My Trip to Mymensingh: Unvarnished

I really didn't want to go to Mymensingh.

That said, I realize that I was more than just a little bit grumpy with my family before I left.

I took a motorized scooter (CNG) to the bus station in Dhaka and it gave out at the last big intersection before arriving. We sat there . . . until the "green light" and then he pushed us through to the other side and jiggled some wires. Finally he got it started and drove me the last 100 meters to the bus stand. I wasn't about to walk, it was already 1000 degrees centigrade and it was yet morning. He didn't have the proper change so I hit him (okay, I just thought about it) and eventually a gracious (I only see the grace in retrospect) passerby shelled out 5 tens for his 50 and I was off.

I was proceeding to the busy ticket counter when a bus attendant whisked me onto the bus and told me there were seats available. I knew what that meant. Only the least desirable of seats were available. I weighed the option of spending 10-15 sultry minutes waiting in a gaggle of people or getting the show on the road in a less than desirable seat. I chose the latter and squirmed my way to the back of the bus to the second-to-last seat on the bus. I resigned myself to a bumpy ride and settled into my window seat after inconveniencing the aisle passenger. After sardining my way in there, I sat down and placed my monolithic backpack on my lap. Both of my legs promptly went to sleep without the rest of me.

I know that I have attachments to stuff and that as much as I would like to deny the material, it is a very big part of my identity. Am I materialistic? Well, let's look at the contents of my bag. First and heaviest, my laptop. It is a big part of my job and boy am I glad it is because it can also be a big fat pacifier. It is my gateway to Facebook which is how I keep in touch with a lot of my friends. It's got The Office, and Chuck on it which bring about necessary and unnecessary diversion and distraction from my current reality. The laptop is also a status symbol, whether I like it or not (I don't let myself think that I do). All said it can create a distance that I don't like. The same is true of the second heaviest item, my camera. I have a sweet little Canan S5 IS which I use a lot for my job. It is not as bulky as an SLR would be (I could spend some time drooling over the camera I really want) but bulky enough that I would like to kick myself for not taking any pictures if ever I lug it somewhere and don't use it. Along with the camera, I carry two extra sets of rechargeable AA batteries just in case. Of course they've got a lot of weight for their size. After my camera there are several more categories of things that I have in my bag; food, books and electronic paraphernalia.
The first book is a book of Sudoku. I can do the 1 and 2 star puzzles without a glitch. I can do most of the 3 stars without a glitch except for one that confounded me for an hour on the bus ride. I think I have finished one 4 star and no 5 star ones. What does it really mean? What does it profit a man? I like to think it keeps my brain sharp and helps me to develop my logic skills. That said, I think some of the most important things I've learned in life have had little to do with logic. Secondly, I have a captivating Russian Detective Novel. Okay, it's not written in Russian (that would be marginally more cool). I finished it on the bus and pronounce it a good read (for someone like me). You can check it out on my Good Reads update on Facebook. Finally, I am reading a book called Soul Making by Alan Jones. It is good in the sense that it is putting me through the wringer on many levels and validating my thirst for God and my journey in and towards "him". It is much about being and it doesn't have the twelve steps that you find in so many "self-help" books. (How can we help ourselves if we don't know ourselves? And if we truly know ourselves would we come to the realization that we really can't help ourselves?)
Now for the food; A bunch of IKO biscuits, Peach iced tea mix, mini rice cakes peanut butter flavored from where else but the good ole U. S. of A., a Fiber One bar stolen from my wife's stash (she would have most probably given it to me). I do realize that most Americans do not use the construct "most probably" but it is not incorrect (I do "need" to be "right" sometimes). I digress.
Electronic paraphernalia; a Logitech Trackball to accompany my computer, a necessity for forays into Illustrator and handy for Photoshop, a non-Ipod (a Mepod) with a Grisham audio book on it, an external hard-drive for photos and a headphone microphone gizmo for skyping (I never Skype on trips although it is not a bad idea)

Needless to say, my legs had fallen asleep with the sheer weight and magnitude of my earthly possessions. I did finally arrive in Mymensingh. Now part of the reason I had gone to Mymensingh was to celebrate the Bengali New Year which involves eating day old rice, dried fish, and mashed veggies along with the not-to-be-forgotten national fish, ilish. It also involves dressing in something other than a blue sweaty t-shirt. I decided that I would buy myself a punjabi before goig to the office and the party. After visiting several shops, I found a punjabi that was bright orange and climbed into a tiny dressing cubicle and being quite sweaty I peeled it on. It didn't help that it was a size too small. I half-heartedly asked if they had an extra large and when they did not I decided to buy the one I had on. I figured that if I had tried to take it off, it might have torn anyway. So I was off to the party where a few people commented on my punjabi, while most of them asked where my family was and one person, seeing my punjabi asked what I had bought my wife. Ha. I ate half of the national fish that I was served and twice as much alu bhorta than I was served along with many helpings of rice and a few dollops of dried fish curry. The bhorta set me on fire. I was sweating and crying and red as a beet. One of those kinds of hot that you don't feel till you stop eating . . . and so you keep eating. My stomach is still suffering although I can't decide if it is still from that or from what came later.

