At this stage, shouldn’t the future have some trajectory?  Some white lines painted on terra firma, hastening us towards an unforseeable, yet solid goal?  Unfortunately, the fault lines that separate potential decision paths have neither reason nor schedule to their tremors.  Each side of these deep rifts take me in such divergent directions that there is little in common between them, and decisions on which to pursue have to be made early enough so that I am not stranded, wide-eyed and unprepared, on the wrong side.

In medicine, people have choices, in prevention, in treatment, in doctor whose advice is sought.  The hardest things to grasp and in which to proceed successfully are those that require you to decide upon and alter your own behavior to reduce the potential of a problem.  When the HIV diagnosis has already been given, there are certain clear rules to follow, habits to change, pills to take once or four times a day, and a new understanding of impetuous actions and their consequences.  If the tagline to care, however, is “if you continue to live this way, there is a likelihood that in 25 years you will have a heart attack,” how many of us will actually listen to our own internal reason, or incessant badgering of our primary care physicians, to change things for a future that is still uncertain?

The 10 and 20-year plans that we are increasingly encouraged to formulate, whether for our own health or career or personal happiness, are seemingly written in invisible ink; when you step on one lighted square platform, only the very next one will begin to glow and show itself through the haze.  It feels like swimming blind, staying afloat at any given moment but with only a vague idea of the ultimate trajectory.  We are required to amass concrete successes, yet use these to gamble on a future.  If no great risk is taken on choosing a direction, this aimless drive and passion becomes a character flaw, something to be spoken of in whispers laced with awe and fright.

We change our behavior to reduce the chances of a heart attack, never knowing whether it will or it will not develop, or whether it would have if we had not stopped eating butter or forced ourselves onto the elliptical each day.  This is the peril and the pleasure of choice.  It can be alternately frightening and successful.  Which one it will be, however, is entirely unpredictable.

The wise answer to this stalled energy, this trepidation associated with stepping firmly to one side of the rift, is that the boundaries of the path chosen are not severe, and it does not forge ahead in isolation.  It will always intersect with others.  The process of creating a trajectory is iterative, and influential decisions are based on daily opportunities and new relationships for which we need to both be patient and actively pursue when they appear.  Stephen Colbert once praised a past President for believing “the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday.”  Take a chance, but when it fails tomorrow, revise the plan and keep going.  Make friends while you travel as they often bring new options into your life.  And look both ways when you cross another path…you just might want to make a turn when you see where it leads.

It is the street itself, however, that holds the greatest fascination.  As Bill Cunningham documents the fashion triumphs and tragedies of Manhattan by bicycle, here I remain still while other lives are lived below.  I see students with laptop bags and sneakers dangling by their laces walking towards the Hopkins shuttle, sheepish men in hoodies walking extremely tiny dogs that must belong to their absent girlfriends, women in pairs with yoga mats strung over their shoulders in naturally-dyed, organic cotton bags.  I see a sudden resurgence of skateboards as a primary means of transportation, and the boys wearing skinny jeans and long bangs with tween hipster vibes who are their owners.

The loudest sounds are usually of two kinds.  Teenagers getting into a heated altercation outside of the pizza place at 1am, a screeching soprano paired with finger waving and a low, exasperated bass intermittently punctuating the shrill track.  The other are sirens, of fire trucks and police cars and ambulances, who use this street as their thoroughfare between the hospital and North Ave.  Sometimes it is the squealing of much-used brakes, as another driver has to avoid the Baltimore drivers’ penchant for reading a yellow light as “speed up,” and the newly changed red as  “go FASTER!!”

Tonight, the night before Christmas eve, the street is quiet.  The sides of the street, lined with exceedingly valuable parking spots that are coveted by more than can successfully co-opt one, have yawning holes, the majority of this neighborhood having left the city to go “home.”  There is a Christmas tree with draped colored lights in the window of the store selling rugs across the street.  I see people piling plates of cookies tied with tartan ribbons and large duffel bags filled with laundry into cars for the ride away from this temporary life.

Over the years, through the transitions, apartments and jobs, a long list of temporary places and people has begun to solidify into my autonomous life.  At different times I have been that college student tossing laundry into my car, the resident walking to work in scrubs on Christmas eve, the person pining to be somewhere else for the holidays.  With each decision, each experience, I have stepped away from those places that were once considered permanent, and worked tirelessly to construct a personal shelter and identity that began only as a weak, transparent thing.

