Dhaka, probably being my only subject of blogging in these first days. This city is so enormous that I found no way to escape it. Orhan Pamuk, Turkish Nobel prize winner novelist, said, The story of his life is the story of Istanbul, his own city. May be, this is going to be true for me as well. If you google “Dhaka” , you will find political crisis ( more like vendettas), absurdly unplanned buildings, more absurd traffic and most absurd population ! But for the dwellers, its their home, where the heart is… I started my blog singing the rhythm of rain in my city, today going to tell the stories of lone rangers…
As other big cities, streets here, never sleep. Thousands of cars, rickshaws, million of people rush every second in this city.. As night is darker they go home, besides the hardworking bus, truck, lorry workers distributing loads of goods to the city or the hijackers….I am talking about the city’s own dwellers, may be he is a multibillionere, may be she is a call girl… may be its a highrise, may be its a shack, may be its a footpath polythene home, but they walk there, give a smile to fellows, sleep for another morning…A rickshaw puller with half kilo rice, two potatoes, one onion walks to his slum home….the sweaty figure dreams of making some money, buy a tiny piece of land in his village…this dream make him live in this wretched city…
Here are people having no home, even not a polythene one, never actually tend to have them or want to have them…Its their tendency to eat, or not eat, sleep or not sleep…some of them are damn addicts…heroin or others…some act like insane, which they are not….Along with their unfortunate children, some become beggar, or religious “Baba”s, which they are not also, but they cover up the lone rangers…
The lone rangers of our city, are “who, no one knows” . I have seen a man, sitting, beside a road for years after years. When was little, was afraid to ask, why are you sitting all the time? couldn’t. When I could, knew he was cripple. But he never begged, I gave him some clothes, for the first time, he received, on the second time, refused! When its too cold, i think, how he survives? Check, if he is dead..but no, this old man survives each winter, each summer…sometimes I think what he eats? But I know there is a nocturnal cycle in it…when its night, deep deep night, no angel comes down from the sky…The lone rangers do..They among themselves have a business, what we never dealt with..They have society, law of their own…the street law!
Once I found one above everything of this, at Dhaka University campus..He also refused everything, but not in a sane way…when I looked into his eyes, I was petrified..His eyes were blank..no, not like the heroin addict ones…different..very educated ones with deep despair in them…Nothing could pacify him, nothing ! Money, food, love, family, he was above everything..laid all day all night by the street, smelled only of piss…I prayed to Allah, please have mercy on him, please bestow DEATH upon him..The day he died, I didn’t come closer, Authority took off the corpse, I cried in distance..
I wanted to save him, tried to talk to him, wanted to know, why? what? what was that made your life so worthless? so meaningless? why you people don’t let us to enter in your lives? Why are you so alone? Life’s not that fragile! or have you found something spiritual? is this so precious that you have to protect by life? or you are just a Schizophrenic? I find myself shaken inside… Everyday we are trying to make ourselves more intact, more hard, more inert.. what if one day I become one of them? above everything else, or beyond everything else…Just another lone ranger!
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stories of my street 
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