Fear and Loathing in Downtown Dhaka
This was written after the my first week here in Bangladesh. Tim and I were returning to Dhaka from a four day trip to the northern district of Mymensign. Our car company reminded me of Hunter Thompson's two main characters from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas played by Johhny Deep and Benicio Del Toro. I therefore wrote this little ditty mimicking that style. Don't worry, no one was hopped up on anything. Enjoy!
We were driving through the streets of Dhaka and I was all hopped up on malaria pills. Cars were flying by like bats out of hell except there was no where to go, no room to turn; I had a feeling that we were going to become the feral fiend’s late night snack. The billboards were shifting in shape and form and all I could hear was the incessant sound of the honking horn. I gripped the handle bar in front of me and crouched towards the dash board shifting focus rapidly from side to side. I was mumbling incoherent incantations to myself while my partner kept his eyes fixed on the road, at ease with himself and his surroundings. The traffic stopped but the honking did not, and my compadre and I found ourselves victims of an ill placed traffic light.
“Salaam, will this light ever turn! Who ever thought of traffic lights anyways man? They have to be the most messed up concoctions ever! I tell you they call them traffic lights because they for causing traffic jams! Frickin' stupid westerners, you don’t need traffic lights if you have brains…I tell ya man!”
My partner went on like this for a good hour before he realized we had been clear of the jam for a good twenty minutes now. My hands were still clutched to the handle bar and I began to hunker down, down, closer to the dashboard until my nose touched the cheaply made plastic. My mind was reeling and I began to wish that my partner would shut up. He started rousing the attention of the two we had picked up in Mymensingh before we started on this crazy escapade. I didn’t know their names or if they were hopped up on something because they didn’t stop talking until we reached the outskirts of Dhaka.
We were driving through the streets of Dhaka and I was all hopped up on malaria pills. Cars were flying by like bats out of hell except there was no where to go, no room to turn; I had a feeling that we were going to become the feral fiend’s late night snack. The billboards were shifting in shape and form and all I could hear was the incessant sound of the honking horn. I gripped the handle bar in front of me and crouched towards the dash board shifting focus rapidly from side to side. I was mumbling incoherent incantations to myself while my partner kept his eyes fixed on the road, at ease with himself and his surroundings. The traffic stopped but the honking did not, and my compadre and I found ourselves victims of an ill placed traffic light.
“Salaam, will this light ever turn! Who ever thought of traffic lights anyways man? They have to be the most messed up concoctions ever! I tell you they call them traffic lights because they for causing traffic jams! Frickin' stupid westerners, you don’t need traffic lights if you have brains…I tell ya man!”
My partner went on like this for a good hour before he realized we had been clear of the jam for a good twenty minutes now. My hands were still clutched to the handle bar and I began to hunker down, down, closer to the dashboard until my nose touched the cheaply made plastic. My mind was reeling and I began to wish that my partner would shut up. He started rousing the attention of the two we had picked up in Mymensingh before we started on this crazy escapade. I didn’t know their names or if they were hopped up on something because they didn’t stop talking until we reached the outskirts of Dhaka.
posted by rach at 2:19 AM
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