As he peddles down the streets of Dhaka, avoiding gaping potholes and confidently pulling u-turns in the middle of oncoming traffic, I often catch him letting his eyes wander around and up. Airplanes capture his attention fairly consistently, and he is fond of pointing out architectural curiosities. “Khub shundar,” he announced one evening as we curved around a traffic circle featuring a modern silver sculpture that he evidently thought was particularly beautiful. On another afternoon, stopped at a red light at a busy traffic intersection, he looked around wide-eyed as any village kid in the big city would. “Madam, 33 tall,” he said, pointing to the skeleton of a 33-story gutted office building. He announced this with a measure of certainty that suggested he had counted the stories may
times before, and that he thought we too would find this extremely fascinating.
Kairul is Elizabeth’s personal rickshaw driver. For approximately 3,000 taka (around $44) a month, Kairul, like many of the other bicycle rickshaw drivers, happily devotes himself to the service of one bideshi (foreign) customer. This month, his affections have been bought by Elizabeth, who has promised to procure him a cell phone in exchange for three weeks of free rides. When she wakes up in the morning, Kairul is downstairs hanging out with the apartment building guards, waiting to take her wherever she may be headed. He drops her at her office, takes her to lunch, waits for her at the grocery store. Sometimes he curls up in the red vinyl seat of his rickshaw (under the shade of the multi-colored tin-plated hood, painted with paisleys and floral designs) and naps while he waits for her; other times Elizabeth will arrange a time for him to return, freeing him to go out and seek supplementary income in the interim.
At just 3,000 taka a month, Kairul enjoys a much larger and steadier income than most rickshaw pullers, who depend on individual fares of just 10
Gulshan 2
Dhaka's version of Times Square, although not so much or 15 taka (15 or 20 cents) from local customers in a market flooded with supply. Despite his youth, Kairul enjoys the additional advantage of already owning his own rickshaw, allowing him to keep 100% of his fares, rather than giving half to the owner of his machine. He belongs to a cooperative of rickshaw pullers in similar circumstances: most own their own cycles and many have broken into the private-rickshaws-for-bideshis market. Some speak better English than the local shop-owners and merchants, and all are self-taught in their language skills.
I’ve shown up in Dhaka in the last week of Kairul’s service to Elizabeth, so I’ve managed to piggy back off of their business arrangement. He drags the two of us around town, occasionally pointing out obvious landmarks (like the beauty parlor that Elizabeth goes to or the German club) as if he’s letting us in on a big secret, and he happily corrects us when we ask him to take us to the Nordic club. “No, Nordic club, madam. Nordics club.”
One afternoon out of the blue, while peddling us home from work, he turns back to Elizabeth and proclaims with his signature youthful awe, “Madam. Cell
phone is magic.” He’s right. Cell phones are a bit magical and mysterious. I don’t really understand how they work myself, and for a teenager out of rural Bangladesh they must surely be a mystical thing. It is also likely that the cell phone will be a small miracle for Kairul’s business. Although he will be losing Elizabeth’s patronage at the end of the month when she moves home, he has now entrenched himself in her network of bideshi friends, and with a cell phone he can be reached by any of these foreigners at any time of day or night (and nighttime is a particularly lucrative market, as foreigners are often looking for trusted rickshaw pullers to pick them up from parties and deliver them home safely for a higher fee). On-demand rickshaw rides always pay slightly more, and with this kind of marketability, Kairul will definitely see a higher income. The cell phone is just another step in Kairul’s budding entrepreneurship. As Elizabeth points out, he has broken into the high paying market, worked hard enough to buy his own rickshaw and double his income, and now he has acquired another tool to improve the value and accessibility of his services.
It turns out that this is not, however, what Kairul means by “cell phone is magic.” After a few minutes of back-and-forth Bangla and English between Kairul and Elizabeth (“Gana gana!” he repeats emphatically), we discover that what Kairul means by “cell phone is magic” is that he wants Elizabeth to buy him a cell phone with songs on it. Like most teenagers in the world, Kairul has figured out that, at the end of the day, a regular old cell phone just won’t do. For while Kairul—as a young entrepreneur—certainly understands and recognizes the business value of his promised cell phone, he also appreciates the status booster that the phone will bring him in his circle of friends and colleagues. And for a wide-eyed village kid in his early teens, the social capital that a cell phone will provide him does make it some kind of magic.
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sarat
non-member comment
aah, teenagers
aren't they grand? social cache escapes no one. good luck with the travels. hopefully you will avoid some of the unwarranted attention you encountered in india. look forward to the blog.