In the beginning, I think we also build these structure to protect our frail, underdeveloped, newly autonomous identities.  We scramble to keep college lives private, decisions on friends and majors and test scores are our privilege and our problem.  Despite this attempt to maintain true independence, we regularly flee back from our budding lives, generally under the auspices of holidays and celebration.  We do so willing to undergo the shredding of our egos via lacerating comments about career choice, hairstyle, sweater color and weight.  I think we brave these waters in order to look around at our families, and remind ourselves that mistakes, even large ones, can still contribute to the strengthening of our own personal structures.  And also that it takes time.  With years and decisions, our choices help this shelter to expand and solidify, a living, metabolizing entity that changes only from experience.

At this time, a decade out of college, far from the days of laundry in the car and beyond the point when my academic pursuits are previously traveled territory for my parents and family, I’m still building my own identity.  I’ve learned, though, that it isn’t meant to cloister me from all other influential forces or people.  Now that it is is becoming stable, although still adapting, I’m allowed to let others in, to help them or learn from them.  It is like an extension of what I once considered permanent, but decorated to my taste. It takes a memory from whatever I do and embraces it, forming a new part that I didn’t even know was integral to me.

After this holiday spent at my family’s home, with colors and sounds brought back from my parents’ trip to India, I’ll come back to another cup of tea and the view from my own home.  And then I will fall into step beside those people living their lives below the windowsill.  I can’t learn everything by watching, after all…

In grade school, I would wake up at the sound of the garage door opening as my dad left for work at 6:45 am.  I would jump out of bed (yes, I was one of those kids), take a quick shower, get dressed in something that had a high likelihood of being either pink or purple, then run down to the breakfast area to take stock of my options for the morning.  Our breakfast nook is at the end of the kitchen, highlighted by four windows which allowed light to stream in from the south and west.  It looked out onto our suburban backyard, with its dogwoods, azaleas, and the intermittent tomato.  If it was winter, the sun would just be coming up, and either yellow and red maple leaves or drifts of snow would be swirling around and settling on the birdbath or patio chairs.  If I was lucky, my dad would still be there, dressed in suit and tie, his aftershave from the crystal blue bottle just faintly notable, his green eyes lighting up as he emptied the peeled, soaked almonds that were a mainstay of breakfast time into my cereal bowl.  He would be standing at the sink (always standing, as if there was no other appropriate way to eat breakfast at 7 am before work) with a bowl of cornflakes with just enough milk to cause minimal sogginess.  We both ate our cereal in 2.5 minutes.  It was an unspoken rule to preserve crunchiness at the expense of taste, and potentially, adequate mastication.

My mom tells me that when I was little, I would wander leisurely through my plate, requiring an hour to put away a piece of broccoli the size of her thumb.  I suppose that I have been making up for this maddeningly slow pace of early culinary exploration ever since then.

The cereal choices – Honey Nut Cheerios (my favorite), Kix (remember those?  this name was apparently hilarious to the entire family and led to many cringe-worthy jokes from grandpa), Crispix, regular Cheerios mixed with Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  I judged the week based on which one I would be eating for the next 10 days.  HNCheerios?  It was going to be an excellent week.  The Cinnamon Toast Crunch usually finished before the Regular Cheerios, in which case breakfast for the remainder of the days would be bland and less-than-inspiring, and cause some degree of grumpiness for several hours afterwards.

As I grew older, I realized that I could have cereal at other times as a snack, too!  Unfortunately, I didn’t quite have the same time constraints as in the morning, and I would be ravenous in the free moments between homework, editing the newspaper, being a band geek, and running to ballet.  Given my early years of training, given 15 minutes and an episode of the The Cosby Show I could eat half a box of cereal on one occasion alone.  Each time, newly astonished at my emerging identity as a bottomless pit, I would roll away from the table and attempt to do homework.  This did not work well.  My brain really did not function after such an infusion of carbs and sugar.  It was as though I was trying to process the assorted responsibilities of my increasingly busy days by slipping back into the familiar, sweet, and mechanical comforts of those early mornings.  It was a 15-minute escape from being a teenager.

In college, I survived on frozen yogurt, bagels, salads, raspberry muffins from the coffee shop and chocolate chip cookies from the bakery.  If I ever had a cereal box it would be emptied, easily, in 3 days while I shunned all other food.  There was no scheduled breakfast anymore.  No ritual.  No certainty.  College was about trying to find a new path every few months, and this included how I ate.  Despite all the changes, however, cereal continued to inhabit the post of a guilty pleasure.  I would return to it when things were uncertain, tough…grounding me in something known.

