Reminiscing my Dhaka Trip...

The visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Dhaka reminded me of my journey to the country in 2012:
Sharing here what I wrote then....

My journey to Dhaka (Bangladesh) in a small 78-seater Turboprop aircraft, run by Kingfisher Red, was anything but travel to a foreign country. No water! No food! Expecting alcoholic drinks would have been asking for too much!

In a half-hour journey we (another journalist from Patna and a representative from UK-based organisation WaterAid) landed at Shahjalaluddin Airport in Dhaka – the capital city of Bangladesh. A very basic but neat and clean airport gave us much needed respite after witnessing the filth and mismanagement at the international airport back home in Kolkata, India.

Our hosts (WaterAid Bangladesh) had made proper arrangements for the pick-up of all the guests and whilst waiting for the courtesy car we were looked after by `Airport Help’. The lady in-charge (Airport Help) Arju was charming and gave us some useful tips for shopping in Dhaka. She also helped me get the money exchanged at a higher rate than what my colleagues from India could manage with their own efforts.

Finally, we were on our way to the hotel. The traffic on the road was self explanatory as to why the pick-up car was late. I remembered that the very first line in our invitation mail was a warning about Dhaka traffic jams and we got a glimpse of it.

What I noticed was that every car had `Bull Bars’ at the back and at the front. Fair enough, as the traffic was bumper to bumper and the buses, which were not good enough even to be sent to the scrap yard, drove with no consideration to other vehicles. The auto-rickshaws painted bright green looked like mobile prison on wheels with grills covering its windows and doors. We were told that this system started about five years ago as there were cases of mugging and snatching of bags. Now, though the situation has improved the grills in the auto rickshaws are there to stay.

Rubbing shoulders with buses our vehicle arrived at our hotel - Asia Pacific Blossom located in a narrow lane in the diplomatic quarter, close to Canadian Embassy and a school run by French.  This area is known as Baridhara and is full of plush high rise apartment buildings.

At the hotel entrance we were greeted by our journalist friends from Sri Lanka and soon other colleagues from Nepal and Pakistan joined us.

We journalists, from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, had gathered in Dhaka to attend a meeting of WASH Media South Asia Forum.

This forum is a network of a few dedicated journalists from South Asian nations, who are writing on Water Sanitation and Hygiene issues (the acronym for which is WASH) in South Asia. Through our writings these journalists try to make the voices of poor and marginalised people reach the policy makers. These poor and marginalised people are those from the South Asian nations, who even today, do not get safe drinking water and remain devoid of proper sanitation facilities.

It was in February 2011 we met for the first time in Kathmandu (Nepal), courtesy - WaterAid offices of Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. These regional WaterAid offices identified journalists writing on WASH and related issues in their respective nations and congregated them in Kathmandu for a workshop.  The idea was to strengthen the efforts of the journalists and raise the issues in a concerted manner. In that workshop it was decided to form a forum and raise the water and sanitation crisis in South Asia in an organised way so that it can have an impact on governments, which have made commitments at various national and international platforms to ensure water and sanitation for all.

The forum Wash Media South Asia was born and we returned to our countries with stronger resolution to use our writing for raising the voices which remain unheard.

In a year this small group of about a dozen journalists from these five south Asian nations have written more than 2,000 stories in different magazines, newspapers and online media, focusing on plight of people who have no sanitation facilities and who do not get safe drinking water.

The meeting in Bangladesh was the second meeting of these journalists and the next step of the forum. The aim was to review the work we did, share the problems we faced and also to formulate strategy for future.

We checked into our rooms, which were more like suites and were bigger than the apartments some of us live in. After a quick rest when we all gathered for dinner we were greeted by the hotel chairman (owner) Mr Mir Mushtaq Ahmed Robi. A fine gentleman, Mr Robi shared some of his fond memories of India with us. He travels to India regularly for business and medical purposes.

At dinner it was time to catch up with old friends and get the latest gossip. However, we called it an early night as everyone was tired after long journeys and the meeting too was to start quite early in the morning.

We had a highly interactive and productive meeting in which many important decisions for future planning were taken, such as we decided to produce a scrap book of WASH stories written by the forum journalists. A trip to Dhaka’s biggest slum ‘Korail’ was also organised by our host which gave us a glimpse of water and sanitation status for urban poor in Bangladesh.

Korail is the biggest slum of Dhaka which is located around Gulshan Lake on 90 acres of government land. Since all the 16,000 families living in this slum are illegal residents, they neither have proper drinking water nor have toilets. Some residents have made toilets which are perched on stilts and are connected to the small shanties with narrow and delicate bridges. The pipes carrying solid and liquid waste from these ‘hanging toilets’, open directly into the Gulshan Lake.

