Santa Claus is Coming to Town

He came out of the north, riding Siberian winds down the mountains of Tibet, heading south to a land he'd never been to before. His face red with cheerful perspiration, he laughed as Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen swooped down towards the deltas below him. A city lay there, its lights glittering dimly like a jewel in the velvet softness of night. He urged his flying reindeer to go lower and to allow him a better view of this place, this Dhaka city. “HO HO HO H- oh, oh, oh shi-“

He swerved the sleigh out of the way just in time as the aeroplane appeared out of seemingly nowhere and almost ended Christmas before it had even begun. Righting himself he shook a red-gloved fist at the departing vessel and roared, “SKY HOG!” He'd always meant to install radar on the sleigh, but had never really gotten around to it. Anyway, he could usually spot a plane coming, but for some reason that one didn't have working lights. Regaining his composure, he thought of all the toys in his sack and all the good little boys and girls in the city before him. He was sweating profusely: this was supposedly winter, yet it was boiling hot inside his clothes, but it was part of the magic and he wouldn't deny the children of Bangladesh any part of the Santa Claus experience.
Who'd be the first lucky family? Aha! That's quite a lot of smoke coming out from over there, and where there's smoke there are chimneys. Santa flew closer and was not disappointed: they were the tallest chimneys he'd seen in a while. “Now just you stay right here, I won't be a minute,” he said to his reindeer team, and with surprising dexterity for a man so fat began to wriggle down the strangely cylindrical chimney.
Thirty seconds later he scrambled out, his red suit charred and blackened, and little fires glowing on his beard. Beating them out, he got onto the sleigh and spurred the team as far away from the brick kiln as possible. “No more chimneys,” he muttered.
But you can't keep Christmas cheer down. Santa was far too old a hand to be deterred by a lack of chimneys, especially as he saw that most of the houses in the city were apartment buildings, with flat roofs and stairs promising easy access to the floors below. He touched down on one such roof, opened the door and made his stealthy way downstairs.
The first door he came to was 6B, and in it there were little Akash and Fahmida, both on the “Good” list. He tried the door and found it locked. This was a problem, as he couldn't just ring the bell and walk in, it wasn't tradition. But then again, what did it matter? Surely the parents would be the ones to open the door: so long as the kids never saw him it was all fine. It was 4 AM, they'd be long since in their beds, bless their little toes. He rang the bell.
Presently the door was opened by a man with a long, straggly beard who demanded to know who Santa was. Santa was nonplussed, he was used to being recognised. “Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas! It is I, Santa Claus!”
“Christmas? Never heard of it!”
“I think here in these parts you call it, umm,” Santa reached for his notebook. “Err…You call it... 'Big Day'?”
“Oh, Boro Din. Thik ase, bujhlam. But who are you? Who let you in at this time of night?”
“Actually I came in through the roof... oh come on, surely you know me, see, I brought my sack…”
The bearded man's face lit up in sudden comprehension. Clearly he understood it all now. He pointed at Santa and screamed, “CHOR! THIEF IN THE BUILDING!”
Santa got back to his sleigh just in time, narrowly dodging the clutches of the mob that'd magically appeared on the scene. He picked out stray twigs from his beard, left by the woman beating him with the broom. “Maybe I should try to sneak into the next house.”
He flew to an apartment building a block away. Ferdous Amin was on the “Good” list and lived in flat 4A. Santa gently brought the sleigh up to the balcony and nimbly leapt onto it. He slid the glass door open. Good. Things were finally going his way. 4:30 AM. Young Ferdous was surely asleep, time to slip his gift under the Christmas tree...
“Oh, come on!” What was wrong with these people? Where was the tree? And for that matter, where were his cookies and milk? There was the dinner table, but it was empty. Tired, hot, beaten and burnt, Santa was feeling distinctly un-jolly. Still, he was a professional, and by God, Ferdous would get his present even if it killed him. He pulled the box out of the sack, lifted a pot plant and stuck it under there. “Right!”
And that's when the door opened. Santa had made a grave error in supposing that it being so late, Ferdous would be in bed. But Ferdous was 15, and like any 15 year-old he was wide awake and on the phone with his girlfriend when he'd heard activity in the living room. “Jaan, hold on, I think I heard someone outside.”
“It's probably your little brother talking to his girlfriend.”
“No, there's someone moving in the living room. Someone really heavy. I have to check.”
“Oh, jaan be careful, it might be, like, a burglar!”
And so Ferdous opened the door to find a soot-blackened bearded fat man in a burnt suit with jharur kathi in his hair, lifting a huge sack and glowering over a flowerpot. The man rounded upon him, cheeks red with fury, and roared: “IT'S BLOODY 4 IN THE MORNING, WHY AREN'T YOU IN BED, YOU LITTLE TWERP!”
“But-but-“ Ferdous stammered. He was frightened and he wanted his parents, but they weren't back from their Christmas Eve party yet.
“I'VE HAD IT WITH THIS COUNTRY! SEE IF I EVER COME BACK!” And throwing the last jharur kathi in Ferdous' face, he got onto the sleigh. “On, Prancer, on Dancer, on - bug this, you know what I mean!”
And so Santa's journey in Bangladesh ended before he even reached Westin.