Nilphamari Field Trip

'So, what would you like to have, darbesh baba?' asked the keeper of the old teashop, leaning forward almost into my bearded face. He wore a white tohbon [lungi] and a kurta-like shirt, with a pale rosy thread from some mazar around his neck, and his breath smelling faintly of siddhi (marijuana). I felt a bit awkward but remained smiling.

'Tea! Just a cup of tea will be fine.'

But Ahasan felt compelled to protest on my behalf.

'Look here, he is our teacher,' he said. But the shopkeeper paid no heed to his words and, while ambling over to his cash box, ordered the waiter, a little boy, to serve us two cups of tea. Then murmured, more to himself than us, 'But you should eat something at my shop.'

Thick bricks jutted out from the plaster of the wall beside me, an old calendar with a painting of Krishna in gokul hung above, and beside it a framed photo of Baba Loknath. We sat on a low bench while an uneven, high bench in front of us served as out table. The 60-watt electric lamp cast a feeble light, and swirling smoke, alternately spider-web and solid-screen, reminded of a creative light director on the stage.

It was hazy, a deepening twilight in early November. The first week of Ramzan. I felt, as we waited for the tea, that Ahasan shouldn't have spoken out. A darbesh (saint), I thought, with the spoon chinking loudly against the teacups as the little boy made the tea and the shopkeeper floated dreamy-eyed on his sea of siddhi, why not? Why not assume the title of 'Darbesh Baba'? Questions began to run through my head: What does a darbesh have that the rest of us don't? Or, to put it a little more academically, what are the qualities people think a darbesh should have? But who knew the answer to that? And the darbeshes themselves certainly weren't saying anything. It's not just my beard, I thought, it's the kind of beard I had, its waywardness, the total lack of any sort of urban styling, which had caused the shopkeeper to address me with the honorific. For a moment I thought of asking him if he belonged to any of the local lines of saints, or different schools of adherents. But didn't. After all, I too belonged to a developmental school. And by not asking about local darbeshes I hoped in return to be spared questions about whether I worked for any NGO there.

I didn't know much about the legendary saints of north Bengal except for Shah Makhdum. But here in Nilphamari, up north beside Rangpur, it was no great wonder that there were a lot of them, with a huge number of followers of each sect. In a way, saints are at the heart of Bangladesh. As soon as you get out of Dhaka, you are within a mosaic of various spiritual and mystical schools and thoughts. Beyond that I didn't know much. And was I correct even in assuming that? How much did I really know abut this aspect of Bangladesh? I didn't, and this lack of knowledge annoyed me, as if I was losing my academic awareness, my training in anthropology.

The teacups were small and the tea was finished all too soon, which meant that I couldn't sit there and sip tea and think on the subject. What should I do, ask for a second round of tea? Or, I thought facetiously, go ahead and take up the original offer of siddhi? I looked at Ahasan sitting next to me, looking at me with a far-off gaze.

Luckily, the shopkeeper resolved the dilemma by offering me a shandesh. Though what I really wanted was a second cup of tea, I was happy with the exchange. And a little later came out of the shop with the taste of a sweetmeat on my tongue. In the murky light, spider webs of smoke were still being spun behind me, rendering the shop mysterious. I felt the entire town was like that, vaguely mysterious, unidentifiable, as if it were any other mofusshil town, as if it were Meherpur (the small town I had grown up in), and not Nilphamari. Two little words darbesh baba seemed to have caused a metamorphosis within me. And I felt it wouldn't be easy to communicate with the developmental team I had come to work with. I became a bit sad, I don't know why.

I had come to Nilphamari yesterday to link up with my eight-member research team. Before dawn, when it was still quite dark. The district office of the development organization was located in a nice place. In fact, one had to think hard for a while whether it was in town or in a rural area, as frequently happens with most NGO offices outside Dhaka. The guesthouse was inside the office building itself. The team was going to stay there a month, while I was there only on a two-day visit, which seemed the current norm for NGO team leaders engaged in social research. My team was excited about the project. Which accounted for the fact that two of them, despite the very early hour, despite the fact that they themselves had barely two hours of sleep after sehri, immediately sat down with me and launched into a full-scale adda. It didn't occur to them to show me to my room, which incidentally was the VIP room, also the only vacant room. The regular office people, whom I later met at breakfast, seemed bemused by this informal style of leadership. A bemusement I felt too, but for an entirely different reason, for it was Ramzan and some of my colleagues were fasting, and though it was not expected of me, a Hindu, to fast, yet it seemed impolite to eat. But I was starving, and one look at the table--parata, bhaji, sweets, all cooked by a full-time employee--was enough to make me tuck in heartily. Unable to mask my happy face.

Finally, after I said I wouldn't feel comfortable taking the VIP room, which then went to our female colleagues since it had an attached bathroom, I got a room to share with others. While the rest of the team were getting ready to go on the field trip, I sat by the window. The sun was barely visible through the fog, with a yellow light on the pale trees--some shimul (silk cotton), some neem, and quite a few others I did not recognize. The scene stirred faint memories in me, of something dusky and gray, or something that perhaps was unreal and only imagined memory. I tried to fix this memory into a nice frame, this scene so close to me, just before my eyes. Which now were burning a little.

'You must take a bath, sir, and then a little rest,' someone suggested, seeing me sitting at the window quietly. I felt offended that my workmates thought that a night journey would make me feel tired. I said nothing.

'You definitely are going with us, aren't you?'

I couldn't tell them that right then I didn't want to go out. Not because I was tired, but because I wanted to keep sitting by the window. Ahasan looked at me searchingly: 'So how are you feeling? Are you all right?'

