Impressions of Dhaka

Traffic and webs of wires in Old Dhaka, common sights across all of Dhaka

For my second blog entry, I’ll be trying my best to describe some impressions of Dhaka, now a month and a half in (sorry for the wait—it’s been a wild and exciting time at work!).

Every time I think I have begun to wrap my head around this place, it never fails to surprise me in new ways. Dhaka is a city of sensory overload and over-stimulation, where sights, sounds, tastes and smells are all at their most extreme and most vibrant. Signs and walls, trucks carrying too many things or too many people, buses scarred from passing and scratching against CNGs (auto rickshaws) and vans, and rickshaws (an omnipresent and crucial part of Dhaka culture) are all painted with vibrant and beautiful Bengali script—making Dhaka probably the most photogenic, easy-to-photograph place I’ve ever been. In terms of sounds, there are absolutely no road rules, so drivers and bikers signal here through constant honking, a sound which my ears have gradually become used to as my daily white noise. Taste-wise, Bangladeshis, as a friend described, pack as much flavor—sweet, spicy, salty, sour—into their food as possible, embodied through the delicious and immediately filling fuchka (fried, hollow shells which you fill to the brim with sauce, chutney and chickpeas) and biryani that are served across Dhaka’s restaurants and street stalls.

Dhaka is also a place where contradictions collide and co-exist. For example, the city is a confounding mix of old and new, as I wake up every morning (sometimes too early at 6-7am) to the sounds of both my neighborhood rooster crowing and the construction scene outside my window, where workers are building, often with basic tools like hammers and baskets of concrete, the newest shiny residential high rise in the booming Banani area. While there is a growing grocery store and e-grocery delivery scene here, bazaars and markets where you haggle—and where I try not to get scammed with a bideshi (foreigner) price—are still ubiquitous and part of everyday shopping.

The area near Banani (my neighborhood's) market, where I run errands and do my grocery shopping. Banani is one of the most developed areas of town, where sidewalks are somewhat existent

Beyond these daily experiences and sensations, at a macro level, I came knowing that Dhaka does not have the greatest reputation to the outside world. In a ranking of least livable cities in the world by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, Dhaka ranked #3, behind Lagos, Nigeria and in front of Tripoli, Libya. All rankings, though, are totally arbitrary depending on the criteria selected and the weight placed on each, so a local friend and I were discussing and unpacking why Dhaka might have been ranked so highly on this list.

Some potentially explanatory statistics: Dhaka has a population of 9 million people—New York’s population—jammed into a city with ~40% of New York’s area, without any major public transportation system (there’s only a metro under construction which is expected to be completed in 2023; however, some locals are skeptical it will ever be completed due to mismanagement). This population density makes for some of the world’s worst traffic jams; the average traffic speed in Dhaka is 7 kmph, just above walking speed. In Bangladesh, 97% of health care expenditures are paid out-of-pocket as private expenses (meaning an overwhelming majority of the population is uninsured), and about 50% of people are unbanked and lack a mobile money account. At times, it’s mind-boggling that Dhaka and Bangladesh more broadly can function at such scale, density and breathless pace of growth, and there’s a feeling that it can barely keep up with itself.

Yet, these statistics and rankings fail to illustrate the whole picture. First, for all the challenges of this city, I have never been in a place with so much kindness and generosity from its people. I’ve been welcomed into homes and occasions, shown around various corners of the city and outside Dhaka, and helped by random people to bargain with rickshaw drivers, all while I can barely eke out enough Bangla to say bujhi na (“I don’t understand”). Additionally, Bangladesh has an energy that must be admired and respected. The sights, sounds and smells of Dhaka are those of both struggle and big dreams. People here are hustling, from the young tech entrepreneurs and risk-takers in the nascent start-up scene to the rickshaw driver whose posture is as straight as a stick from his round-the-clock peddling.

One example of classic Bangladeshi kindness: this man, who shows tourists around the peaceful Armenian church in the middle of Old Dhaka, gave me a postcard of the church as memorabilia, and then proceeded to help us hire a cart to carry three bideshis (foreigners) and our guide through the streets of Old Dhaka. He also had the most tolerant and open view of religion, as a Hindi watching over a Christian church ("we all worship God," he said!).

It’s not easy to live here, but people are finding their directions, their livelihoods, their pace and their retreats in the middle of it all. I am endlessly impressed and astonished by both their grit and their carefree attitude (best captured by the commonly used Arabic expression Inshallah—“God willing”—or by my friends’ relaxed exclamations of “It’ll be fine” while our boat or car is sputtering black fumes), which come hand in hand to survive in such a place.

While Dhaka is a city that may sometimes require you to sleep in all weekend to recover from a hectic week and long commutes, there’s a life and earnestness in all of this chaos, where people are trying to make everything work and to live a better life in such a rapidly shifting environment. It’ll be exciting to see where Bangladesh is headed in the next few years—and even in the next few months while I’m here—and it’ll definitely be a place for the world to pay attention to.

And, because Dhaka has been raining for almost two weeks straight as it transitions into one of its autumn seasons (Bangladesh has six seasons!), here's a tune that I've been listening to on repeat: