Asian Adventures

1. I missed my flight to Fiji. This is because in the month of December, all airlines leaving Dhaka move their flights up by several hours. Why? The sightless fog which blankets the city every night through the dawn.

Whichever passengers with local Bangladesh phone numbers are notified of this change. Whichever passenger booked her flight from another country online and gave only her email address will arrive at the airport 3 hours early and in fact be 3 hours late.

Said passenger will then spend 2 days arguing her way onto a flight to Hong Kong, but will miss one of only two weekly flights to Nadi, Fiji. She will then spend 3 ridiculously posh days in Hong Kong, courtesy of the wonderful Cecily Park's wonderful parents, eating fishball soup, watching movies in 3D, and seeing light shows in the sparkling rain.

New Years Eve will be spent flying over the Pacific drinking Fijian rum punch as the pilot does the countdown and the attendants and passengers conga line down the aisles. Totally ridiculous, totally fun.

I got to Nadi on January 1, 2010, wired, tired, and a week late. Luckily, this crew of friends have more than just New Years Eve in them. Party queen Melissa had organised her 40th birthday party in Fiji, all the way from San Francisco, and 15 of her friends had flown in from all over to celebrate.

The birthday bash was scheduled for January 3, 2010 and everyone was raring to go. Competing song and dance teams? Check. Naked belly dancing competitions? Check. Sport Illustrated swimsuit modelling? Check. Fire dancing? Check. Gourmet meals? Check. Snorkeling around Castaway Island? Check. Umbrella drinks? Check. World class sound system? Check. Glow sticks in our bikinis? Check. DJs among us? Check. Sailing into the sunset? Check. Cardinal joy? And how.

2. I have high tolerance. This means more drinks, more pills, more tabs, more drops, more drags, more cookies, more magic, more lines, more money, more time. (More on functional damage later).

So at 3am on Malolo Island, the night of Melissa's bash when everyone's crashed out (to their credit, we started partying 12 hours before), what was I doing?

Spraying myself with Deet, and running down the cliff stairs to the beach where the tide had gone out a quarter mile leaving the ocean bed wet and empty and lit up like a black and white photograph below the tumescent moon. (no photos from this episode, so you'll have to look at this beautiful blue moon from Kolkata's Durga Puja (2007)).

I danced to my iPod for the next 4 hours, through the incoming tide, the outgoing fishermen watching bemused, the waning cheesecake moon, the incomparable sun. Arif, in case you're wondering, the song on repeat was Reckoner, by Radiohead. Not a dancy song as such, but who cares when you're alone inside the starry world?

3. I've run out of money. This means I've resorted to siphoning from my mother's rental income from her flat in Shantinagar. $250/month is supposed to be going into a Bangladeshi bank account to fund her retirement. Instead the last 4 months, half that money is funding my rickshaw and CNG rides and the occasional Baishaki meal (I love bharthas). The rest of the time I bum rides, eat at my relatives', sleep in Nadiya's and Neeta's guest rooms, write. Could I live like this forever? Possibly. Should I live like this forever? I think you and my father know the answer to this one.

Come back home, he tells me with some feeling in late February when I'm dropping him off at the airport so he can go back to America. I find it so utterly ironic. Abbu brought me to Bangladesh in 2001 and said, this is your home. This is where your roots are. No mind that I had never lived here and found it alien ground.

Still, I returned on a Fulbright (incidentally 45 years after Abbu's own Fulbright to study in the States). I stayed almost two years to write and photograph my Lovers and Leavers book, found friends and lovers, and rediscovered my extended family. I loved every dirtypretty second. Every year since, I've come back, for a few months at a time, and it's been amazing. I get all the privileges of a guest, all the warmth of a homecoming.

One of these days, I'll look back on the years (4 and counting!) I spent below the poverty line (true this was voluntarily to a certain degree - Wharton BS notwithstanding), and I'll be overwhelmed with the deeply madly beauty in my life.

4. I'm losing my memory. So is my father. His is age related and possibly (horrifyingly) Alzheimers related. Mine is self inflicted hedonist whim. Thank you, JimChae for our ecstatic years in San Francisco which have destroyed a good part of my short term memory, possibly forever. Take, for example, the time I opened a bathroom cabinet (sober) and for a few seconds, forgot the purpose of everything, including myself.

