Bangladesh, Thailand, London – Mash up
I'll start off my final thoughts on my most recent, though definitely not last trip to Bangladesh, by saying that in the end Bangladesh was normal. I had and have friends there, we talked shit, got wasted, the only real difference was that we caught rickshaws around instead of cars and public transport. As soon as i got to London i realized how completely far out I'd gone. Not to say that Bangladesh is not normal, everything is normal or nothing is normal, nevertheless for me and where I'm coming from it was pretty out there. Thats also not to say that London is like Melbourne, its different but......its all pretty difficult to describe. To the special moments in Bangladesh, my panidesh.
The last month was a pretty wasted month, not really to sure why it turned out that way, but such is life. Some of my best memories are at Lincoln's house sitting on the roof of the his storey apartment building he lives in, smoking all day and night then the 4am call to prayer kicking in. Dhaka during the day is awash with the noise of more than 10 million people doing more than 100 million incomprehensible things. By 4am it is completely quite and still, then the thousands of mosques over the city start the call to pray, wailing over the city all starting within about a minute so they merge into one unintelligible mess of the most extreme yet beautiful dedication to an idea. This is what I really like about it, an unwavering dedication to an idea, nothing tangible that comes and goes but a supremely high and abstract thought. To me this is to be human, many would disagree with me on this but to me to be human is to think, to think is to be abstract and there is nothing greater in all of humanity than abstract thought, there is no concept more abstract than god, this is the height of humanity. One of my last major changes of thought that was induced by my lovely panidesh was concerning God, of course. This did not come to me properly until i left. For many years now I've been thinking that god was a construct, a way of thinking to understand our place in the bigger picture, that we create God. Now i understand things, not a little clearer or better, just differently. The God that is a construct i no longer believe in, moreover i don't really believe in God. There were a number of things that led to this, many discussions with Towhid and Lincoln plus one purely bizarre incident. Just in the last few weeks I discovered a side of Bangladesh that I'd some how or other managed to miss, no surprises why, my life goes up in smoke. Lincoln and i had some earlier discussions about this Sufi that he follows. A Sufi is a Muslim mystic who seeks direct connection with God. Little did i know that this is common amongst pious Bangladeshi's, the mystics are mainstream religion. Lincoln took me to meet with his Sufi, he's quite big in Bangladesh he's got a following of about 2 million people. I was of the understanding that in Islam there is an impetrenable boundary between God and us. In south-Asian religions this is not the case, in Hinduism the Gods are reincarnated as people and teach us. The Sufi is the intermediary between God and the disciple, charting the path that they must follow. Lincoln's particular Sufi says he is the 36th reincarnation of Mohammed, this gets around the Koranic injunction that says Mohammed is the last prophet until just before the day of judgment. Apparently he has now also claimed that he is also this person, so be careful the end of the world could be upon us, remember who told you this and pray for me. Anyway I went to meet him which was a pretty amazing experience, he touched me an inch diagonally under my left nipple which he says is where God resides within us all. I think the idea is that he gives you some insight into God. I was then meant to go away and meditate on this spot, imagining his face and listening for God to say his name. I did try it once, admittedly it was about 4am just after the first call to pray, I'd been up all night and was particularly wasted, still i think I'm a little to cynical to here God say his name. Both Towhids mother and wife through meditation had heard God speak his name. At first I thought all this emphasis on meditation was very Indian and not very Islamic. He says you should meditate before anything else then you will follow the Koran automatically, there is no need for compulsion and rigorously following Koranic laws. So all of this brought me to this conclusion, all very hard to describe that my idea of God really has nothing to do with anything at all, except some post-modernist rantings. The brief glimpse into their conception of God, although I cannot believe, I wish I could and hope some day I will, is the most beautiful thing imaginable. From Allah to some of the special moments, talking philosophy till all hours with Tanvir and smoking yet again. I remember one particularly excessive night, Tanvir looked over at me and said 'Jesse, you are totally taal', in Bangla taal means wasted, totally taal, i like the way it sounds. All of Masud's and Lincoln's friends coming round, them singing on the roof, they all love to sing. In the end due to the paucity of my knowledge of lyrical songs Masud taught me this song by one of Bangladesh's leading musicians who I apparently met on my last trip there but I can't remember, bring on the digital memory. The lyrics are: nimontron roylow amar bari ( welcome to my house) nimontron roylow shobhar (all are welcome) fiti pote esho shobe (when you return come here) tikana amar pote tuke (my address is the dust on the road) sinai sinai lageton (there are strong feelings between you and I) The guy who wrote this calls himself James, its a smokers song. I spent a lot of my last month at the university, after my first trip down to the tribal area my mother asked me to speak to the Australian embassy to see