It was just an off-hand remark – pretty standard fare amongst such circles. I was sitting with a twenty-something audience member after a performance by our jazz duo BlueNote. The scene: an expat club. Balmy evening air, tinkling glasses, the chatter of people looking forward to the weekend after a busy week at work. To make polite conversation, I asked her how long she’d been here, and whether she was enjoying it? “Oh you know” she replied, “it has its moments. Up days and down days. But it’s also really nice to be able to come in here and escape from Bangladesh.” It may be that she was merely talking about the traffic, or the noise, but people rarely stop to specify. It’s the whole shebang that needs escaping from, it seems.
Once I would have been eye-poppingly outraged by such a comment – the casual contempt it implied, and the automatic (and in this case entirely mistaken) assumption that I as another bideshi (foreigner) would agree without hesitation. But now I just feel weary, and rather saddened by this common sentiment, which echoes with so much missed opportunity. Much as I was when someone asked me recently how long I had to go on my contract. I said something like “Just over a year”, and his spontaneous and utterly sincere response was “Oh, not too bad then”, as if it was Alcatraz, not Dhaka I was describing.
What is it that goes wrong? Why is it that such statements can be heard so easily? Read more here.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:20 am
Don’t be too blue mate, the reverse also happens. So some Bideshi needs to escape from Bangladesh. Is it really so bad? After all, so many of us Deshis also want to escape from the Bidesh where we live. Why else do we spend so much time in these pages?
May 21st, 2007 at 8:44 am
Ah yes, but Deshis needing to escape is slightly different. That’s just a human response - much as I have and had back home, which is probably why I am here. But there’s a difference between escaping occasionally and living a life of permanent escape and denial, linked to total apathy or worse, contempt for where you live.
And wouldn’t you say that when you look at the jobs, the influence and the status of these bideshis, there’s also a power dynamic going on, with echoes of what has happened here historically?
The essence of racism is not so much a negative view of another people, (which is probably hard-wired into us for good survival reasons) but a negative view of another people coupled with real authority and ability to influence their lives.
But hey, maybe I AM taking this all too seriously. Maybe I need a tinkling glass of something. Where was that club again…?
May 21st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Interesting article as usual, Mr Morris.
The worst offenders of this contempt I felt was from British High Commission consular workers in their dealings with applicants for immigration to Bilaat/Blighty. Their barely-disguised contempt for these, mostly, poor and unlettered people was disarming to say the least.
Even more upsetting was seeing how these “consular attitudes” percolated down to the Bangladeshi staff who worked alongside them. These people seemed to be caught up in a morbid desire to out-sneer their English bosses when dealing with people of their own country, in what could only be viewed as a mixture of jealousy, snobbery and condescension. Trully awful.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Andrew
Nice one.
This would be the attidude of 90% of High Commission and Embassy staff and their donor agencies and white NGO colleagues. The 10% that aren’t like that spend all their time indoors out of fear of being associated with the other 90%.
They also escape to Thailand to avoid Bangladesh. They live in fear of going outside the diplomatic zone - i.e. Gulshan.
I know something about that having lived in this world in Bangladesh.
You found it astounding that they assumed you would share their sentiments, being a bideshi.
Well imagine my surprise that I assumed I would sympathise, too. Perhaps they just didn’t notice my ethnicity!
Next time when you’re in the Baga try listening out - you’ll find several strange conversations about the Baga being open to locals and how this isn’t right. They’re espeically worried about the influx of British Asians who can use the club - with their British credentials but it seems they still think Britain is all white.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Sid and Tahir
You’re right - and of course the High Commission is the supreme example of attitude plus power. But yes, your depiction of how they assumed you would also join in is pretty gobsmacking. One of the joys of these conversations you hear around is that they take zero account of the presence of Bangladeshis within hearing range.
I did listen into many of the discussions in the BAGHA. The result? I left. Now I just take my music group there and happily relieve them of their money.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Tahir
Oh god, that’s just so colonial but so not surprising. I went to the Bagha once but found it to be full of boring one-dimenional tossers who obviously bore more than a little malice towards the natives, and blaming the Bangali staff for finding themselves in “Hardship Country”.
Half expected someone to shout out “Bearer! I want some ice in my gin. Jaldi Kurro!”
May 21st, 2007 at 4:26 pm
i once knew a UK based bengali guy guy who spent two years working for a british company in dhaka. he had an apartment in gulshan and never left the gulshan-baridhara zone. he had honestly never been to the national museum, or DU campus. he said he didnt really go to “those places”. he vaguely remembered going to dhanmondi.
what irritated the heck out of me, was the fact that this guy was so damn clueless about his classist attitude. he thought he might get into the foreign service because he could see himself representing bangladeshis the way it “should” be done. he doesnt read bangla, cant name any bangla writers, poets, songs — heck knows nothing about bangladesh’s geography — but he wants to represent bangladesh to the foreigners that he hangs out with at the BAGHA club.
ki ar bolbo.
-shahpar
May 21st, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Isn’t the case is really different in india?
But why? is that education?
or their command over English Language? where you see a mixed breed of foreign and locals everywhere? or the adaptation to culuture?
Is there anthing to learn from our Indians counter part?
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:19 am
Hi Andrew,
I like your article but I think you’re being a bit over-reactionary.
Bangladesh is a very difficult place to live, for Bangladeshi people, and is especially difficult if you’re from a very different culture and background. I don’t think it’s fair to intimate that people are suffering from some kind of colonial hangover when they admit that they find things hard here.
Of course you’re right that the best thing about Bangladesh is the spirit, and the people, but one could counter that most countries have great people in with great spirit, but also don’t have such testing weather, have a constant power supply etc…
I agree that it’s a real shame that most expat workers never venture out of an artificial world surrounded by tinted windows and guarded entrances in Gulshan. It always makes us VSO volunteers laugh to receive security advice ‘don’t leave the Gulshan area’ - what if you don’t even live in the Gulshan area?
But I wouldn’t, to be honest, describe friends who are ‘a photographer, a journalist, an architect, a lecturer, a writer and a musician, all with wide experience of the world’, as typical Bangladeshis either.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:09 am
… and the search for the typical, average Bangladeshi continues…
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:54 am
Sowula
Good points, especially about Gulshan.
But I don’t recall saying that my friends were “typically” Bangladeshi, (although that set of backgrounds is probably fairly representative of the readers for whom I write in SWM). But in case you think they all come from one sector of society, writers, lecturers, journalists and photographers are not well paid here - none of my friends who do those jobs belong to the Baridhara elite. They’re just open-minded people, willing to share.
Anyway, if I’m honest, my education and background probably preclude me from being close friends with “typical Brits” too, if by that you mean people who like a natter down the pub, get pissed on a weekend, holiday on the beach in Spain and hate the French. As AsifY suggests, the search for the typical citizen of any country is a chimera.
All I was saying is that it is possible to meet Bangladeshis, full stop. And that in itself would be a first step for many of the expats I meet.
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:41 am
Perhaps this is the power differential you were aware of Andrew: that the British have had the power to shape their own “typical” types over centuries, while Bangalis/Bangladeshis have had stereotypes thrust onto them. The popular stereotypes at least!
Just my own speculations on the matter after a sleepless night. Thought-provoking piece!
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
And there are 140 million of “typical Bangladeshis”… whose votes ultimately decide things (thank God!)
But good points you raise Andrew. Thanks.