Ergo, my obsession with memory loss and its effect on personality and identity, parlayed into a novel, as yet untitled, as yet with double digit page count, as yet plot free. I am writing it, gay porn scene by gay porn scene, as Dhaka moves from winter to spring to monsoon.

As I have to come up with a synopsis eventually, here's a stab: my novel is about Jewel, a Christ following druggie who's losing his mind. In "Sliding Doors" style, it's also about Jewel, an elderly linguist who's losing his mind. There's also Lailai - his adopted Chinese sister, their crazy Mamma, Rio - Lai's boyfriend, Cruz - Jewel's lover of undetermined gender, and Father Martin - a priest. They live in the model fairy town of Berkeley. This excerpt is for you, sexy Mr. Jack Murnighan.

Jewel swishes his belt out of the loops. It leaves the bone curve of his hips, marks the air with the opposite sine, then falls by his side. He pulls the boy's wrists together, binds the belt around them, and then buckles it to the bedpost. The boy is helpless, liquid with laughter. Jewel's face is still, stern. He's playing his part even if the boy won't.
"Quit your laughing," he hisses. "Want a beating too?"
"Yeah," the boy says, "With a cupped palm."
"Like you get to choose how," Jewel says flipping him over all rough like.
The boy cries out and Jewel turns him back quickly. His eyes are screwed shut, his mouth slightly open. Jewel leans down to kiss him and in doing so brushes against the boy's cock. It's hard. He grins.

5. The Indians don't want us. Since the Mumbai attacks and then Headley, it's become harder for foreigners to enter or return to India. An aunt in Dhaka was refused entry because it had been too soon since her last visit. Another Bangladeshi American acquaintance was rejected for unknown reasons. Friends have been stranded at borders or spent days in embassies trying to reenter India on perfectly valid visas.

Last November, I was refused a 10 year visa on my American passport due to my birth country being different from my birth citizenship being different from my current citizenship. And the matter of my foolishly saying I was an editor (writers, photographers, filmmakers, repeat after me, I am a project manager).

And god forbid one is a dual citizen Bangladeshi and desires multiple entry visas extending for longer than 2 weeks, entry ports different from exits, land AND air options... My chances of getting everything I asked for? Apparently 100%.

From start to finish, my month touring Delhi, Rajasthan, Bangalore, and Kolkata was a wet dream, picture perfect. Of course, it's always been the case that from the moment I leave Bangladesh for India and put away my dhupatta, I feel free. I walk, wear, say what I want and no second glance my way.

I first thought to go to Delhi because of my good friend Mahmud Rahman's debut publication by Penguin India: a collection of stories called Killing the Water - a strong quiet book stretching from British Raj India to contemporary America, each story set with integrity, thoughtful characterisation, and compelling detail. You can get it in bookstores throughout India, as well as from Abebooks.com.

To celebrate, we organised a reading (Electric Sweet Water Girl) featuring 7 readers at the lovely gallery space, Khoj, sponsored partially by Tranquebar since almost all the writers had appeared in the Tranquebar anthologies, Electric Feather and the New Anthem.

The readers were Mahmud Rahman (natch), Shabnam Nadiya (a Bangladeshi writer, poet, and translator, who incidentally just got into Iowa, the best writing program in the world), Parvati Sharma (Delhi based writer, look for her hilarious short stories, Dead Camels and Other Love Stories, out later this year), Mridula Koshy (with her debut collection published in Delhi last year, If It Is Sweet), Sheba Karim (Pakistani American novelist with a young adult novel out last spring, Skunk Girl), Samit Basu (best selling fantasy and graphic novel writer), and moi.

Over 50 people showed up to listen, drink, and then dance at our raucous kissy afterparty (thank you, Samrat for hosting and Hari for photographing and Nadiya for coming into the bathroom)...

My India visit was defined by my luminous Sheba baby (photo by the uber talented Hari), whose bed I shared for two weeks (though poor recompense for her and Faisal's own disastrous Indian visa dealings). Sheba is in Delhi on a Fulbright researching her second novel, a historical fiction about Razia Sultana. To that end, we went on a 10 day tour of Rajasthan including a 10th century fort in Ranthambore and the fabulous Dhai Din Ka Jhopra in Ajmer.