whether it was safe to go there or not. All they told me that was the universities are the most unsafe place in the country and the national disgrace, needless to say, although not deliberately, i spent a fair chunk of my last month there at the universities. Tanvir introduced me to a number of his professors at the university, we were both disgusted the way they cowered towards me. Nevertheless i had some pretty interesting conversations with them, met one of the leading left intellectuals in the country and discussed various aspects of modern Bangladeshi history and politics. I met one of Tanvir's tutors who is from the only Jain family in the country. The Jains are an ancient Indian religion that dates to around the same time as Hinduism, its completely pacifistic, they can't kill anything, they're all vegetarian. This came to the fore at the time because there was an outbreak of dengue fever that the government insisted wasn't an epidemic which is spread by mosquitoes. People were dying all around Lincoln's house, we thought Masud's mother had it for a while. Still this Jain guy wouldn't kill mosquitoes, thats conviction in your beliefs. I killed every mosquito i could find, bought loads of toxic life shortening sprays that I'm sure are banned in the rest of the world to kill 'em and liberally sprayed everywhere i went. I also had mosquito coils, roll-on anti-mosquito stuff, after what i heard about this dengue there was no way i was going to risk getting it. Although that's not completely true, i could have left the country, this seemed a bit drastic though. Ahhhh the panidesh (water country), the rain partially saved us from the mosquitoes, had a massive downpour that flooded Dhaka, flooded all the shops, Masud came back after having to wade through waste deep water. This is no ordinary waste deep water when there are open sewers, hahahaha. To probably the most amusing incident of my time in Bangladesh, for a while i was staying on the top floor at Lincoln's house. Everyone in the building thinks there's a ghost on the top of the house, Lincoln and Masud had woken up early and headed off while I was still asleep. A maid servant from the third floor came up to get something out of the room, she looked in saw me, thought i was the ghost, dropped a glass she was carrying which smashed and ran down stairs. She'd finally seen proof of the ghost, after a while she thought about this some more, got another maid servant and went cautiously up to check out the ghost, by this time I'd woken up and headed off. Bangladesh also gave me first experience at bribing a public official. I had a three month visa, i thought there'll be no problems extending it, went to the visa office, they wanted a bribe i refused. But this is Bangladesh and if you have friends or you have money, and especially if you have both you can have anything. Gopu had an aunty who was high up in some government office who we went to meet and she wrote a note which we then took to the visa office, no problems. Then two weeks later the police called up they wanted me to come in and see them i had to pay them US$10 'administrative fee', i was expecting it to be a little underhand but since every other cop in the building was in the foyer collecting bribes off everyone it was all pretty open. So two days before i left i went to get the visa extension stamp, the police said it should be ready by then, they refused me. Went back in with Masud, he stared them down and they gave me the stamp. The whole incident pissed Masud off so he spoke to some friends who said they could get me Bangladeshi citizenship, we all had a good laugh about this. I went with Masud, Zaved and Monir off to Monir's families Sari making factory in the countryside, by this time the rainy season was seriously starting to kick in. Had one excellent night when we jumped on the motorbikes sometime after midnight and went riding round the countryside, we had to stop cause the road had collapsed because of flooding and about 100 metres in front of us there was a hospital with the bottom floor underwater. It brought home to me how different Bangladesh is from Australia, not so much in a cultural sense, more that everything is in excess in Bangladesh. In Australia there are so few people, in Bangladesh so many, in Australia so little water, in Bangladesh far too much water, Bangladesh is such a geographically small country Australia is so big, in Australia there is relatively no political conflict, in Bangladesh its everyday, in Australia the soil is next to useless when compared to the silt laden flood plains of Bangladesh. Moreover in Bangladesh there is too much of everything, political conflict, corruption, poverty, religion, passion, smell, dirtiness yet cleanliness of the people, rice, friendliness, pollution, bad food, beggars, those who work too much and so many who have no work, the righteousness that everyone holds their own world view in, unity over the liberation war and nationalism yet disunity over everything else, idealism and the pragmatic realities of power and corruption, love for cricket, love between men and women and the repression of it. I know that when I look back on my life I will count my time in Bangladesh alongside the best in my life. Its so difficult to describe my experiences and thoughts, how its has changed me, time will tell. Already I can see a mellowing in my beliefs, I still believe firmly in socialism and the innate equality of all people, it is just I feel less dogmatic about it all now, a little more relaxed in my beliefs. I left Bangladesh on a high note of idealism, this could not last and unfortunately has not, a mixture of things have brought this about which I'll elaborate later on. There are two things that stand out when i think of Bangladesh, two things that made my time their really special and probably a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. Firstly