Freed from the expectation of daily breakfast cereal, the contents of my early morning meals ricocheted between acceptable and disastrous: dining hall birthday cake with too-sweet mocha frosting, soymilk, random Indian sweets from home.  I remember stepping into the coffee shop, bleary-eyed from midterms and promptly being pointed towards the coffee with the “most caffeine” which would then serve as fuel for the morning.  I believe the ultimate nutritional depravity came when I counted breakfast as a multivitamin and flax seed oil pill taken with the last sips of that super-caffeinated coffee right before a physiology final.

As I left college and went to grad schools, began living on my own, I somehow naturally took cereal out of my day, shifted it to oatmeal (of which it is quite difficult to eat too much) or eat it as a dessert.  I now rarely have a box in my house.  I think it took growing up to realize comfort food is about joy and taste rather than eating to fill a void or recreate easy moments.

When I go back to my childhood home, in that same breakfast nook with the four windows and the soaked almonds, I still find a colorful variety of boxes and sit down to eat a bowl in the morning before tea and conversation begins.  These boxes, which have changed with the times to generally include words like “high fiber” or “whole grain” are now served with warm milk and tea and a Centrum silver multivitamin.  Still, though, it is the time and circumstance of those moments that holds such great potential.  Breakfast will always be entwined with early morning, when the entire possibility of the day still extends before you.  I hope that optimism will stay with me, honey nut cheerios or not.

or does this mean that the stories these people do ultimately amass are so much richer and more able to be enjoyed (as everything else is booked and planned and taken care of), although many fewer in number?

I am one of those people.  those planners.  my gmail tasks list is linked with my phone, I get to the airport 3 hours before takeoff for an international flight, I’d rather be half an hour early than 3 minutes late.  I figure how to get where I am going before I start going there.  of course, I am acutely aware that my plans will rarely, if ever, lead me down the expected path.  they would rather saunter, with fits and starts, sometimes even going backwards, before they get somewhere.  the point, however, is that there was a plan.  written down in beautiful, curving prose, laced with cautious exhilaration at the possibilities.  revised twenty times.  then sent to a wiser individual who tears it apart and pieces it together into a better mosaic.

regarding travel, I think that there are two kinds of people: those who are escaping from, and those who are traveling to.  the former seems more unplanned, spontaneous, requiring a fraying leather-bound journal in hand at all times, and an adventurous career carved out of myriad experiences.  the latter is goal-directed, a destination constructed out of vision and data and direction.  still, as much routine as we try to impose on place, often it is the place that ultimately dictates routine.  even I can’t control whether or not the train will run on time, which way down the continuum the patient will go, or whether serendipity will favor me on this day or not.

although I map and plan and  schedule and worry over details of direction and place and time, the exploration always lies in the unplanned.  adventure does not have an itinerary.  although you can lie in wait for the Himalayan snow leopard for days, travel to Iceland at exactly the right time to be swept up in the northern lights, or wisely choose summer months to travel to Denali, the true adventures are always sidebars to the expected.

then why do I (and will I forever) continue to plan, when all the good stuff actually happens on the side?  I suppose for those who do not have a to-do list, who may not write down the row number of their long-term parking spot, who move to a new place and let that inform the future, their daily experiences will continue to be the fantastical content of storytime revelries and novellas.  but so will mine.  my plan just allows me to arrive at a certain point before the unexpected materializes and derails things.  I am able to enjoy the surprises that people and places throw my way, even if exasperating at the moment…instead of worrying from the outset how I’m going to take every next step.  and those surprises may more often be of the good kind…as planning makes it more likely that I will catch a glimpse of the Taj Mahal at dawn through whispering fog if I actually set my alarm at 5am and book a car and driver to get there.  life can’t be constructed solely of sidebars.  I plan so that the main content is fulfilling, too.

Now onto the next unexpected change.  a potential move to a new apartment in Baltimore?  let’s see how this one goes.

1. There is an extremely high ratio of black suits to friendly, smiling faces on display

2. Orlando has way too much space to occupy.  It does so by erecting massive, sprawling convention centers with east and west concourses, all air-conditioned to the point where distal fingers and toes take on a dusky hue…unless you are well padded by a snowsuit or wool jacket or something of the variety of clothing that no one should own in Florida.   These concourses are joined by an elaborate series of elevated walkways and shuttles and cabs driving on roads around unnecessary water features, when it would be a perfectly acceptable, and much more soothing, to actually step outside for a minute and walk on the sidewalk.