In non-research related touring, we went on a tiger safari in Ranthambore (not a bagh beheld, but fauna and flora abound), a Sufi qawali in the Dargah at Ajmer, a special lassi and shopaholics tour of Pushkar, and a 5 star Fulbright sponsored holiday in Udaipur. As if this weren't cake enough, on a surprise and fabulous impulse, our hilarious and hot friend Rahim joined us on this trip, a day in Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, and my last weekend in Delhi.

I'll tell one story in detail. In Ajmer, Sheba and I left Rahim outside the dargah with our cameras (no cameras allowed) and went inside. Sheba wanted to give prayers for her parents who had always wanted to visit Ajmer and the saint's tomb (a very holy place for Muslims) but had been thwarted twice now. But we didn't know how or what or where. As we milled in front of the beautiful tiled tomb, I saw a boy watching us. Since he was pretty, I up nodded him over. Tahoor Chisty turned out to be a descendant of the caretakers of the tomb. He procured a silver tray of red petals and led us to the back of the tomb where he said the line would take 5 minutes instead of 50. As instructed, we each took a spilling handful of petals and crouched and huddled and crawled our way into the tomb amidst masses of bodies.

Inside the tomb, it was sweltering, humming, at once hushed and roaring. Tahoor stood in the centre, on one side of a grating, beside the tomb itself. We stood on the other side of the grating and flung the petals over his head, onto the tomb and its luscious tapestry covering. Then he took the corner of the tapestry and pulled it over our heads and said, whatever you wish for now will be granted. And then he prayed over us in his cracked boyman voice.

I'm not religious, but I love ritual, and I rather like the Sufis. They like to dance after all. I watched a spectacular dervish display at Humayun's Tomb one evening. The hand above is the one that receives. The hand below gives.

I must also mention Delhi's ever awesome Qutub Minar, gay boy parties, picnics in the most beautiful city park - Lodhi Garden, my first Holi, and the best farewell party ever. Of course, Sheba has always thrown the most fantabulous parties, ever since those Bachanal nights at Penn more than a decade ago. If I remember correctly, those also featured kissing.

Old friends just met, Mandakini, Rosalyn, Durba, Hari, Anindita, Samrat, Vikram, SK, and Misha, you are beautiful. And thank you pretty Mr. Rana Dasgupta for signing my (Commonwealth Prize winning) copy of Solo (I just got to the Narwhal chapter and it's one of the most beautiful things I've read).

In Bangalore, I got set up in Charan's lux city digs, courtesy of my thugpretty cinematographer ex, Ram, with whom I've wandered many many cities (starting with Philly, San Francisco, Bombay, Chennai, and now Bangalore). And it was a pleasure to finally meet his lovely sweet smart woman, Vinuta. Another highlight was Sharan's farm house, decked out all industrial chic, and eating his mom's stellar food (I want more of that daal, Sharan). I'm only sad because I foolishly didn't charge my camera battery and so don't have photos of our yummy dinner party.

My last stop in India was Kolkata. Kolkata is perhaps one of my favourite cities, visually. I think it's stunningly beautiful, chockful of character, endlessly entertaining. Plus I can speak the language. The last few times I've been, my friend Madhurima and her dad, Kanak Uncle, have been my hosts, and you couldn't ask for kinder, more welcoming people to take care of you.

The first outing the lovely Madhurima (see photo to left) took me on was one of my favourite things I've ever done in Kolkata: a sunset boat ride from Outram Ghat, topped off by fuchka and ice cream . Queue up Chambalamba Jewellers in New Market, Rajasthani thali at Teej, drinks with Rishi and Pooja at Silver Grill, a million metro rides on Kolkata's fantastic subway system (so cheap! so clean! so quick! so often!), the fanciest mall ever (South City), seeing Misha again, and catching up with Saugata (finally!)...

I'm back in Dhaka. In the next month, I have 8 photo albums to organise and upload, editing clients to solicit, taxes to file (my ticket out of Bangladesh?), 2 personal websites to rehaul, 5 residencies to apply to, 30 pages to write, and my 37th birthday party to plan (April 10).

You may send your birthday love cards to:

AH (do spell it out)
c/o Anvir Khan Babu
Apt 1/701
Eastern Peace
30 Shantinagar
Dhaka 1217
BANGLADESH
(I'm here at least through early May, and after that my uncle will forward on...)

Til then, I remain the silver lining in your pocket.