Laura's Listening Walk - Sounds of Dhaka

In an effort to overcome my writer’s block about how to encapsulate the culture and environment in words for those who might be interested, I decided the other day to try focusing on one sense at a time. For my daily walk I went to a new park in a nearby neighborhood that has a perimeter walk around a small lake, just a little less than a kilometer for one lap. I made note of and sorted through all the sounds that I was hearing; they included horns honking, rickshaw bells jingling, crows cawing, smaller birds chirping, airplanes overhead, construction sounds including hammers pounding on bricks, and the imams’ call to prayer. A closer look at the source of these sounds can give some pictures and insights into the Dhaka experience.

There is no denying that the chaos of the local traffic is a dominant element of daily life. The streets are crowded with cars, trucks, busses, motorcycles, bicycle rickshaws for people, flatbed rickshaws for goods (the local version of the personal pickup truck) and many pedestrians, including beggars at the busy intersections. Driving involves continous jockeying to nudge into an open spot and there is a lot of weaving, “lane” changing and general crowding. All of this involves the constant beeping of horns to signal they’re butting in, passing or just announcing their presence. In contrast to the obnoxious motor horns, the soft bicycle-type bells of the rickshaws are a more pleasant sound used when making any of the above manuevers as well as to get the attention of potential customers. Though it’s not a sound image, I have to share a common visual image – that of the slender, hard-peddling rickshaw driver or even a small boy on foot who puts out his arm with a hand up, indicating to the giant bus or car in his path that it should stop while he makes a turn or crosses the street!

There are a lot of huge crows in the neighborhoods and parks that caw obnoxiously, but taking time out to sit on a park bench can result in the reward of chirps and songs from other birds hiding in the trees. When willing to wait patiently I have been able to catch sight of them as they flit from tree to tree or venture to the ground nearby. Perhaps I will try to get a bird identification chart or book, because some of them have nice coloring - green and yellow or maybe a red spot on the head or tail with brown, gray and/or white feathers.

The airplanes overhead, of course, are a city sound heard anywhere in the world when your neighborhood isn’t too far from the airport. And the construction noises might be common too, except that they are different than the usual jackhammer and large earthmovers. One sound of hammers pounding on bricks, for instance, gives an insight into the availability of plentiful and cheap labor. Those willing to work hard for very little are employed to literally break up bricks into small pieces for the purpose of making gravel and coarse concrete used in the building process. Bricks are used extensively in building, more so than concrete blocks, because there are many brick factories in the country utilizing the clay-like soil. On a recent drive out of the city we saw many such factories with the bricks piled up for drying in the sun after casting. And are they moved around on pallets by forklift? No! At any building site you will see men carrying a dozen or so at a time, after carefully loading them onto a board on top of their head.

The imams’ call to prayer can be heard at the Islamic prayer times throughout the day. Sometimes it is loud; other times just another sound in the background. Generally, the musical nature of it is non-descript, but occasionally I have noticed that it can be really bad or pleasantly sonorous! Bangladesh is predominantly Islamic with around 85% of the population identified as Muslim, however it is considered to be moderate and that can be seen in the wide variety of dress styles. Most men wear either western clothes or the local dress of a simple pullover shirt and a sort of wraparound skirt, called a lungi. Women typically wear a sari (wraparound dress) or a shalwar kamiz, which is a long pullover top with loose fitting pants underneath. Almost all women, even those with western clothes, wear some sort of scarf loosely hanging over the chest with the ends draped to the back over the shoulders. Almost everyone, no matter what else they wear, has on sandals or flip flops. Only some men wear slip-on leather shoes if they want to look more business-like.

So, do I feel like a foreigner in a strange land? Well, of course, I know that my blond hair and fair skin mark me as a transplant, but there are so many people always on the streets that I figure I might as well jump in and be part of the milieu. It does not appear to be considered rude here to stare at others. Some Americans find this annoying, but I figure that if the locals want to stare at me that gives me license to observe them in return! Even though I used the sounds to jump start my observations, I have shared a lot of visual images as well. In such a densely populated city of some 15 million there is no shortage of sensory input – for this midwesterner, often resulting in sensory overload, but at least one cannot complain that there is nothing new to tell about!