going to the tribal areas which was an incredibly out there experience, i think i gave a little picture in the last big email i wrote, multiply it be a hundred and then you can start to gather what a mind blowing experience it was. Secondly but really firstly and most importantly was the friends i made there. Sitting around talking all night, Masud said to me you are one of us, 'we don't think of you as a foreigner anymore when we think of us, our circle, you are there'. Tanvir's father told me that i was one of the family. Emotions, types of people are the same across the world, to me most of Australia is full of fools who don't know it, i on the other hand know I'm a fool, my friends in Australia know they are fools my friends in Bangladesh know they are fools. What I'm trying to get at here is that most people in the world regardless of culture i don't get on with, on the other hand there are only a few people around the world, i haven't met them all, I'm waiting for more surprises, who are my people. I was lucky enough in Bangladesh to meet some of my people, my Dhaka bondhu (Dhaka friends). So I flew out of Bangladesh, in a very messy and sad state, i didn't want to leave but my financial situation was crumbling, a few hours sleep, the only way to leave a country and went to Thailand to meet my dad. This was all fun and amusement we went off down to patayya which is a sea side resort, to my mind full of prostitution, first night we stayed in a brothel, i often seem to end up in brothels, ridiculous given that i never take up their main service. This was a particularly drunk and stoned affair, had one very big night where i threw up all over an Arab bar came back to the hotel my dad was with a woman in the room so i continued throwing up in the reception then finally went to sleep on a couch, got woken up by the staff to be told the room was now free, what a joke life is. The reason for going to patayya is that my dad had an American friend there. Meeting him and his Thai girl friend raised some interesting questions. He was a sixty year old hippy she was 24 and stunningly beautiful, they lived together, he paid for her to go through school and helped out her family. On the other hand he got sex on demand from someone nearly a third his age, not that it was a one way relationship, Thai women are pretty bossy but i think he liked it. In the end he pulled the purse strings although i think he was pretty attached to her. He was no demon this sixty year old, he was a really nice guy. We went out to a few strip clubs where he emphatically said to me 'jesse you can help everyone of these women, get some money and put them through school'. Still I think its all pretty back to front, they didn't look very happy, they shouldn't be put in that situation in the first place. Although I couldn't help but find it all very funny, these women dancing around poles pulling cotton from their fannies and tying it around the poles, more of a freak show than a turn on. On the other hand everyone's forced into working, everyone has to sell either their mind or body to live, maybe the distinction is some works demeaning, some isn't, i have to sell my mind, although my works my hobby. Maybe their hobby is playing around with cotton and polls. From decadence we headed off to an island and chilled out there for a few days. Ahhhh the islands they're hard to beat, i don't think i could live on one, i could go more insane. Still to chill, the sound of waves beating on the beach and rocks, getting stoned, its a pretty good life. After this we met up with the American guy and his girlfriend again and went off to their farm, this was a really special experience. Of all the time I've spent in Thailand I've always been at really touristy places this place was special and really beautiful. This guy said one thing to me that really struck me when i got to London 'jesse get prepared because soon you will no longer be a film star', and ohhh its so devastatingly true. Dad and I spent out last night together their so we were up smoking late and only a few hours sleep we started making our way back to bangkok. As we got off the bus I'm looking at the police and my brain which is going slowly started to tick over, this mightn't be that good. Unfortunately they pulled us over searched our bags and of course found the smoke in dad's bag. When i think about this in hindsight, I've been damn lucky to get away too now, its hard to draw a distinction which country outside Australia I've been most wasted in but it suffices to say Thailand would not come last. This was all a bit of a freak out, dad had to get a plane, Nicole kidmans Bangkok Hilton screamed through my mind, although i guess my dad wouldn't be rescuing me, as he'd be in there with me. After a few minutes i figured that they wanted a bribe, they wanted US$250, which i thought was pretty excessive for one joint. After some negotiation we got away with paying about US$150, still a fuck of a lot of money for one joint. Think I'll avoid Thailand from now, I'll try and fly through Malaysia or Indonesia, both of which have stricter drug laws but they pissed me off so I'll be a good well informed consumer and take my dollar elsewhere. Still it was good to catch up with my dad again after a year and a half. Spent a drunk week in Bangkok waiting for a plane out, i have some hazy memories of a few disgraceful incidents but i won't go into them here cause I'm not really too sure if it was me, a dream or a story someone else was telling me. Finished off Thailand in good style got to the airport at 6am in the morning spastically drunk having gone straight from the bar to the airport and onto the plane. Needless to say it was a messy headed flight. Got into London after a 14 hours on the plane, we went via Singapore, with no sleep and more to drink. I really should have thought this out a little