April 15, 2011,
"You can’t understand. How could you--with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you on or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude--utter solitude, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back on your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness." Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness
This is how I feel as of late.
I’m constantly feeling like I’m fighting to preserve that capacity within myself to control the direction and adaptation of my thoughts. I’m usually a master at fighting negative attitudes, but here, surrounded by the bleeding open gapes in the legs of three year old beggars, and the sense of a stalemate in humanity’s development, it’s often hard to feel optimistic or at peace in such a place. My peace is gone—or at least on pause. I only find it briefly, in a millisecond’s fleeting breeze in the 100+ heat, or maybe a moment in a song, or humorous thought. It’s my sense that Dhaka feels the same.
Yesterday it was Bangladesh’s New Year—their 1418th year, I think. We became absorbed by the crowds in the streets near Dhaka University, where it seemed the whole city had come out to celebrate. There were thousands of people, all dressed in the festive red color of the holiday, running through the streets with horns and drums, atop elephants or trucks. It was easy to get caught up in the energy, and we ended up spending hours weaving through the crowds ourselves. It’s times like these when I feel the similarities of home in Bangladesh—a party is a party anywhere. But then, as it always does, my whole perspective gets shaken when I see the stark reminders that this place is different. You grow up with such a sense of right and wrong as a child. You tend to know when to offer your help to a stranger, or when you need to go seek someone else’s. I remember reading a study in high school that spoke about the power of numbers, and how often it can turn group mentality into a parallel of savagery. If you see a car accident on a busy highway, do you pull over to help? It’s so easy to reconcile that someone else has called 911, shedding your own responsibility. I often feel as is Bangladesh is just a massive portrayal of this shedding. A city of excuses and personal agendas and survival. Really dog eat dog. After 3 months I still stop to stare from a safe distance and survey people’s faces to see if it affects them when they pass the atrocities of the realities saturated throughout their streets. Lying squarely in the middle of a parade of people, was a middle aged man with amputated arms, and a caved in abdomen, severely seizing amidst waves of people blowing into their kazoos. His eyes were bulging and twitching in pain, while people in the street kept their eyes straight ahead, or down long enough to circle around the man, continuing with their own lives. The number of times we’ve stumbled across scenes like this makes me feel as if I’m living in an eternal Rob Zombie film. It’s a disease, and inevitably, we’ve caught it, in the sense that we, like many Bangladeshis, simply don’t know what to do for this man—especially as there’s hundreds like him. There is no one to call for help. And leaving even a 10 or 20 taka note will attract the pulls on my arm from someone equally needy in a mere minute.
Anyone who has ever lived in a city in the United States can probably reconcile that they too develop an attitude of passivity when walking by beggars in the streets. Knowing that your dollar would be better spent donated or invested in a social cause, rather than in a fleeting instance of guilt, we tend not to give money, and walk forward with eyes adrift. Never in my life would I expect to develop such a shell of conscience towards a 3 or 4 year old child. The term ‘street children’ may be used too frequently in discussions about urban poverty, that it has lost the severity of punch in reaction that it deserves. These aren’t just 14-15 skinny boys one would think of, who may have been orphaned, and are subsisting through their teens to make it to self-reliant adulthood. These are literally children—who back home, wouldn’t even be going to the bathroom alone, let alone begging on the streets to provide themselves a meal. The common themes found in developing countries—child prostitution, malnutrition, disease, the list goes on—often become simply words after reading about their prevalence so frequently. The danger in that is the mind acknowledges the issue, understands the meaning, but forgets the daily horror inflicted on the millions worldwide. I would think one should shudder at the thought of even 1 child, but there are 3 billion people worldwide living in poverty—the women and children of which are affected the worst.
You could be disgusted by the thought of a city full of people becoming complacent towards such poverty. You can complain about the inefficiency and corruptness of a government. You can hug your children close and fear the future of civilization—whose incomes become further and further apart each year. But the real fear I have found, is in the validity of the belief that there is an absence of responsibility in the minds of our society. I’ve become abducted by it myself. Why else would I pull away from the tugs of a helpless toddler, with my eyes keen on looking dead ahead?
