Where songs are buried
Story: Afsan Chowdhury
Photographs: Md Asaduzzaman Pramanik
Featured image:Footpaths house as many shops as any of Dhaka's fancy malls. The footpath, one could suppose, is the supermarket of the poor.
The city is not about to burst at the seams; that happened long ago, with its millions flooding in from everywhere – not to live but to survive. How you survive is no longer a question because the city offers no escape route, no options, no space to manoeuvre. It neither asks nor replies.
In a city where municipalities and authorities no longer offer protection or respite, there is a sense of controlled anarchy and everything is redesigned and rephrased to suit the needs of the survivors. It's not defined by rules of civic governance or public hygiene but by a will to live – a will stronger than the rule keepers and law givers. It's not a pretty sight.
All this translates to a level of chaotic energy and disorder that sums up human survival at its raw and robust best. This is a city of multiple identities, defined not by the urban indicators that make it one of the least habitable cities in the world but by the people who refuse to fade away or die.
It's a city of filth which breeds fruits and flowers of toxic smell and lends a new, unwholesome meaning to the word "beauty". It's an ugly city where everything changes meaning including the pavement. The pavements have become the thoroughfares of the pariahs in the city's caste system: the pedestrians who live in, reshape and ultimately re-imagine the landscape designed by their own refusal to be defeated.
- Time to sleep in a winter's night, wrapped in shredded blankets, right under the stars. Whether winter, spring, summer or autumn, the footpath is a friend.
- The authorities make a noise about cleaning up the pavement, but it's also their storage space for building materials. For free, too. It's fine when the government misuses the footpath but an offence when the poor do it.
- Someone out there has a great sense of humor. The toilet bowl placed in the open is not just symbolic, the wet pools around it show just how literally it's taken. The pavement is so narrow that everyone is forced to walk right through the … shall we say toilet? Of course, one could choose to walk along the road … was security ever an issue?
- Another street vendor: One day an old man emerged from the cancer hospital, leaning on his son or grandson. He could barely walk. The x-ray film and other things the young man was carrying were about to slip out of his hands. Suddenly a peanut vendor went over and held the old man as the lad rearranged his things. Then another man gave the old man a stool to sit on. They helped him into a shop where he rested until the lad got a CNG taxi. Nobody stole anything from the peanut vendor while he was gone.
- A footpath is a roadway, too. As a biker, you are quite welcome to it. No one complains, no one protests. If you have the clout, you use it. The law of the jungle.
- So what if it's called a footpath? It's also a parking lot.. With no other places to park, motorists happily occupy the footpaths. As a car owner, you don't need to give answers. Nobody asks, anyway.
- Good enough a place for a concrete slumber. Who knows what their dreams look like?
- Miraj, 50, Rickshaw garage caretaker on the footpath near St Joseph's school, Asad Avenue: We park 250 rickshaws on this footpath after eleven in the evening. For each rickshaw we charge Tk15, keeping Tk5 for the police. I sleep here, in this makeshift tent. My livelihood is in danger because of the eviction drives by the mayor and the councilors.