more, i went into the toilet before i got off the plane to clean myself up. You know when you have too much of a big night and the veins or whatever the blood carrying things in your eyes pop so your eyes look more red than after smoking non-stop without sleep for days. Well i got into London in this state, looking very shabby, reeking of alcohol, no ticket out of the country, no money and not a fucking clue. I had to stand in a queue for about two hours before i finally got to the woman at the counter. She gave me some bad looks, went through every page of my passport twice, asked what i was doing, i said i was going to Ireland to work, she asked if i had a work visa, i didn't, she quizzed me for a while then gave me a sixth month stamp, wohoooo. If i was behind that counter and not who i am, i would have refused myself. Luckily tom was at the airport to pick me up in his £40,000 Alfa Romeo to speed me to his place and get me spastically stoned. So to London, what to say about London, the first week absolutely did my head in after Bangladesh. If tom wasn't there i would have stowed away, i had no money, to any other country. Thanks to Tom London was allright it became the all good London mash up. The most excessive night combining smoke, grog, e and coke, about half the night is pretty blurry, we spent about five hours in a club that we thought was fabric, listening to terry Francis dj, only to find out after it had closed that in fact the club wasn't fabric and terry francis wasn't playing, got knocked back from a gay club cause we weren't gay and decided that the scottish are insane. Needless to say most of the month was spent extremely stoned and drunk, played my first game of snooker, played a number, went out to see tom's cousins band play, which was excellent. Outside of the London mash up i managed to do about two days of tourist stuff in my month their. They've got all these cute little terrace housing in London. I was thinking it would be an an honor and a privilege to go and piss on the gates of Buckingham palace but never made it. Went to see westminster and wanted to blow it up, i tell you they have some really beautiful buildings their but how does a little island manage to build all this stuff, obvious answer, on the backs of the rest of the world. By chopping off the hands of Bengali weavers because they made better fabrics than Manchester, by enslaving two thirds of the world. The most disgusting thing is the museum, absolutely repulsive, i tell you its better to watch a pig eat your shit than see the British museum. I was looking for a comments book to write 'you are a nation of thieves', alas i couldn't find one. Its a testament to how they've pillaged and raped the world. This of course is not the general British public but the elites, the ruling class of that country. I'm not claiming any moral high ground here if Australians or i was in the same position I'd probably do the same. I mean most of the shit they have has been created by former incredibly unjust systems on the backs of their respective populations. Anyway enough of my political rant, i know one more thing, the citadel of Protestant Christianity, St. Paul's, you know that feeling you get that religion is often about money, i had to pay £5 to get in, they've got tills and gates inside st. pauls. Not that i ever knew Jesus or really know a whole lot about him, i can't imagine he would have been to impressed. Still its a nice building but if its going to be a profitable venture they should scrap any claims to having anything to do with God, any high ideal and put a big M on the front. Don't take this as a rant against Christianity as a religion, just a rant against a hypocritical church, my time with the bawm in Bangladesh gave me a much better impression of the Christianity. I guess its like all ideals, if you live it, its beautiful, if you corrupt it and claim to be the guardians of it, it breeds nothing but contempt. Its a funny place London, i was expecting it to be just like Melbourne, except bigger and faster. Its similar but there are loads of differences, i was expecting the culture to be identical, thankfully it isn't. Its a cold place, not just the weather but the people, if you know someone they're excellently friendly, they're friends are open but it would an awful place not to know anyone. THE COST, i maxed both my visa cards even though i was crashing at tom's place, he was feeding me and getting me wasted. I'm still unsure where all that money went, thanks to tom and my mum for bailing me out once again. At some point in my life my irresponsibility is going to come right back at me, hopefully this happens when I'm really old, about to die, only effects me and has no consequences for the afterlife, next life or whatever happens or doesn't. So i have arrived in Ireland, as Ronan tom's cousin said to me, 'what is Irelands greatest invention? The submarine, they were trying to build a ship and it sunk'. I've been looking forward to Ireland, i get the feeling that they're sort of similar to Australians, they don't take themselves to seriously. I've now started work my job title is 'linux developer', it sound much better than it is, I've just got to build a really good linux web server. I'll see how the work goes in deciding how long I'll be here for, at the moment it looks like it'll be a fair bit of fun. Once i get a grip of this place I'll type up an email about it all. I should finish off by saying i have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, this is not a change more of a recognition. I've got no idea why I've left Australia, I've got no idea why I'd ever want to be in Australia and i certainly have not a clue as to why I'm in Ireland. Anyway its mainly fun, patches of loneliness and extreme lostness, on the whole its something, although I've got no idea what that something is. Click here for Bangladesh Photos