3. It was brought to my attention by an astute friend conducting an exercise in federal emergency responses that this very large, otherwise ideal, location for an emergency shelter would turn into one giant safety hazard in a hurricane due to the floor-to-ceiling windows, effectively wiping out the population of global cardiovascular researchers in one fell swoop.  Morbid, perhaps, but…aren’t there hurricanes in Florida?

4. The food available at a cardiology conference is wickedly engineered to be the most salty, fattening, arterial plaque-inducing stuff imaginable.  Somewhere along those ultrabright, endless corridors must have been a portable cath lab.  And several intervention cardiologists on-call with the latest breakthrough in arterial roto-rooting.

I think I prepared well for the experience.  I packed every black dress that I own, 4 pairs of shoes for a 5-day conference, and my USB drive with the AHA logo emblazened upon it.  I also remembered not to smile too much and to walk as if I was going somewhere important at all times.  I struggled with the reality of my identity among this very large body of people who spent some of the best moments of their days traveling through other  people’s arteries.  Do I tell people that I’m not a cardiologist?  Do I tell them that I’m a, gasp! General Internal Medicine researcher and primary care physician?  I did this about half of the time.  As usual, I got the range of responses: politely confused, genuinely interested, “ok, let’s move on,” and, oh, do you work with such-and-such?  If the answer was yes (as it usually was), then I was validated.  I was excited to see that a major topic during the conference was focused on efforts, research and progress in the prevention of global cardiovascular disease.  At last!  I have found my people.  Unfortunately, while it was heartening to see such emphasis from the AHA body on this cause, the sparsely attended sessions were a let-down.  What is it about prevention that is so un-sexy?  I suppose I will spend my career trying to change that.

I also realized how much conference-goers stand out against the generally calm Florida backdrop.  The first was the abnormally large, RED nametags that we invariably forgot to take off when we went out for lunch (nevermind that everyone in the place had matching adornments).  The pace of walking (cardiologists: fast, ignoring the sunshine, moonlight, and other people on the path.  General Orlandoans: why walk when we can drive!).  The preponderance of technology: iPads, iPhones, tablets, bluetooth earpieces, all designed to communicate with people who are 2000 miles away rather than 2 feet away).

I learned several survival skills for the research/cardiology world.  1. ALWAYS have your talk with you.  Always.  The optimal place and time to practice your talk with your mentors is in a busy restaurant after several glasses of wine and an alfredo sauce that has slowed down your processing speed to minimal levels of functional capacity.  Then we will magically pull out a laptop, after clearing coffee cups and wine glasses to the floor, ledges of potted plants, other people’s tables…I still am dubious that they actually heard what I said.  The suggestions, however, were constructive and excellent (even the next day in the clear, sober, frigid conference halls).  2. The only people who you will just “run into” during this conference of 30,000 participants are those who you are trying to avoid.  This happened several times with friends there, which usually resulted in us ducking into a darkened presentation room about something genomic and unintelligible.  You find yourself trailing the back of a head that looks oddly familiar between boards displaying posters, slumping down in your seat at lunch (which you have chosen to extend until 3 pm on this particular day) when you watch that colleague stroll to an adjacent table. 3. Make time to go to Disney world while in Orlando.  Yes, fine, you are no longer 6 years old and don’t have children in tow so cannot blame them for “dragging” you to Epcot, and, fine, you have to go to ALL of the conference sessions on therapeutic hypothermia.  But still.  Orlando is Orlando for a reason.  I didn’t get to go this time, but I’m planning well for my next conference there next May…

I quickly shed my oranges and yellows, blues and purples so intrinsically connected to the vividness of the Bangladeshi countryside – that bright palette that melted into the technicolor green fields, the purple hyacinths, the orange of the papayas and even the deep red of the tea from roadside stands.  I altered myself, from being swathed in the bright happy dyes of a thousand vegetable fibers, back to the sophisticated blacks and tans and rose hues of life in Baltimore.  The bright magenta of my garment the day before leaving Dhaka faded into something more subtle, muted, understated.  The garments smooth my  re-entry into the society in which I generally exist, where I have a name, a title, a desk, and ID card.

