To travel is to expose oneself to the great adventure of the open
road—sometimes literally. In Dhaka, the chaos capital of not just
Bangladesh, but perhaps the entire Indian subcontinent, it is the open
sewers that pose a unique hazard to unaware visitors. And I’m sorry to
say that I’ve already had the rather miserable experience of falling
into one.

A few weeks ago, I was cycling around the upscale neighbourhood of
Gulshan, where a good deal of the foreign missions situate themselves
in the capital. Normally, I am a fairly agile and coordinated person
and I find it quite easy to nimbly pilot my half-size, folding bicycle
between rickshaws, busses and donkey-driven carts.

As I came up to a major road from a side street, I spotted the
culprit sewer before I even began my crossing. It lay in the center of
the road, between the opposing traffic flow and sandwiched between two
pedestrian barriers. A two-foot wide strip of concrete bridged the
sewer, via which pedestrians could make their crossing.

As I cycled up to the gap, I was entirely conscious of the oil-black
pool’s presence, not wanting to imagine what kind of microbial cultures
bubbled away beneath its surface. Unconsciously, however, I knew I
needed to stop in the middle of the road and wait until traffic
travelling on the other side of the street cleared enough for me to
pass.

As I rode onto the thin concrete bridge, my hands instinctively
squeezed my brakes so I could check the oncoming traffic. I put my
right foot out, and rather comically, there was nothing there to meet
it except the fetid puddle. With a screeching yelp—the volume of which
probably turned every head within 30 metres—my entire right leg plunged
into the breach and I toppled over. Fortunately the sewer’s opening was
not human sized and I didn’t tumble into the gaping hole whole.

Unceremoniously, I picked myself up and hobbled over to the other
end of the street. Distraught and disoriented, my stomach churned with
the thought what just happened. I finally gathered up the strength to
meet the eyes of the 15 or so Bengalis who had witnessed my fall and
gathered to watch what I would do next. I managed to blurt out, in my
broken Bengali, that I needed some water. Immediately the small crowd
parted to offer a three two-liter bottles of water, and, without
reservation, they poured it over me and I bathed right on the street,
Bengali style.

To their credit, I do not recall a single person laughing at me.
Everybody, including a nearby policeman, came over to offer me ashen
faces and politely ask after my nationality. I even recall that some of
the crowd shook their heads at the fact that a bideshi (foreigner)
could have such an undignified experience in their country. Once I had
collected myself enough, I shrugged my shoulders and simply laughed it
off and eventually they smiled too. I then hailed a baby taxi and
tossed my bicycle inside. The driver’s confused expression gave me
away—no doubt most of his recent customers didn’t stink of sewer like I
still did.

Random gaping holes in roadways, back streets and footpaths, are a
fact of life in Bangladesh. During the incredible downpours of
Bangladesh’s monsoon season, they often become dangerously obscured to
the inattentive visitor. The caustic effect of corruption and a
corresponding lack of enforcement are the greatest contributors to this
phenomenon in the capital. I reckon that most people who live in Dhaka
have had the unsettling experience of stepping in something foul at one
point in another, or at least missing by only the narrowest of margins.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume the city I currently
call home is full of gaping chasms ready to swallow its unwary
citizens, but there sure are a lot of them. Since that untraditional
Bengali baptism, I’ve noticed that the local papers often publish
photographs of these perilous holes, in the hopes that the authorities
in charge will finally take the steps to get rid of them before they
injure anybody else—local or bideshi.

The current caretaker government in Bangladesh certainly gives me
hope that the country’s deep disparities—both physical and
economic—will eventually be closed. The administration is currently
pursuing a drive to cleanup corruption, and recently added former Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina to jails that are already overflowing with
corrupt businessmen, politicians and whoever the administration deems
to be an enemy of the people. Hopefully they’ll continue plugging the
other random holes as well.