Night and Day

Five or six kilometers north of the sprawling apartment blocks extending into the horizon in every direction from the vantage point of my 15^th story apartment in central Dhaka are the gated communities of Gulshan, Banani and Baridhara. I’ve spent a good deal of time in each of these three neighbourhoods in northern Dhaka over the last few weeks, and each time I visit I can’t help being struck by the new sights I see. The socio-economic and esthetic contrasts between Verdun and Westmount in Montreal or between East Hastings and Shaughnessy in Vancouver can also be quite striking, both for visitors as well as residents of either city, but they are comparisons that still can’t capture the depth of the contrast between cramped and crumbling old Dhaka (which begins just south of my neighbourhood) with its quickly expanding and shiny new northern neighbours.

The best way to explore these diplomat-friendly communities is to find a rickshaw driver who isn’t quite sure where he’s going (despite what he tells you); this way you’ll get to your destination eventually but will surely be unintentionally exposed to a number of interesting, if not jaw-dropping, new sights along the way.

The ambassadors’ residences are the easiest ones to spot: a bronze plaque engraved with the country of origin of the resident, usually in English and the language used by that particular country, is placed prominently on the brick or cement wall beside the massive iron gate, and behind the guard post stationed nearby is a two to three story home that usually appears uncomfortable in its own skin. It’s as if the house knows it should be amongst the red-brick mansions of upper Westmount, the Tudor houses of Shaughnessy, or even amongst the mega-projects of Dubai instead of here in Dhaka, where a taxi driver or rickshaw puller might be the one peeing against the side of its security wall instead of a purebred German Shepherd or Golden Retriever.

The deeper into each neighbourhood you go - that is, the farther away from the main road, Gulshan Avenue, that runs north-south through the city - the more elaborate the garrisoned estates become. On my way to Baridhara for rehearsal last week I spotted a white, three-story mansion with a beautifully manicured front garden and tall roman columns outside its front door. I could only speculate as to its owner, possibly an American or Japanese diplomat, but I knew it wasn’t the home of my own High Commissioner.

He and his family live in large, discrete (typically Canadian), and distinctly tropical two-story home within walking distance of the Canadian Club on Gulshan Avenue, which disappears into the palm trees occupying most of its front yard behind a three-meter high wall. Unfortunately, however, I was headed in the opposite direction from the Romanesque palace and didn’t have the opportunity to inspect it at close range, but it certainly made me think that returning to embark on an ‘Estates of Northern Dhaka’ photo tour would be a great way to spend a Friday afternoon.

Since the socio-economic extremes of Bangladesh characterized by the contrasts between these neighbourhoods have already consumed a significant amount of space in this journal, I’m not going to talk about the apparent injustice of it all (both from the selfish perspective that my fellow countrymen are living much, much larger than me, and from the imagined perspective of a resident of a Dhaka shantytown who happened to wander into the foreigner-dominated community). Instead, given the uncharacteristically large amount of shopping I did this week, it would be more appropriate to put aside a search for their root causes and potential solutions, (at least for the hour or two it takes to write this entry), to instead shed some light on another material outcome of the extreme inequality that defines this city.

Let’s look at our options: four-year-old children selling cigarettes in traffic to passengers in air-conditioned four-by-fours; beggars with severe elephantiasis outside of a brand new A&W restaurant; multi-story billboards promoting imported shampoo that costs more than the average Bangladeshi’s weekly salary; and clothing designed for Western tastes that’s produced in factories where wages go unpaid for months at a time and by an industry in which worker-led labour rights demonstrations often erupt into chaos and violence with inevitable fatalities.

I’ll take ‘Textiles’ for 1000, Alex, but in lieu of writing a mini-sequel to No Logo, I’ll take the more shallow and materialist (but still effective) route by talking about the great deals I scored on an impromptu shopping excursion today. [Feel free to click elsewhere or close your browser window at this point, for there isn’t likely to be anything more of substance from here on in…]

We went to Dhanmondi intent on taking a look at a new photography exhibition hosted at the Bangladesh Photography Society off of New Elephant Road, but were unfortunately denied the opportunity by yet another piece of misinformation. Aleema, a newly-arrived Edmontonian volunteering for BRAC - yes, another BRAC intern – was told by one of the event’s organizers that the exhibition would definitely be open today from 2- 8pm, but the locked gate outside the door told us otherwise. Not willing to give up the opportunity awarded to us by successfully meeting up in the right place, (nor wanting to return to our powerless apartment building as our electricity flow was once again re-routed elsewhere) we decided to make our way to Westecs in Gulshan, a twenty minute ride by CNG across town, after being lured into the shopping spirit by the dozens of clothing stores that line New Elephant Road.

Winter has been much cooler than any of us expected, and since Aleema had already bought her required wardrobe of sarees and salwar kameez (one piece dresses), Marc and I could focus on expanding my collection of long-sleeved shirts while benefiting from a woman’s all-important fashion advice at the same time. Westecs is well known amongst expats in Dhaka as the place to find good quality factory over-runs at a fraction of the price we’d pay in recognized clothing stores back home, as most of the clothes are exported to the United States, Canada and Great Britain. In September I picked up two H&M short-sleeved collared shirts for $10 CAD (500 taka), and this time I walked away with one short-sleeved and three long-sleeved collared shirts for far less than the retail price of only one of them in the United States. Two of these shirts – at 295 taka or just under 6$ CAD per piece - came complete with a branded price tag indicating they usually sell for $36 US at Kohl’s, an Illinois-based clothing retailer.

Today’s afternoon of big spending came as a surprise not only because I’m a very infrequent and, let’s say, conservative shopper, but also because I had freed myself from a substantial wad of Taka by ordering a suit from The Raymond Shop, a well-known men’s clothing chain in South Asia with an outlet only a few minutes’ walk away from my apartment building. Once again thanks to cheap labour (though this time with relatively inexpensive imported material, and I stress relatively), I’ll have a personally tailored, navy blue suit with red pinstripes (100% wool or a wool-polly blend) ready for me in the first week of February, all for less than the cost of a suit off the rack at The Bay.

Sitting here in one of my comfortable new shirts, and admiring the three others (of unquestionable style, I might add…) lying on the table beside me, I’m left with one question: in an era of free trade, tight budgets and off-shore outsourcing, is it possible to be both an ethical consumer and a rational one?