There is a certain smell…a combination of frying spices, pungent bodies, petrol exhaust, and the faint scent of incense that combines to form the distinctive South Asian musk.  This greets you at the airport, wafts out of bags as clothing bought or laundered there is unfolded, and becomes as much a part of you as the fine red dust that integrates into your shoes and under your fingernails.  Stepping into the sterile gateway at JFK, it stays with you for a short while as your fellow passengers walk in step towards the baggage claim, then dissipates slowly as each person breaks off from the group and acculturates again.

After being covered from throat to toes with several layers of clothing for the month, I am relieved that I am not returning in the height of the summer, where appropriate attire is a tank top and barely-there shorts with flip flops and a cavernous beach bag.  After a month of extreme modesty, I do believe that on returning in the summer, I would have uttered an expletive and let loose a shocked gasp, and most likely run up to one of these half-naked girls and flung my scarf around her shoulders to relieve my own embarrassment.  Again, I am glad that I did not re-enter this world in July…

Every time I return from South Asia, the first change, the one most piercing and altering, is the sudden absence of the crush of humanity.  Acclimating to culture does not require that culture to be unfamiliar or strange.  It is just the ocean of difference between the proud and essential independence of life here, and the assumed interconnectedness of existence there that requires a restructuring of daily life and attitude each time I land on those shores.  In South Asia, I require days to adjust to people helping with my bags, questioning what I had for dinner and where and bringing out more food regardless of the hour, expecting to see the woman in the public bathroom with her green sari drawn modestly over her head handing me rationed toilet paper,  the experience of buying a pashmina in a small store where they instruct me to sit on dingy benches while bringing out fragrant tea with ginger and unfolding dozens of options for my inspection.  I become used to inquiries about my health, my studies, my work, my plans, my marital status, how long I will be staying, and when I will return.  When I returned to India in my early 20s, after being away for a decade, these inquiries at first seemed invasive.  Why does it matter what I ate for dinner!  I told you I’m not married!  How many cups of tea am I going to have to drink today!  I then realized how much concern and care is behind these small inquiries and seemingly little actions.  At our next dinner, something will appear that I mentioned in passing that I had liked.  When I leave, my host will produce several gifts for both me and my parents.  I learn that there is never a question about getting help from anyone with anything  – this is assumed and done often without even having to ask.  The warmth and curious concern about my life is just a manifestation of the care of a family for one of its own.  And there it is.  That strong interdependence lasts through other seemingly fragile parts of daily life.  Daily power outages, intensely competitive schools, domestic flights that leave when they want to, nearly nonexistent traffic laws, corruption, a booming IT sector, pollution, some of the best food in the world.

Coming back to Baltimore, I remember to appreciate my independent space and the agency that this life provides for me to take it in any direction that I choose.  But as if to pull strands of that existence into my life here, I will occasionally wear that saffron yellow scarf or burn incense to recreate that South Asian musk…until I return next time.

I woke up this morning to a strange chirping sound.  It sashayed through the cracks in the windows, a mechanical chirping, insistent yet vibrantly musical.  Growing up on the east coast of the US, I immediately began having hypnopompic visions of RadioShack, and “soothing” alarm clocks that ease you out of sleep with the faint chirping of birds and the gentle illumination of the room.  I was also somewhat irritated at how many times my roommate was hitting snooze on her alarm clock….

Clearly I did not grown up in South Asia.  Of course it was an actual bird, sitting happily outside of the window and talking to his friend in the morning.  When my eyes finally opened for long enough to realize this, I stumbled out of bed to brush my teeth, willing myself to completely awaken, as my next job was to redirect the endless stream of ants away from my apparently delicious toothpaste.

Then down to the breakfast table, passing some enormous beetles and leaf-like bugs sunning themselves in the bright morning light.  Our way to work requires the skilled attention of the driver at each microsecond to avoid, among others, the goats galloping along the road with their tiny ears and glossy black coats, cows who choose when and where to cross the road, and geese in pairs taking in the morning air followed by their amused owner shooing them in the general direction (give or take 500 feet, a cup of tea and several dozen feathers or so) of the village market.

