Faheem Chowdhury
When I was eighteen, in the months before my course at Surrey, I elected to spend some time back in Bangladesh volunteering in a village named Dirai. Dirai is a remote vastly under developed place with many areas only accessible via boat. I worked with an NGO named Grameen Jonokolyo Sangstad (GJKS) on projects such as the micro loan scheme (which was of added interest given my impending Economics course).
I can safely say that I was ‘immersed’ in this a country I had visited but never experienced in such a vein, and this a task that I had expectations of but no past familiarity. Though an excursion of only three months taken years ago, the experience amazed me and still effects me with its gift of effusive memories and wisdom.
Canto 1: The foreigner
The tainted hue of humid air
And all those eyes that resided
Under the formidably blazing sun
Had their own expectations
A foreigner no less
With foreign gestures
With foreign speak
With foreign skin
A foreigner perhaps
But of the same origin
A foreigner not a stranger
To quaint eccentricities
Of this land and its scarcity
Of its flood washed smiles
And its humble humble reality
So now here was this
A distant boy
From a far distant dawn
Stood eagerly upon the door
Awash with excitement and fear
And so much
And so much
Expectation
Canto 2: My origin
So this is where it is, this is where it begins, so here
I am
In this the place
For me to deal
Having been flown, having been driven
Having been carted along on rickshaw wheels
To find that now
Everywhere is a stranger
The beaten roads and
The sun tired buildings resemble
My familiar cities
But now I am certainly with all certainty
In contrast
My mobile has no friends in signal
The television spews incomprehensible speak
Mosquito nets, blocks of wood for curtains
Mud on floors and straw for ceiling
Water, water, water everywhere
But not on tap
Roads traversed by cars, motorbikes, cow
Electricity that has a name lodd shedddinng[1]
And is often sick or resting
Flatness, no hills
Fields like swamp across every plain
With regiments of green shoots and
The elegant laborious work
Of the farmer and his loin cloth
And suddenly I am not
A short man but tall
I am not darker skinned
But pale
My accent isn’t refined
It’s awkward
In a village, in country land
In this country, another country
No less
My intellect and understanding
Is shaken
To timidness
With all this strangeness
But this is where it begins
This is where it is
So here I am
In my origin
Canto 3: The poor
With an ease and efficacy
Reality easily
Draws cosy curtains
To an ablaze light
Shining mercilessly
Into the blinded
Reflex of unknowing eyes
So Poverty
Of trauma of suffering
Poverty
Of longing of scarcity
Poverty
Of no gloss or beauty
Poverty
Of tired eyes despondent gazes
Poverty
Of birth and born again
Poverty
Of struggled homes meagre living
Poverty
Of desperation of starvation
Poverty
Of education opportunity in apparition
Poverty
Complicit of coveting crime
Poverty
Unmoved by world’s of moving time
Poverty
Of insipid continuity
Poverty
Extant and in front of me
Poverty
Dearth poverty
Poverty
And I for a witness
To its reality
Canto 4: My apprehension
Now overwhelming
Distraught
Indecision
Discomfort
Disengaging
Disdain
All Overwhelming
My voice is a shaky
Shuddering
Of confidence
And control
Completely overwhelming
Undue disorientated
And astray
But what is the use
In complicit dismay
When
Overwhelmingly
I must continue
No flights from here
To take me far away
I must continue
To have been overwhelmed
And perhaps
Perhaps
To find that
Joy of hope
In what I see
To give that moment
Of kindness
To have someone overwhelmed
By me
Canto 5: The Noble King
A dangly creased loin cloth
And a wild untrimmed beard
A reluctant voice
And a retiring walk
Hardly the grace of a wise king
Teaching wisdom
Poorer, far poorer than me
And as poor as any
We had come that day to see
Hardly the state of a prosperous king
Abundant in wealth
And yet, when it was that we said
That this day, today, we could
Do nothing for him
Because there were others
Of no tube wells or roofs or food
When it was meekly explained
He replied
Of no hesitation
As if
Nothing was easier
That we must go
There were many much needier
For today he had eaten
And many days past
He had been happy
Under a passable roof
And full of heart
With one shirt and one cane
And instead he’d give
For us a prayer
For our kind care
And he lent against his stick
Content
Even though
Everything stood the same.
