Day Nine: Sunshine (21 June)
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 21/Jun/2010 13:19, 34 days ago
Not the metaphorical kind. Real, bright, warm sunshine, the kind that heats the water tank on my roof, and makes me squint as I walk the muddy streets between my house and office.Monsoon season is, if you’ll excuse the pun, in full flow in Khagrachari right now. My clothes are moulding, laundry stays damp for days, my strolls to work involve, on ‘dry days’, careful navigation of the puddles taking over the narrow streets, and rolling up my trousers on the wetter ones. My umbrella, which I –now habituated to Bangladeshi ways – use in both sun and storms, is breaking for the second time, struggling to stay upright under the heavy winds and rain.It’s that time of year after all, Bangladesh’s second rainy season. The difference between too much rain, and not enough, is a precarious one here. Last year, in this part of the country, it was unusually dry. This year, early into the monsoon, the rain has already broughtlandslides in the hills, killing around 50 people. Elsewhere in the country, there have beenflash floods, destroying crops, and people’s means of survival.This teetering between too-much and not-enough is clearly not positive at all. In a country so prone to natural disasters, in which people are so dependent on land, and therefore the weather, these occurrences happen over and over, and of course, are only going to increase in years to come. Taking away lives, and livelihoods, time after time.I’m yet to understand what it means to live with that ever-present possibility of disaster, or to find out what the perfect balance would entail.But I do know, that today, after weeks of emptying the buckets filled up by my leaking roof, it was sunny. There were blue skies this morning, and they continued up to lunch. By the time I wandered back to the office after lunch, clouds had come in. Wind had picked up, meaning I had to carefully hold my orna in place, to avoid an unwanted display of immodesty. Rain was coming again. By the end of the day however, the rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared, and the blue had returned.I can only hope that today, with its mixture of wet and dry and light and dark, is something close to the balance people wish for. For me, the chance to take a walk in the sunshine again was much welcomed. And I even left my umbrella in my bag, unopened.