After getting to work, our musical interlude of the morning is provided by a cow mooing in a deep, sonorous base which reverberates through the ceiling and floors.  As has been noted, roosters do not actually crow at dawn…but rather whenever they feel like it, as was evidenced by a rather loud and insistent friend causing background amusement during a 7pm skype call.  For those who believes that fidgeting burns calories, try swatting mosquitoes and flies, wasps the size of golf balls, and the occasional bee away from your computer while trying to complete that already irritating statistical analysis.  (This is how we justify eating our weight in dal and fish curry at lunch…)

One of my favorites is the “tik-tiky” darting through miniscule cracks and across whitewashed walls with alien grace.  The gecko, a tiny, translucent companion who might be staring at you curiously when you first open your eyes in the morning.  (n.b. when going to sleep in south asia, avoid having your face in close proximity to any walls…)

This is only the beginning of a guide to the everyday wildlife of Gaibandha.  I also took a break and headed outdoors on a peaceful sunset bicycle ride with my lovely friend Shefa.  (For all of you who are aware of my seemingly limitless clumsiness, riding on tiny rutted trails past rickshaws and motorbikes and women carrying large things on their heads required a great deal of concentration.  I DIDN’T fall in a ditch.  Seriously.  Although I think riding on the road might have been worse when I was nearly sideswiped by an itinerant cow and a van-gadi (kind of a motorized cart) while trying to take a photo.

Our hosts are so wary of the potential for any of us expats to strike disaster when we leave the 4 walls of our compound that we have our own very special log: the “Expatriate Movement Register.”  On our bicycle ride, we were surprisingly only stopped once out of overwhelming, almost palpable, curiosity about who in the world I was.  The standard line of questioning: “What is your name?  From what country did you come?  Are you married?” (if the asker is a woman).  If this is a guest to whom it is reasonable to reply, the conversation continues: “Oh, you are a doctor.  Practicing physician?  What specialty?  Private practice?”  If I was from Bangladesh, it would continue further: “Where are your parents from?  What do they do?  What medical school did you go to?  What batch?  Oh, aha, you are very junior to me.”  And now dinner can resume.

Remember that for your next cocktail party…

Standing beside a corrugated sheet metal home, the fields opening into the background.

The homes are small and unassuming, made of straw, sheet metal or brick, befitting to the SES of the owner.  Beyond the clusters houses, where neighbors are always looking in through large windows sharing smiles and news, lie the luminous green fields.  Their expanses, dissected only by narrow dusty paths that simmer in the heat between rice paddies, delights in the rich, silt-laden soil.  The farmers and and villagers bend in these fields, working to plant and harvest, standing amongst the haze and mist from a thousand cookstoves and the humidity rising off the plants.  They make their way slowly along the paths as they work the land, walking home with bare dusty feet accustomed to the hard, crumbly ground, or, if tired, riding home on one of the bicycle-driven “van-gadis” weaving through the busy village roads.  Life is bustling in the evenings.  A barber, shaving a man’s beard at 9pm, people haggling over the price of DVDs, women with saris draped over their hair, walking home in clusters after buying snack at the local stand.  Dinner at 9pm, conversation and family time until midnight or 1 am.  Then again, to sleep, until the insistence of the cows and traffic and sunlight wakes you in the morning hours to begin again.

Reaching Dhaka is itself an experience, as the outskirts of the city begin well before any buildings are in sight.  The houses begin to crowd together, women wearing purple, gold, orange and green spill out of the market stalls, carrying vegetables and their children and men in lungis and american-themed tshirts wade into the water to catch fish with their huge, delicate fishing nets held aloft over the water by bamboo poles. (My favorite, spotted by my housemate, was the macho Bangladeshi man in a lungi and a black tshirt that read: America’s Next Top Model”

As you get closer, the signs for myriad international schools begin to overtake the walls of large buildings and billboards advertising mobile companies and skin lightening cream and fashionable clothing for women loom above you.  One of the best is a bright red sign above a brick building that advertises: “Yale International School – Playgroup to A Levels.”  I’m not sure Yale is aware of its international counterpart in Dhaka…

We spent our days in Dhaka attending meetings, eating fun dinners and exploring handicraft stores.  Our first dinner was in a Szechuan restaurant for a “hot pot.”  It was described to me aptly as a yin-yang shaped bowl, with the red, evil, bubbling sear-your-tongue spicyness on one side, and the mild, white, brothy, angelic side on the other.  We loaded it up with vegetables and all kinds of fish, black mushrooms (which you must order ahead of time by asking to reserve “fungus” for your dinner).  Then we spooned it out into a bowl, combining the angelic and evil sides into one simmering delight and ate up.  Unfortunately, if you had the wrong balance of evil to good (heavy on the evil), you might find yourself suddenly getting red in the face, your throat lit on fire.  I looked around and noticed that there were beads of sweat dripping down the foreheads of those who had been most ambitious in spooning the chilis into their plates.  At some point, we would look up, realize we had consumed far too much without a break and desperately look around for something, anything to wash the fire away…lime soda, beer, water, the guy’s coconut milk from the next table….