It was not a shocking site for those who have seen Dharavi in Mumbai, which is Asia’s biggest slum. Nonetheless, there were a few things which did draw my attention – like, the slum was self-sufficient as it had shops selling practically any conceivable item required in a house from medicine to vegetables or like every shop had a television set or a transistor radio and lastly the smiling faces – it seemed like people living there have accepted their lives the way it is and have no complaints.

No complaints even form the shutterbugs. The trip to Korail was definitely a treat for any journalist, especially if he/she has interest in water and sanitation. It was though a bit tough to click people’s plight on their faces but we could not resist and eventually the journalistic temptation overrode our humility. We clicked till the camera battery refused to cooperate.

However, during the workshop there was a completely different issue than water and sanitation, raised by the Country Representative of WaterAid Bangladesh Mr Khairul Islam, which left me pondering.

He said we all work on issues, which are critical for South Asian nations yet gathering journalists in any of these South Asian countries is a real ordeal. He was referring to Visa problems the journalists, especially from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India face in obtaining Visa for any of these countries. The moment these journalists specify their profession in the Visa application, the embassies of these South Asian nations become apprehensive of the intentions behind the visits.

Mr Islam had to personally assist the Pakistan journalists in getting their Visas for this meeting and in my case I mentioned my profession as Consultant (the safest and most ambiguous profession) in the Visa form.  This is not the first time it happened with me, I had to hide the fact that I am a journalist even when I travelled to Sri Lanka in the past.

The journalists from Sri Lanka too were allowed to attend the meeting only after they gave it in writing that they would not produce any stories related to their visit to Bangladesh.

Back home in India too, the situation is far from rosy. The journalists from Bangladesh and Pakistan shared their humiliation that they had to go through when they came to attend an International Conference on Global Sanitation that took place in Mumbai last October. There were special announcements for Pakistan and Bangladesh journalists (during the sessions) to go to the lobby where the police was waiting for them. (The two countries one of the Visa condition is that they must report to the police every day. However, these journalists attending the Global Sanitation Conference were exempt from this).

Mr Islam appealed that along with water and sanitation crisis, the journalist should also raise the critical issue of obtaining Visa for these countries, especially Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, whenever they find a platform to do so.

The heavy discussion though left a bitter taste yet working on a bigger issue of water and sanitation, we moved on and once again focused our attention to the crisis of safe drinking water and proper sanitation facilities, which million of people are facing in South Asian countries. Dedication to an issue means following it despite all odds and we scribes have resolved to do that.

After fifteen hours of hectic participatory exercises of a day and half, we were rewarded by a shopping trip. WaterAid organised a mini bus for ten of us from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and one of WaterAid colleagues from even UK, who were interested in seeing the city life in Dhaka.

This leisure outing enabled us to have a close encounter with Dhaka city traffic at peak hours. We covered about 10 kms in more than an hour. By the time we arrived at Basundhara Mall, most of us were drained off energy to shop. But as we entered the Mall and saw and intricate and exotic handicraft of Dhaka, we were rejuvenated enough to lighten our purses.

The long way (courtesy traffic jams) gave an opportunity for some light moments also and to me some insight how our neighbours observe us. 

The journalists from Sri Lanka were candid in criticising the Indian media (especially in sports reporting) for their brazen ways of reporting about cricket. “I find it weird how the Indian media puts a cricketer on a pedestal should he do well but then is too quick to knock him off the same pedestal should he fail to live up to people’s expectations,” said Chandani. “We in Sri Lanka want to see our players winning but we maintain silence when they do not perform,” she added.

From cricket the conversation shifted to film stars and to India’s most celebrated star Shah Rukh Khan. Colleagues from Pakistan recalled their memories of seeing a huge crowd standing in front of his house just to have a glimpse of the star.

This gave our colleague from Nepal to take a dig at the frenzy of Indians about their film stars. “Why are people so crazy about film stars? In Nepal if a film star passes from the road, no one even gives him/her a second glance,” said Laxmi from Nepal.

Whilst we were engrossed in our friendly criticisms and leg pulling the time had come for us to say good bye to each other with a whole lot of promises for future and resolutions to stay connected.

We were booked in the same carrier Kingfisher which made us `sit, relax and enjoy the kingfisher experience’ on our way to Dhaka. The flight from Dhaka to Kolkata was two hours late and at least ten passengers were set to miss their connecting flights. I was the only lucky passenger, who was booked in the same airline for my onward journey and kingfisher made all efforts to give me that Kingfisher experience. I was driven in a car with an escort for the immigration formalities before boarding the same aircraft again, which brought me from Dhaka to Kolkata.