A New Year Celebration

 April 14th brought in the Bengali New Year of 1418.  The city was bustling with joyful activity.  Thousands joined in the festivities at the river's edge or at Rajshahi University.  I was invited by a student to the university.  I arrived around noon and she had just finished cooking me a chicken curry  in her little dorm room over an electric hotplate.  After eating a delicious rice meal she put a 'teep' (red dot) on her forehead and mine,  changed into a lovely shalwire-kamiz,  did up her face with some eyeliner, face-whitening cream and lipstick,  and off we went to join the crowds.

  There were numerous concerts, plays, game booths,  and stalls that were selling a variety of foods and trinkets-and, of course,  the typical fair-type stuffed animals.   There were thousands of people there, all dressed in brightly colored (mostly red) festive clothes.  As a white foreigner ('bideshi')  in a city that has very few, we attract a lot of attention.

At one point we stopped to watch a game being played which was similar to the 'hit the pinata' except you were to hit a clay water pot on the ground.  There were only a couple people watching at first.  I was coaxed into participating so having blindfolded me they started me off about 15feet from the kulshi.  I began to walk,  estimating that it would take me ten steps.  It turns out that i walked right past it and with all my might I slammed the stick onto the empty ground. Oh well,  no prize for me but  I gave everyone, including myself,  a good laugh.  When I took off my blindfold I saw that the crowd of spectators had quickly grown to over 50.    The one tradition that I missed out on for the New Year was eating 'patha bhat'-  a fermented rice dish.  Oh well, there's always next year...

Deconstruction

Our route to the market takes us past an area of the road that looks like a bomb was dropped on the buildings.  Actually the front part of the structures are being torn down.  I'm told that they were illegally built too close to the road.  How strange it must be for the owners/tenants to see half their home disappear!

Drinking High and Drinking Low

  What does one drink in Bangladesh? Keeping hydrated in a tropical country is crucial. Part of the wealth of Bangladesh is its accessibility to clean drinking water from ‘tube wells’ which can be sunk 30 – 60 feet anywhere in the country and which provide relatively safe drinking water.

  Bangladesh’s natural version of bottled water is dab -green coconut water. Train station platforms often have a dabwaller who will cut open a fresh green coconut with an opening for drinking. It is healthy and tasty.

 If you prefer to go for modern ‘bottled water’ and want to pay the exorbitant price of 15 taka (25 cents) per litre,  you can buy a bottle of “Fresh” (brand name) drinking water. A description of the purification process is included on the bottle:

 Superfresh drinking water is treated by reverse osmosis, ultrviolated and ozonated.

 We may wonder about the moral ramifications of drinking violated water but have given in and often bought it for trips.

Now tea- this is a Bengali drink. A cup of chai (small and strong with milk and sugar) is more than a cup of tea. You open friendships, seal agreements, entertain any guest, and mark the end of a visit with a cup of chai. A product of the country’s northeast districts which are swathed in tea gardens, the leaves make their way to every nook and cranny of Bangladesh where local vendors fix you a cup in minutes for 8 cents. On trains they charge the outrageous price of 10 cents.
 

We were really outrageous and payed a dollar per cup (70 taka) for ‘7 layer tea’ -a concoction of seven layers of variously flavored tea all served in the same glass. We drank this during our tour of the Sri Mongol tea estates. The novelty of being able to experience this carefully guarded secret process was worth the outrageous price.