The meal was delicious though.  Although the slight ache in our stomachs convinced us that our next course should be gelato.  Ferraro Rocher gelato at that!

The next few days passed without too much craze.  Driving around Dhaka, however, I realized a couple of things.

1. The city was not planned for more than 16 cars, 30 bicycle rickshaws and 5 autorickshaws to be traveling anywhere at once.  Unfortunately, it is more like 16^300 cars 30^500 bicycle rickshaws and 5^200 autorickshaws on any one street at a time.  It takes an hour to go 2 miles.  An hour.  When you’re driving in one direction and the traffic starts to lighten, you only feel more depressed because you realize that the other side of the road is at a standstill, and that’s the only way home….

2. There is a man on every public bus whose sole job it is to stuff just one more person onto the bus.  Oh, right. The buses.  Imagine giving about 50 large men with anger-management issues mallets and sledgehammers, and putting them in the same room as a giant metal sheet.  Now take the results of that experiment and multiply by 4.  Now put them together and add wheels.  Now you have a public bus on the Dhaka streets.  There will be a man, generally in a blue button down shirt and dark trousers, nonchalantly hanging off of the lower step of the bus as  it rolls through the streets, never stopping, always at a pace that is fast enough that you have to jog to catch up, but slow enough that there is a constant stream of people jumping onto and off of the step.  Men with portfolios and laptops, women in saris, people smoking cigarettes.  They will run up to the step, catch hold of the handle, swing themselves up, and be stuffed into the fray by the bottom-step man, until their faces are pressed up against the grimy glass windows like goldfish in a scummy bowl.  The same process is repeated, in reverse, when you get off.  If you are really lucky (and a man, as I’ve never seen a woman do this), you will swing yourself all the way up to the luggage compartment on the roof, and join 15 or 100 other men sprawled on their high metal perch, surveying the traffic around them.

3. People come out to march for the national political parties with a ferver and pride whose only parallel in the US is with the Subway Series or a Big 10 game or March Madness.  The brightly colored headbands, signs, tshirts, foghorns, entire villages out lining the streets yelling slogans and chanting fight songs…politics in the US does not inspire this kind of feeling and devotion.  We see this only with sports.  On the positive side, in the US, any aggression or violent behavior is tempered and expressed through team rivalry, rather than street protests that become deadly.  But it also seems like we are so much less engaged in the national debate, for lack of passion, thoughts of futility, or maybe just an idea that our opinions don’t matter to what plays out in Washington.  Of course, it’s not as though the daily activities of the government are transparent here in Bangladesh, but the grassroots support creates such a visible difference.  There are designated national days for these marches.  I think the closest that we got to this in the recent past – this boisterous community support of government – was Obama’s inauguration. I wonder if we can get back there…

my adventures have now landed me in Dhaka for a few days, and I’m waiting to start a meeting with a physician here, to pick his brain a bit about the state of chronic disease prevention, surveillance and treatment in this country.  but enough about work

On Thursday, 2 students, a staff member, one faculty member, the driver and me set off on our long (soon to be ill-fated) journey from Gaibandha to Dhaka.  Our day began with a routine…this is despite the fact that, the night before, we had been up on the roof with a guitar singing the national anthems for everyone in our group (bangladesh, US, china, India), then american pie, then some pink floyd, then finishing off with a resounding rendition of acoustatic lady gaga – paparazzi…and had gathered an impressive audience in every window around our rooftop.

We headed into the office, did some work for a few hours, had some meetings, and were rushed off to lunch since, heaven forbid you miss any means- the skies will open and the cook will look at you with a fiery glare (not unlike my almost-famous death look)!!  We gathered our things, and since the Bangladeshi-born Belgian faculty member was leaving for the US, there were many goodbyes, extending into the requisite 45 minute farewell that seems to be ubiquitous in south asia.

We got into the car and headed to Rangpur, where we had exactly “30 minutes” to wrap up some meetings and make some important decisions before we would all be squeezed into the car to catch the plane from Rangpur to Dhaka.

