A room of one's own

Having lived here for a year now, I can safely say that one of the best things about living in Parbatipur is having my own flat.. I mean, sure, I’ve had my own room before, but this doesn’t have quite the same potential for dancing around in one’s underwear, say, or being a ginormous slob and not cleaning up after myself for days at a time (you can make a mess in one room, then close the door and pretend it doesn’t exist! Magic. Until the ants force you back in to straighten things out, that is). So it has been with great pleasure that I have discovered, like so many before me, the joys of living solo.

However, as in so many things, the Bangladeshi context is filled with idiosyncrasies and surprises. I’ve written a lot already about how the concepts of privacy and personal space are understood rather differently here. Privacy, for instance, does not cover things like bowel movements or intimate medical conditions, although it does apply to ankles and décolletage (if you’re a woman, of course). Personal space does not apply to one’s home in any sense, and really only begins a few inches from your body if people are feeling really interested in you.

I’ve become accustomed, consequently, to being barged aside the moment I open the front door, and standing idly by as whoever has come a-calling gives their brother’s wife’s sister’s son’s daughter a grand tour of my home – which naturally will include a running commentary on me and my life and all the hilarious things I’ve ever done (forgetting my purse when going to the bazaar, getting to the bottom of my stairs before realizing I’m not wearing an orna, leaving a bag of spinach outside my door all night because that’s where I put it down when opening the door, etc, etc).

Despite what I think is my enormous flexibility and adaptability in the face of what some might term an assault (not me though), things have stepped up a level of late: last week, my good friend Lily actually broke her way into my flat in her eagerness to see me.

I hadn’t been feeling well for a few days, so had decided to ignore the knocking. I knew it’d be one of my neighbours, and I couldn’t be bothered to make small talk about our respective lunches, so decided this was as good a time as any to reassert some boundaries (something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Seriously, jumping up from whatever I’m doing every five minutes to talk about the weather or dinner, or to be force fed misti has been getting to me a bit recently). However, this grand plan was to be in vain.

I sat on my bed, valiantly trying to read my book as the knocking persisted for ten solid minutes. And it wasn’t a continuous, regular sound that might easily fade into the background. Oh no! There was some straight forward knocking, a lot of serious-sounding thumping, and even a bit of rattling thrown in for variety. My patience began to wear thin. I was just fixing to march over, throw open the door and demand to know what imminent disaster necessitated this barrage in perfectly fluent Bangla (yeah, ok, maybe not the last part), when I heard the familiar clatter of the bolt dropping on my door.

Peering rather apprehensively around my bedroom door, I saw Lily framed in the doorway, glaring at me. What was I doing, she demanded to know, that meant I couldn’t answer the door? Furiously, I mumbled something about taking a bath. Sadly, this brilliant piece of subterfuge didn’t seem to take her in, perhaps because I was standing there fully dressed, book in hand. Anyway. It transpired that the house was not in fact burning down, and no-one was in dire need of any assistance that an unskilled bideshi might be able to offer. No. The big emergency was cake. Lily and Tarra were making cake, and I simply had to go and partake. Sighing in defeat, I threw on an orna and sloped after Lily.

As perturbed as I was by this incident, I have decided to press ahead with this reassertion of boundaries thing, and now only answer the door if I’m not in the middle of doing something else fairly urgent. Slowly, I think the message is getting through, and the knocking is getting less persistent. However, I don’t think anyone quite understands why I’m not answering: I’ve caught wind of several speculative conversations that there’s a problem with my hearing, and perhaps I should get my door bell fixed (hell, no!).

On a related point, now that I have my own place to take pride in, I’m becoming somewhat house proud. One of the things I’m enjoying about this is inviting people to tea, and trying to return (on a small scale) the staggering hospitality that I’ve been shown here. Adjusting to being a host in Bangladesh is proving to be a little challenging, unfortunately. For instance, I’ve never been able to get used to the practice that the host does not eat with the guests – rather as a guest, you are waited upon and watched as you eat. When it’s my turn to be host, I’m not particularly good at doing that: when other people are eating cake, I want to eat cake too!

But this is not the biggest challenge, however. The biggest challenge has been getting used to my guests throwing their food waste onto various inappropriate surfaces (the floor, the table, the work surfaces in the kitchen, all spring to mind). I know that it’s a different culture, I know that nothing is meant by it, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to shriek, in a manner rather reminiscent of a harpy, “what the hell are you doing?” or: “there’s a bin right there!”