'Yes. Why shouldn't I be? I am not a white man unused to the land.'

'But you've been living in Dhaka for so long!'

'I travel outside Dhaka all the time. Villages are not fictional to me. And this is not really a village. This is a district town!'

'But Nilphamari is very different from Dhaka.'

'That's a different point altogether. But, unlike you, I am from a mofusshil town.'

'Yes, that's true. But a trip with a development mission, an NGO man, doesn't that feel very different? Doesn't it have a specific meaning?'

I looked at him. Ahasan was sharp as ever. He had guessed at my ambivalence about this whole venture.

'Yes. It does. It's as if I have to justify to myself every move I make. It is tiring.'

'So do you think you'll be able to hold on?'

'Maybe I should split into two personalities,' I laughed in reply. 'One would go to work. And the other would be free to enjoy the trip.'

Later I went to the village, to perform the obligatory ceremony sacred to all development programs: the field trip. With three others on a rickshaw-van. On the way back, Lily took photographs of the group with her digital camera. There we were, picture perfect, sitting in a rickshaw van with rural Bangladesh as a backdrop! She was going to take these images back with her to Italy. Or was it UK? She showed us the images on the square-inch silver screen. There I was, smoking, swinging my feet by the side of the van, set against a huge, green, fertilized background. Krishna in Mathura, I thought, here as liberator of Mathura's inhabitants. What better proof of my second identity than that image: A Dhakaieea ignoramus turned emancipator. Still, despite the jocularity, I didn't feel good about myself.

So I asked the rickshaw-puller, later at the evening, when I moving around the town. 'So who is your hero here?'

'Here?'

'Yes, let's suppose Nilphamari. Or north Bengal.'

'And you mean a hero?' he asked again while still pedalling.

'Yes, an ustad. A guru. Who you feel you are loyal to, or from whom you taking guidance.'

'Why should I need guidance?'

'Yes, that's true.' I nodded in agreement. He had been hired on an hourly contract. He informed me that though he was originally from Dinajpur, the adjacent district, in reality his village was closer to Nilphamari town than Dinajpur town. He was living here with his only son. His wife and daughter were still in his home village. 'Why?' I asked. Because, he explained, he couldn't support the whole family in the town. But he needed to work here in order to look after his son, who was proving to be a good student. So he and his wife had decided on this particular arrangement.

'And where is your son?'

He seemed shy about replying to my question, but then said. 'He is at home now, studying. I have rented a room. Last month I managed to buy him an electric lamp.'

'So he is studying here?'

'Yes. You know, he is in class seven at the district school. Next year he will take the examination for scholarship. With your blessing of course, bhai.'

I didn't say anything. I knew what his next question was going to be. And finally, after some more pedalling, he asked it. 'Are you working in an NGO?'

'Yes.'

'You are. You get a good salary, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'Do you think my son someday will get a job in your organization?'

I managed to evade answering him by pointing to a roadside sweetmeat shop and asking him to stop there. I went inside. When I got back on, he didn't ask me the question again.

After we came out of the smoky teashop, Ahasan and I started walking towards the guesthouse. My bus to Dhaka would leave in three hours. I told him about my conversation with the rickshaw-puller, about his hopes for his son being employed by an NGO. Ahasan didn't reply, and in the dark I couldn't make out the expression on his face. I also mentioned that though I had searched high and low earlier that day for a flute (as a souvenir), I hadn't been able to get one.

'Did you really think you'd find one here?' he asked me.

'Well, I don't know. I just thought that I would get one here, but they don't have any in the bazaar. If there's a flute player around here, he must be getting it from some other place. Anyway, what use is a flute, it's not like food you can eat.' My not finding the flute had left me feeling exasperated.

Suddenly, out of the blue, Ahasan asked me:

'Why didn't you say something when the shopkeeper called you darbesh baba?'

'Why? What difference would it have made?'

'You are not a darbesh. Don't you think it was wrong?'

'But then I am not a liberator either, but here they look at me that way.'

'But being a darbesh raises expectations in people. They want certain things from you.'

'And what about our work here? Isn't it the same thing? It's a very thin line we are straddling here. For a moment I just wanted to be a darbesh. So what?' And both of us didn't say anything for a very, very long time.

The bus started quite a bit late. One reason was a youth leader, who was seen off by a whole crowd of fellow male colleagues, all of whom kept calling out his name. It was evident that he was a bigwig of one of the youth fronts of a national political party. Or maybe an ex-student leader, going to the capital city to pay a call on his bosses. The seat next to mine was empty; actually the only one that was empty. He came and sat down, his face still wreathed in false smile of a 'leader'. The bus started then. He finished his waving at the window, then turned to me.

'You look like a fine arts student. Aren't you?'

'No, I am not.' I said, very softly, waiting for the inevitable next question. He paused now, eyes sparkling, thinking of how to pose it, then gave up and came out with it.

'Where's your desh?'

'I don't think it's important. But it is Kushtia.' I replied, still softly. Meherpur would be too remote for this leader.

'Kushtia! Lalon's place. See, I was on the right track! So you must have a particular darbesh line, aren't you? You know, our party (and here he named the political party he belonged to) is now taking you shangskritik folks seriously...earlier we made a mistake in underestimating people like you. You too are a part of our national history. So, tell me ... ha, ha… aren't you from a line?'

Now it was my turn to smile broadly, to switch on a facsimile of the smile he had been beaming to his disciples who came to see the great leader off. Whatever line I followed, it was certainly not anything this neta would know about!

Manosh Chowdhury teaches anthropology at Jahangirnagar University. Khademul Islam is literary editor, The Daily Star.