Living with stink and garbage

Most of the drains in Dhaka are open skyward. Everything from human excreta, household water, thrownaways is floating freely in the wading water of these drains. No passersby seem to bother about that. But the germs hovering over these open drains must be finding their way into the nostrils-and-then-to-stomachs of these unperturbed walkers.

Worse still, when these drains go clogged with heavy rubbish along with soil, people have it dredged up and dumped right beside the drains by the footpaths. That generates even more odious smell as well as a hideous sight. Guys with a sense of aesthetic beauty will certainly find it repelling. When I pass these street side gooey dunes, I feel like running past.

Road with rabbits and tortoises

It's a common sight in Dhaka. All sorts of vehicles, both fast and very slow, are plying most of the the roads and streets. Buses, trucks, pickups, jeeps, rickshaws, rickshaw vans - all cram the road and run their race. Speedy vehicles are constantly forced to give way to the tortoise-paced rickshaws or rickshaw vans. Rickshaws or rickshaw vans are also nonstop shouted at (by the bus conductors) to move to the left or right. Result: a perennial sight of a python-like lumbering of vehicles along the roads and streets. Some dwellers of Dhaka clandestinely take this phenomenon as a blessing in disguise. For seldom does Dhaka have to see speed related road accidents! Life is slow (too slow indeed), but safer than that in the roads of cities like Jeddah where dangerously speeding BMW's suddenly go ripped into pieces in the middle of the road.

Alleyway garbage collector

Another common sight in the narrow lanes and alleys of Dhaka. Stinking, overflowing, open garbage vans stopping by the residences they would collect garbage from. The garbage collector blows his shrill whistle, and that sets the maids, women or their proxies scurrying up to the garbage van waiting on the lane. All types of garbage - be it fish guts, plastic, vegetable rinds, or broken glasses - find their place into this van. Flies, swarms of them, always and invariably accompany the garbage. I can't figure out how the collector boy bears with the stink! He's apparently unperturbed by the stinks or the flies.

I've seen in Siliguri, India, the garbage vans have separate chambers for biodegradables and indestructibles, they have covers upon them. Our garbage vans are without any such distinction or cover-up.