RADIO BANGLADESH

Sumon, 25, drives cars for a living. In a country like Bangladesh it is possible to employ some person to drive your car for pittance. My wife and I employed him a few months back for Tk. 9000 per month with two meals a day and Fridays off. He is married and lives with his wife in a rented room in city’s Mohakhali area.

He is a good kid, with a wife who is still technically a kid. She hasn’t seen more than sixteen summers. When queried about his very young bride, he told us he fell in love when she was at school and married her. Don’t bother your head about why her parents ever agreed to marry off their daughter at such a tender age; they must have been more than relieved to get Sumon for a son-in-law. Girls as young as ten start facing sexual harassment in villages as well as towns; news of a 5/6 year old baby getting raped is not uncommon, but I digress.

Sumon has one character trait that stands out – he talks, talks relentlessly. You ask him about a trivial matter and soon you will know about the trivia as well as a million other things, sometimes with no connection with your original question. He talks about things like school kids write compositions or essays with an introduction, body and conclusion, and sometimes a critical review to boot. When no attention is paid him he does not ramble on like an unstable person, but starts talking to a rickshaw puller about his mistakes and then explaining to him about the wrongness of his action, all the time checking whether he has garnered your attention back, if so, God save you. He will dump the rickshaw puller and start talking to you, tangentially at times. We have a name for him: “Radio Bangladesh”.

Our Sumon, the man with an opinion about everything, asked for a couple of hours off on a work day – apparently a relation has passed away. He was granted the leave and then came back after a few hours, tight-lipped. The vagaries of life are such that we were at unease at his reticence. Our cook who is day in day out at the receiving end of his verbosity asked him about what was behind his quiet demeanour.

Apparently, a small shopkeeper, the kind that is ever present on street corners selling tea, cigarettes, and other goodies hanging from the shack known as his shop, had died from a stray bullet when the police opened fire on rioters. This tea stall was frequented by Sumon regularly, a possibility of an audience for his reports very bright. The stall-owner also liked his innocent chatter, hailing from the same region of rural Bangladesh as him. The death shook Sumon to a state of gloom that is stopping him from chatting.

We are still waiting for him to come back from his depression, if ever that be possible.

Dhaka, 5th December 2013.