VIGNETTES FROM DHAKA

SAVAR. Wednesday 24th April 2013
The scene of the second worst industrial disaster in human history resembles a war zone with screams, tears, countless hands with the photos or identity cards of the deceased or missing, sirens, barricades and the putrid stench of decomposing corpses which once were lived by souls who dreamed of better lives for themselves and more importantly, for their children. Amidst this man-made apocalypse, a couple of hundred men and women arrive from nowhere, almost bare handed, most of them not trained at all for rescue work of this magnitude, have jumped into the very jaws of death to rescue their comrades who survived or at least to hand over the corpses to their kith and kin. People from all over the nation donated medicine and supplies for the survivors.
It is not a story only of despair, corruption, sweatshops, and the faithful worship of the blinded deity called Walmart- style- globalisation.  Hope and tragedy dance hand in hand in this city of 15 million souls.
The city is the people of the city. To paraphrase the famous urbanist and housing guru John Turner, the city is not what it is but what it does.  Amidst the despair, chaos, filth, noise, a young chap captive in a traffic jam  will mutter to himself “the city is not ready for the people and the people are not ready for the city…we can't do what we are doing anymore because we can't live if the city can't live…
Somewhere a professor of urban planning will echo the same news to his rather bored students  “ …the unmistakable sign of the urban age where 75 percent of the world's people will live in cities in 2050 is the explosive urban growth in cities with strong societies and weak government coupled with immense income disparity…this is a new hydra headed beast which has sprung all over the developing world simply cannot be tamed with conventional short term patch up solutions which cater mostly to the wealthy… ” Elsewhere in a plush air conditioned government office with a view of the city, a planner is marking miles wide swaths of agricultural land on a flood flow zone to be acquisitioned by the government to make a new satellite city. This despite the fact that the one designed in the 1990's for a million people is yet to materialise and will be so for many years to come, given the accountability of the public servants.
 

Somewhere in the greater Dhaka region… Wednesday 24th April 2024
Ripa lives with her son Raju, daughter Rina, and her husband Rono in a fine apartment complex in Gaffargaon, a fifteen minute metro ride from Mymensingh. At 7:00 AM in the morning they all board the commuter train at Gaffargaon station after swiping the monthly passes of 1500 taka each. At 7:15, they arrive at Mymensingh Metro station. Rina walks to Ananda Mohan College and Raju gets off at the Agriculture University, where he is a sophomore. Nipa boards the Dhaka bound train at 7:20. She will reach Banani Station at 8:50 and walk to her office at Safura Tower on Kemal Ataturk Avenue.
Rono boards the Metro headed for Bhairav from Mymensingh at 7:30 AM. He is the general manager of a textile factory. He reaches the factory at exactly 8:30 AM every morning. Many of the workers live at Brahmanbaria and even Laksham. A young chap from Chandpur gave an interview last Monday. While taking the interview Rono suddenly remembered that 10 years ago when he started as an assistant manager in the same factory, it took him three to four hours to reach Bhairav from their tiny apartment in Mohammadpur. Nightmares never to be repeated.
Around 3PM, Raju decides to meet his ailing aunt. She was admitted to a clinic in Comilla in the morning. He boards the Metro from his campus, changes trains at Bhairav and reaches the clinic at 5PM. It was indeed a pleasant surprise for his cousins!
Around 7:30  PM, the family sits together at the dining space for a snack and is making plans for the weekend to watch the new experimental drama at the Shilpakala Academy.
As the conversation takes off the cool winds blow gently into the dining space from the surrounding paddy fields.

The writer is the current Secretary, Environment and Urbanization, Institute of Architects Bangladesh.