The plane was scheduled to depart at 4:35pm.  Somehow, we had gotten it into our heads that the scheduled departure time was 5pm.  Somehow, no one thought to correct us.  Somehow, this was going to be a problem.

The 30 minutes stretched languidly into 75 minutes, and managed to include tea and cake, a tense discussion of cross-cultural issues in communication, a visit to the data management center, and another round of goodbyes.  We got into the car at 4:15pm.  The airport is 45 minutes away.  On the road, our driver donned his Nascar helmet, and swerved around every bus, cow, bicycle rickshaw, truck precariously carrying sugar cane, and motorcycle carrying father, mother (sitting sideways) baby (sitting between mom and dad), older child (standing at the very front, and maybe a dozen or so eggs to sell at market.  I chose to sit backwards and watch the extreme terror on the faces of the two students who would alternately grab hold of each other and whimper in terror at every swerve.  My residency-induced poker face swung into gear.  Fight or flight senses were all ready to go!  I was just waiting for the code bells to go off….  Meanwhile, my adviser was on the phone with the pilot of the aircraft (who was in the process of readying the plane for take off, mind you) to just hold the plane for the VIPs as he struggled into his official-looking navy suit jacket and we prepared to leap out of the car door while the vehicle was still moving.

We made it to the airport at 4:45pm.  Ran through the nearly empty airport (this consisted of running maybe 20 feet)),and (hurrah!) saw the plane on the runway with the stairs still down.  Wait, why isn’t there anyone to give us boarding passes?  Wait, why wont they do the security checks of our luggage?  Wait, why is my adviser storming through security, through the door, onto the runway outside…only to be stopped by two bangladeshi police with very large guns asking him to “please sir” stop walking towards the plane…which had begun to pull up the stairs and start the propellors…

Needless to say, we didn’t get on the plane.  Amusingly, after all that screaming and yelling and saying “we will call your boss tomorrow,” it ended aimiably with my adviser and the head airport guy shaking hands.  They probably made plans for dinner the next time he was in town.  As this was all going on in Bangla, I wouldn’t be surprised.

So we decided to take the car instead.  We went back to the office (where everyone was chuckling just a little bit) to grab some food and movies for the ride, do some last minute errands, say some more goodbyes, and then we were off.

Kind of.

There was this strange beeping sound on the dashboard, and every so often it would go off.  My adviser was telling funny stories, we were still driving at a breakneck pace, and every so often would lean over and say something in a rather low tone to the driver, who responded in an equally low tone.  My dubious receptors went off.  *Alarm alarm!  Mechanical failure of some sort!  I can’t narrow it down more than that!*   Looking through the windshield, hmmm, interesting…kind of looks like our headlights aren’t on.  And the gauges look for the fuel and the temperature and the speedometer look…not functional.  Ok, Meghana, think fast so that you can be appropriately worried.  What happens when things start flickering and there is a weird sound and, omg, now my adviser is driving, and the driver is opening up the fusebox and fixing it WHILE THE CAR IS MOVING.  It didn’t work.  The annoying tinnitus-like sound continued, and then  I gave my best “Let’s not be stupid now, gentlemen” stare into the rearview mirror and watched as the same menagerie of Bangladeshi road traffic whirled by.  We actually made it about 2.5 hours, and then, suddenly, a 5-star hotel with every pharma and tobacco executive in the country appeared, complete with huge lawns, a fountain, olympic sized pool (into which they didn’t feel like putting a pool filter, so, instead, pump out all of the contents and fill it with fresh water every 2 weeks.  yes, I’m serious).

Turns out that the annoying beeping sounds was the battery near total decimation.  At least this wouldn’t end like my own personal experience with a faulty alternator on the highways of Seattle…as I don’t think there is AAA in Bangladesh…

We landed in the hotel and felt like we were on the moon.  People in business suits.  A blond American woman.  A random Samurai sword hanging on the walls of the lobby (still don’t get this).  Then made our way into the dining room and proceeded to have the best dinner I’ve had in quite a while.  (Anyone have the recipe for malai prawns??).  Then after being yelled at by the guy at the reception desk for who knows what, and after sharing the elevator with a Chinese woman in tight, tapered legging jeans and a bright teal fanny pack (this would make me stare in the US…imagine how obvious we were after living in rural Bangladesh for a week) we finally headed to bed.

Dhaka adventures in prohibition-era smuggling of Chivas into a Chinese restaurant to accompany our Szechuan hot pot will have to wait