This graciousness and gratitude
Of no greed or grieving or frown
Was so far from anything I had ever known
From richer men or kings
Or even those
Whom I had actually relieved
So I stood aloof
In a delightful charm
And if I had the capacity
I do swear
I’d have given him
A kingdom and a crown
Canto 6: The business woman
Middle aged
Zestful
Single mother proudly
Sat intently
Listening to
Our advice
She knows
That men work and
Women feed
And yet she did not
Depend
She need not beg
Or ask
She need not have
Lending hands
Gift
For there sat Fol Begum
Amongst the horde
Of intent mothers
Proudly and not alone
All entrepreneurs
Selling little fans,
Or biscuits, or sweets
Or bric a brac
From tiny little loans
Withstanding
That sorry sentiment of
Dependency in a country
Where a woman
Barely have a voice
She works and sells
And lives of her own choice
And she runs her own home
That will be paid back
She is called a business woman after all
So she sits intently to our advice
At this business seminar
In a village mud room
Under thatch ceiling
Proudly
For ardour and independence
And capacity and courage
She doesn’t lack
Canto 7: The island village
The rain and wind
Lash at the insolence
Of this little rogue ship
Negotiating water
Water and water
So that those lost
Ghosts of land
And their village dwellers
Are found by our attention
And our pretty educated hope
Though it is that living
These people manage
Un-needing of worlds of wealth
Or superfluous sophistication
But perhaps some seeds
Perhaps some wisdom
Perhaps some remedies
Perhaps a few kind deeds
For it is that these
Poor village dwellers
Quaint and uninstructed
Are rich
They have wealth, real wealth
Just no money
They grow their sustenance
From their land
And fish their delicacies
From the sea
They grow their children with courage
So they skinny but strong
They find their merriment
In my meagre
Remote and hardly found
Of civilisation
But it is clear to see
They are rich
In wanting but little
But a few kind deeds
As for myself
From all this I see
That I am
But a poor greed filled realisation
Canto 8: The orphans
Orphan
Perhaps no longer
Of loneliness
Or of despondent company
Orphan
Together
In this place of father
Less foundlings akin to loss
Orphan
Although
Content and surviving
Still courageously fighting
Orphan
But with chance
And fed of plain smiles
Till almost ordinary
Orphan
Of opportunity
In a place where
Tragedy appears easily
Orphan
And those unanswered for
With friends or means
Are rarely cared for
Orphan
But orphans here, perhaps no longer
Now blessed with sincere parents
Of Togetherness and Opportunity
Canto 9: The volunteer
Uncle Jamil
Who shared my surname
And let me accompany him
To share his passion
And to learn of his home village’s
Plight, of its sicknesses, of its strife, of its
Drowning swim beneath oft flooded plains
Of its need of compassion
A man who knew families and dwellings
Of almost every woman
And man of Dirai that we met
A very strange sort of man
Not a politician or
A powerful merchant with an interest
But a volunteer like me
Volunteering his life
A leader leading
Little projects of great effect
With his other willing bodies
Of kind dedication
In this a small district
Where not enough is done
For people and their lives
To bequest satisfaction
Dr Jamil
Who shared his time
Consideration and considerable wisdom
With me an understated boy
He hardly knew
But was somehow impressed upon
And somehow duty bound to
As I reciprocated beholden
To his and new friends care
Having gone there a stranger
But now in an uncles village
With his shared duty
Canto 10: Able
So here I was now
Suddenly able
Having once been commanded
By inability
I had had to endeavour with a language
I that I thought I had known well enough
I had laboured with situations
I thought I had capacity to cope with
I had struggled with troubled emotion
For very long now
I got myself used to being away
From what I had known
It is hard to be sure why
Now I was able
Maybe from nothing more than
Overcoming and moving on from shock
Now each day was far easier
Maybe from learning how
To face disorientation
And to not retreat
Perhaps beholden
Maybe duty bound
Honouring commitment
And doing so
By feigning control till I believed it also
Or maybe feeling an impact
Of kindness
Upon kind needing faces
But definitely
From a genuine enchantment
With these simple but complicated
Situations which these
People lived in
Did somehow manage
To survive in
While our able smiles bought
Some succour from struggle
So here I was now
Suddenly able
Having once been commanded
By inability
Canto 11: My reflection
I had gone to add the world of
Valuable experience to my repertoire
Facetious to its challenges
Naïve to its potential on me
I had gone for use of vacant time
But with noble intention
With will and wish
To learn the trade of benefaction
And now I knew
That it was certainly a trade
An unfair trade indeed
Having gained more than given
And now I was content
In my new cliché
Of humble findings
Of appreciation
Of gratitude for my situation
For my opportunity
And for my parents
And their resolutions of me
Canto 12: Immersed
To be immersed
Is perhaps to be unable to flee
Or perhaps to be a seed planted
In harsh earth
Unakin to ease
And to need to grow from there
Withstanding tempestuous conditions
Withstanding worldly derisions
And from overwhelming challenge
Thirsting experience
And to spurt those
Novel shoots of promise
From newly gained wisdom
From newly gained appreciation
To become versed from
Overbearing engulfing situations
Is perhaps to be immersed
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