My Chiggy Wiggy
Hey readers, the last entry was quite a hit. So here goes another one. Do not mean to moan and groan like rest of the gariwalas in Dhaka. I just want to document some of the things that I do here so that you get a glimpse of Dhaka life.
The day started dealing with the mistiri (workman). Oh, what precious little creations of the world mistiris are. They don’t change no matter which part of the world you live. ’Tomar to Attai ashar kotha chilo, nota baje, kothai tumi?” ”Sir, amar jor. ” After three days of dilly dallying the mistiri’s “gari chole na” excuse. By the way, this is a very common excuse in Bangladesh and not just prevalent among the mistiri class.
” I have fever. I can’t come for 9 days”, I got a text a few days ago from a co-worker. Precisely 9 days, he said. If I was a snoopy boss, I would have called and checked if he had a foreign tone in his mobile. He was so sick that he couldn’t come to the office, couldn’t answer his emails but there he was happily on facebook posting ‘I wanna Chigi Wigi’ with you’ by Kylie with Akshay. Fair enough Chigi man, how about my deadline? Why are you chigi wiging with it to screw me? A friend calls in, “Get used to it, dude. I can write a mohakabbo on the excuses that I get.”
So the mistiri bunks. I move on. The guy from Otobi comes in. Otobi, by the way, is Bangladesh’s answer to IKEA minus the bloody hassle of putting the furnitures together. I am not kidding. Its a really good answer, by the way. Just go to their Gulshan 1 showroom and you will know what I mean. Smartly dressed young men and women selling fancy furnitures to the ever expanding middle class of Bangladesh at a 50,000 Square feet show room. They have ‘free delivery’. One such delivery man came in his tri-cycle van. He gets in, delivers the furniture parts and prepares to leave. ”Why are you leaving? Who’s going to put these furnitures all together?”
“The fixer will come soon.
“You have a separate set of fixers? ”
Great. That means double bakhshish in place of free delivery!
Okay, now starts my waiting for the fixer with one eye on the clock for the next meeting time. The fixer comes — an hour late with a wry smile — no real explanation of why he was late. After putting together one furniture, he leaves. ”I couldn’t put the other one together. I will come tomorrow with somebody else”, he says scratching his head. Jee achcha. Apni ja bolen — I run for my meeting.
On the car, I have a little work station. My laptop, the citycell ultra zoom internet, a water bottle, some files and music. The window glasses are tinted so that I can sometimes doze off without people staring at my open mouth. Is the new office time thing working? Seems like it. Cause I am at the venue in no time — or did I doze off a little?
On all Bangladeshi offices these days you pass through metal detectors. But the funny thing is once metal is detected, no one does any thing about it. Life goes on. Security guard looks the other way, you walk away with your metals. Does this sound familiar? We have great laws but we have no enforcement. We have great diagnosis of our problems but no solution provider.
‘Move on with your fat, metallic ass’ said the person behind me, seeing my befuddlement.
Nah, he didn’t really say that. He was quiet — most likely because I was wearing a suit.
But I still moved on to the elevator. There I met this young guy whom I first saw in Tangail a few months ago. His project got picked up by International NGOs. He is very excited. Just returned from a two weeks US tour. Funnily enough the guy is hardly speaking in Bangla with me. What the heck? AMrica theke firle ki English bolte hoi naki? I am not going to make fun of his accent. I will leave it for another day for the RrrJs of FM Radio. Someone told me recently that just English speaking ain’t so cool any more. Speaking English with an accent is. So you MUST have an accent and pretend that Bangla does not come naturally to you. But English — rather, bhul English — does. Fear no more. DFID has just granted a lot of money to teach our young kids English. Partnering with BBC, they are all over in the media. Whoever came up with the idea, is smart. If even a few thousand young ones can learn some decent English through this, that’s money well spent. How’s your English? Try it.
Colleagues are frantically texting. ”I am stuck in Dhanmondi — jammed. Get started without me.” I start and finish my meeting in that office in a rush. Every one’s in a rush to leave. Why? Because AL has called their own meeting at the street next door. I rush with the others. Not to get to the Jonoshobha to protest the attack on Taposh shaheb, but more to get the hell out of that area. Turned out I was a little too late.
To be continued…
Ha ha @ Tiktiki. You just made me laugh on a very stressful day.
In certain places like Bashundhara where they check your bag, they don’t even bother to look inside. I always wonder what the point of this exercise is.
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hey Tik – looks like U R having a lot of fun. With mistris & all.
But since when did you start wearing a suit……….. Glad to see ur on your way to becoming a bonafide shaheb!
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