Motorcyling (17/02/09)

In another demonstration of the highs and lows of Bangladesh, since arriving back in Parbatipur, I’ve had one great week of high-powered action followed by a few days of pinioning self-doubt. In a bid to cope with my latest spasm of uncertainty, I decided to join some colleagues on a monitoring field visit.

Now let’s be absolutely clear: when the decision to go on said field visit is made five minutes before leaving, chiefly because the senior management is all but absent that day, little reflection on the aims and objectives of the visit is possible; little consideration is given to how said visit ties into one’s placement goals; and the question of whether it is an effective use of resources and time simply does not arise. No: I saw a chance to escape and I jumped at it, in a manner some might term hysterical.

Brushing off a nagging sense of guilt at my rashness, I was soon speeding out of town on the back of my friend Mahabub’s motorbike, with Kalam-bhai and Sarah-di, (the project coordinator and my GBK counterpart, respectively) just ahead of us. The moment the lushness of the ripening paddy enveloped us, I knew I’d made the right decision (for my mental health, if not for my work).

There’s something magical about gliding through the countryside on the back of a motorbike. Gliding isn’t generally a word to be associated with transport in Bangladesh: the roads are so rutted and the available modes of transportation so lacking in suspension that an altogether more vigorous word is necessary. On this day, however, I’d decided to try riding side saddle for the first time. (All the women here ride sideways – it’s more culturally acceptable – but before today I’ve been unable to master this complicated art.) Although I spent most of the first hour gripping the seat so hard I lost feeling in my fingers, and raging against the injustice of expecting women to ride in this terribly dangerous manner, gradually I began to enjoy the feeling of supreme elegance that comes with riding this way.

For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of trying this, I’ll try to explain how this works: You sit sideways on the motorbike’s seat, with your knees pointing forwards at an angle, and there’s usually a little ledge to put your feet on (although for bideshi feet, it’s really not big enough). With your left hand, you hold onto the bar on the back of the bike, and with your right, you grip seat behind you. Of course, the pros dispense with this holding on malarkey, and instead use their hands to gesticulate in heated conversations, phone friends, fix their hair, or hold onto multiple small children. Personally, although I once or twice released my right hand to rearrange my orna (scarf that covers the chest and shoulders, and has a habit of flying off in a revealing and/or life threatening manner – Mahabub told me several times to be careful, because it’s not unheard of for ornas to get caught in the wheels…), I generally held tight the whole way.

Travelling in this way is brilliant: you get a panoramic view of the countryside, whilst sustaining scintillating conversation with your driver. However, it’s not particularly comfortable (think tense thighs from the effort of trying not to fall off, and neck strain from craning to hear what Mahabub is shouting over the wind), nor is it very safe. Parents, grandparents: perhaps you should look away while I detail the road conditions? If you won’t take good advice, console yourselves with the thought that a) generally, no-one here will let me within 1 metre of a motorbike without a helmet on; and b)when I’m a passenger, whoever is driving drives at a special reduced bideshi-speed. If this is not consolation enough for what follows, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Some characteristics of roads in Bangladesh
1.Cracks, ruts, potholes and stretches where there just isn’t any tarmac. This means you cannot relax at any point, as you have to be constantly vigilant for moments when the road condition threatens to throw you from the bike. Generally, Mahabub was very good at shouting warnings before we hit dicey stretches, but occasionally he was caught unawares. At these points, presumably when he felt me lift out of my seat, he’d shout something helpful like “Be careful that you do not fall down from the motorbike!” As if there was an element of choice there.

2.Thundering, overloaded buses driven by teenagers. Thankfully, it’d fairly difficult for these buses to sneak up on you: they have Bangla tunes blaring from the roof, they usually employ small boys whose sole job it is to shout at the other traffic on the road, and no-one in Bangladesh is shy about using their horn. However, somewhat worryingly, there were a couple of occasions when I took a backward glance to see what was going on around me, and there was one of these beasts bearing down on us, only a couple of meters away. Mahabub only tried to out-run one of these buses twice…

3.Thundering, overloaded trucks driven by idiots. To be fair, this might be an over-generalisation; there MIGHT be a truck driver in Bangladesh who isn’t a complete fool. Unfortunately, my experience of truck drivers in Bangladesh would not lead me to support such a theory. These guys think nothing of overtaking a slower vehicle even when there is another truck coming the other way that is also overtaking a slower vehicle. They also think nothing of hanging out of the cab window to stare at the bideshi on the motorbike that they have just overtaken, as they continue to speed ahead at sixty miles an hour.

4.Farmyard animals, small children and old people. As Mahabub pointed out, none of these groups have any sense when it comes to roads. We came close to killing representatives of these groups on multiple occasions.

5.“Brakeless vehicles.” Yes, these are exactly what they sound like: vehicles without brakes. When Mahabub first pointed to a plough hammering down the road at about fifty mph, and said “brakeless vehicle” I hoped it was a flaw in his (otherwise very good) English. Sadly not.

6. Shortcuts. It’s probably not fair to describe shortcuts as a feature of all Bangladeshi roads. Rather, shortcuts seem to be a speciality of my dear friend Mahabub. These included squeezing down an alley so narrow my knees grated along the wall, and haring along a dyke in someone’s vegetable field (think, a path wide enough for feet only, raised about a metre above the field).

Note: Mahabub seems to have received something of a bad press here. He’s actually a really good driver and I trust him fully. There were just a couple of moments when that trust waivered…