the concert for bangladesh

a bhen with ben, louisa and tc

and finally i am in my bunk bed listening to birdsongs and gheckos. its a friday, and i spent half of it in a cha shop having about 6 cups of tea and samosas and lunch and discussing SE asia. inspite of the rain, i am determined to find postcards/something to mail today.

but before that, its time to recount the events of the last few days.

sunday morning, we load up the lumber for the playground, our supplies of biscuits, fruit and toilet paper and we take a 45 minute "van/bhen" ride to rasulpur bazar.


its a quiet little sleepy village with a row of shops (fondly called the strip mall), most of which were almost always closed! after a quick tour of the cyclone shelter, where we will be staying, and the pond, where we will be bathing, and the cha-shop where we will be drinking a lot of tea, we start work for the day.

at 5, we have an introductions/qa session with the village folks in the school yard. i get an applause because i am indian!

as evening sets in, from the best seats in the house (elevated cyclone shelter), we watch the village men play volleyball and children frisbee and badminton till dark.

after dinner and after setting up our mosquito nets on the terrace, we decide to take a stroll in the village bazar. the first stop is a cha-shop, where we introduce ourselves again at the insistence of everyone around us. after several such introductions, we return to our terrace to take in the quiet of the village.

it turns out to be a wonderful place to sleep or to lie awake and do star-gazing, as i discover later. at about 2 in the morning, a woman, who lives below the shelter, starts talking loudly to herself. gradually, the monologue turn into a mournful wail. surreal, and very disturbing- a cry in the middle of a dark night perhaps remembering lost souls. i lie awake in my bed the entire night, wishing i could understand her.
the next morning, zameel, our translator, tells us that she mourns the loss of her family in the cyclone.

the village is a delight to work in, the community helps in every way possible, the cha-shop is right on our way back home. every two hours i go for 2 cups of tea.

every day i have someone come up to me to tell me how glad they are to have me there and that i am their "most favorite" because i am one of them. kids call me aapa (big sister), adults call me sister. i am in shock- i wasn't sure how a brown woman planing wood and hammering nails and painting would be received in a muslim country and the response has moved me.

tonight, its movie night at the theatre that we discovered the previous night. its a small room (15'X 20'X 5'), with 2 benches against the walls and planks on the floor to squat. there were about 50 of us in that room watching a bangla movie on about a 28" tv. we take in the cigarette smoke and heat for about 45 minutes before heading back.


the next day- our third- its long and tiring. in the evening, we go for our usual tea routine. our tea-break turns into a face-off- with bohemian rhapsody, followed by bangla songs, performed by ben on our side and amazing singers from the village, on theirs! after 2 hours of singing songs we don't know the words to, we have another great evening under the stars.

our last day is a half-day, to be followed by hand-painting by the school kids and then opening of the playground. the eight of us do the customary 5 minutes of posing on the playground, before we get down to leading bewildered kids to put their handprints (for "hands-on") on the playground. and then it was open to all..

it was an emotionally charged one hour, to say the least. we sit on the sidelines and watch as 12 kids jump on the tire swing, 15 on a see-saw/teeter-totter, an endless lines form for the swings, the rope bridge is a trampoline.

it is impossible to capture the joy, the laughter, those smiles ( but i try, nevertheless) a little girl walks up to me to say "thank you" and walks away.
someone walks up to me and offers to take us to the sunderbans. another invites us to play volleyball, and yet another invites us for another song competition in the evening.

after a wonderful game of volleyball with the locals, we retire to have a bath followed by dinner. it has been an incredibly moving day- little did we know what is going to follow this!

after a brief post-dinner rest, we head to the cha-shop as promised. the locals wait patiently, for us to finish and then lead us to the center of the village.

the entire village has come together, including the women and children. there are about 300 of them.. there is a stringed instrument, singers- adults and children on floor mats. they have been waiting for us for an hour, if only we knew. we are made to sit on a bench, tea is served and the program begins.

there are beautiful bangla songs, some hindi songs. the audience requests a hindi song and i oblige- with about 5 minutes of kal ho na ho- forgetting the first verse after 2 lines :) all of us sing amazing grace and then ben, always the entertainer steps up to do a funny song and dance routine. more joy, more laughter, more smiles ..

the 2 hour program ends with another hindi song and an emotional farewell speech and all of us too speechless to say anything.