After work was done I was invited to join my co-worker on a trip to the New Year's Mela. I was not expecting what I found. There were tens of thousands of people lining the road, most of them wearing red, white and less frequently orange. Both sides of the road were packed with vendors selling sweets, toys, clay items and tchotchkes. The middle of the road was teeming with people and hawkers. There was no way you could decide which way you were going to go. Those decisions were made for us. Of course, I had to try the street food beginning with some homemade potato chips (yum), followed by some fuschkas which were okayish, the jhal chanachur more than made up for the mediocre fuschkas and then I washed it all down with a cup of lemon ginger tea. I called it my supper. Now, my stomach was already toasty from my lunch so I didn't think it could hurt anything to add a few layers on top.

I finally got to bed in time for the power to go off. I took a couple of showers and then decided to watch a movie. It ended up being a documentary about four guys who were nuts about Scrabble and went to the big tournament and one of them won. I found it hilarious, it makes me want to go out and watch the documentary about Boggle. Hee. I finally did get to sleep after chowing down on my mini rice cakes and Snyders Honey Mustard Pretzel Bits, and guzzling an inordinate amount of water. I guess I've had healthier suppers in my time. Oh yeah, I also did my hundred situps back to back instead of dividing them up on either end of the day. Another shower and I hit the hay.

My goal after waking was to get all of my work done by noon and head home. I started my day by rounding up all of my coffee making paraphanelia and dumping some Bon Cafe into the French Press and making myself a few cups to drink while I did push-ups, read my deep book, and pretended to think deep thoughts (you know that there is something seriously messed up when you are still pretending when you are all alone) I finally got connected to the wireless after a tech call to Dhaka. Upon checking Marita's Facebook status, I discovered that Pruitt was at home sick for the day. I was served a nice and spicy breakfast of a momlet with green chilis on toast. I tried printing on tracing paper for some screenprinting and the printer ate about four sheets and crumpled them. I tried doing a simple task in Photoshop on a colleagues computer and I had to bite my fingers to keep from screaming naughty words when his Ctrl Key did not work. What do you mean the Ctrl Key doesn't work? Is not Photoshop built around the Ctrl Key? Yes THE Ctrl key, the one on the left side (the right one didn't work either by the by). Another call to tech support. That issue never actually got resolved and I managed to accomplish the task by venturing into the menu bar (what a snob). I eventually did get enough of my work done that I felt that I could leave at about 1:00pm.

I walked out of the office into the hot sun and took the short walk around the corner to Rom III a Chinese-Bengali restaurant. I ordered a piece of nan, an order of veggies and a faluda minus the ice. They hadn't seen me for a while and told me as much. As usual they tried to get me to order meat but I declined (I figured correctly that I would get meat at home sweet home in the evening). I was going to change into a comfy blue t-shirt in the restaurant but I forgot. After eating I hailed a ricksha and had it take me to the bus station. At the bus station, I was tempted and gave in to the temptation of taking the air-conditioned bus. This meant that I couldn't leave "right now" but I thought the 20 minute wait sitting under a sweltering tin roof was worth it. I'd appreciate it that much more. After sitting down for about 5 seconds a man came and sat down beside me and started up a conversation. He turned out to be an engineer that had worked for the past six years in the ship yards in Singapore. He was built like he had worked the last six years in a ship-yard too. He'd only been home for three days after being gone for all those years and he was already looking for a job. He thought that he might go to Russia or Australia. He asked if my organization was hiring engineers and I took his number. Finally after semi-exhausting our conversation we got on the bus and amazing coincidence, we had seats beside each other. I started getting ready to sleep and he got a phone call and all of the sudden he said he wasn't going to go after all and he got down from the bus. I imagine I'll get a call from him soon. Eventually his seat was taken by someone else and we took off not more than 15 minutes late. The AC did work fortunately, only my back was sweating. The thing about AC buses is that there is a movie screen that plays loud Hindi movies. I always seem to forget this detail. So in the midst of the noise of honking and Hindi merriment I proceeded to doze, and plod my way through a few Sudoku puzzles while a young couple in the seat across from me displayed unusual amounts of affection one to the other. I then listened on my Mepod, to audio Grisham. I had fallen asleep the last time I listened to it so I backwarded it until I was sure I had heard some of it before. I must have re-listened to three chapters. I guess I'll be more ready for the test. Usually he has me hooked by the third chapter, but I'm on the seventh and it seems tedious. We finally got into the Dhaka traffic and made it to Mohakhali where I got a CNG and didn't even bargain because I was so close to home sweet home.

I come to the end of this craziness and realize that I left out some juicy details, such as the substance of the work I did get done while I was in Mymensingh, the big lady with a beard, the 10 new workers in one of our new programs, visiting the new job creation training center, the trying on of wrap-around skirts (don't ask), a visit to a silversmith . . .

Needless to say, now that I have put a lot of this into words I see how incredibly rich my life is and how much I take for granted (no I am not going to write a moral to my trip).

It is now 11:56 pm and time for 50 more push-ups, a quick game of Bejeweled and to bed I go, oddly weary for some reason and with a tummy that is still acting funny.

Now all I need to do is add some photos

Oops! Sorry . . . no photos.