Dream, drama, and a decaying city
I wake up to an unusual silence. Or so it seems as I slowly open my eyes. A gentle breeze comes along through the unlocked windowpane. I try to squint outside, baffled by the calm, and end up catching a fresh ray of the early-morning sun. Suddenly, some birds start chirping in the distant, which sounds like a medieval tune in my unaccustomed ears. The air is fresh, strangely fresh, so I take a deep, healing, diaphragmatic breath and then let it go.
Waking up has never felt more refreshing.
Even before I get out of bed, something tells me that today will be different, that being visited by the fabled pin-drop silence in this city of noise may not be the only surprise of the day.
Several things happen in quick succession. I take my first sip of tea of the morning. The newspaper boy arrives. I take a shower. Breakfast is served. I dress up and head downstairs. Only when I step out of our house, after about an hour, do I finally have some time to ponder over the strangeness of today's environment, more specifically, the bizarre headlines from today's newspaper.
It is not what they said that strikes me. It is what they did not. There was no news of rape, child abuse, murder, corruption, leaked question papers, pollutions, human rights violations, public sufferings, or dissidents being sent to jail on flimsy grounds. No freewheeling, logic-defying comments by any politician. The journalists must have had a dull day.
The street ahead is in perfect condition. The pile of garbage that usually adorns it is gone. The potholes, which caused collision, bodily injury and damage to people's automobiles almost on a daily basis, have been patched up nicely. I have to look down the street again to believe the potholes are really gone.
However, a view of the main road comes with an even greater surprise. Before me is a cityscape the like of which I have never seen before. So familiar, yet so unfamiliar. If anything, it looks like something dredged from the picture books used to give infants the idea of a city. And I don't have the slightest idea about how and when this transformation has taken place.
The city before me is quite picturesque. A stream of traffic is moving in a slow, systematic manner. No one is trying to overtake or honk their way around another. The road is clean, intact and spacious, much more spacious than the roads I knew, with storm-drains and gutters to drain excess water. Waterlogging, it appears, is a thing of the past. The pedestrians are using footbridges instead of weaving between vehicles. No shouting. No spitting. No careless throwing of cigarette butts or chewed betel leaf.
There are roadside waste-containers placed every few metres to prevent littering. The bins look like they are used, emptied and sanitised at regular intervals.
Getting on a bus, I take a window seat and look outside to see a clear skyline unaffected by smog. This neighbourhood that I once thought I knew has now transformed into a pleasant sight, dotted with public parks, large school campuses, playgrounds flanked by ponds, no wires dangling from the utility poles. The buildings on both sides of the road are evenly spaced, with enough room for pedestrian movement in front of their garages.
Before the reality of what I am witnessing begins to sink in, our bus begins to slow down. A child in school uniform gets in. Apparently, students as well as the general public are now less dependent on private vehicles and instead using public buses for their daily commute. The child sits beside me, unfazed by the company of a total stranger.
From what I understand from the conversations of my fellow passengers, the city's law and order situation has improved greatly. Women and children are no longer afraid to go out alone. A benevolent government is now in power, which takes care of all citizens irrespective of their gender, faith, wealth or political leanings. What it lacks in resources, they say, it makes up for in its dedication towards its people. And it has spent a large part of its resources on primary education, youth and industrial development.
Dhaka is still the capital city but decentralisation has taken root, meaning there are now fewer people in the capital and less pressure on its existing infrastructure as the offices of important ministries, public institutions, business entities and factories have been relocated to other cities, and the authority and financial resources for providing public services transferred to local units of government agencies.
This redistribution of authority and resources, backed by a pro-people development policy, has not only created greater opportunities for the less developed areas in the country, but has also practically saved the capital from being totally unliveable.
About 30 minutes in, I get off the bus near a signalised intersection with crossing opportunities for pedestrians, cyclists and ambulances. I come across a transgender police officer manning the special lanes. While seeing a member of the marginalised community in a position of authority heartens me, my attention is soon drawn to a patch of grass that was once the site of a slum.
Upon my enquiry, the officer tells me that the residents of the slum have been rehabilitated in an industrial zone outside the city. In fact, living and working opportunities have been created for the former residents of all the slums, street people and beggars outside the city, as part of a massive human resources development plan, which helped improve its living conditions and the overall economy.
Special reintegration measures have also been taken to address the plight of the members of all marginalised people, including the LGBT and Bihari communities, and turn them into productive citizens.
I move from place to place, road to road and neighbourhood to neighbourhood to hear stories of how a city—and a country—transformed itself and improved its physical, social, environmental and political health not through the powers of magic, but the powers of concerted efforts, good planning and judicious use of its resources.
***
When I dream about my city, it looks more or less like the one narrated above. The dream may seem dramatic and quite impossible but it's one shared by an increasing number of people who can see the pillars of their city crumbling down bit by bit, and the fact that they can't do anything about it makes the pain worse. But it doesn't hurt any more than the futile promises of the politicians who seem to have sworn to never try and fulfil them, or forget their divisions to unite for a common cause. But the silver lining is, if you want something bad enough, and never stop trying to get it, it may happen. A city defines a civilisation, as someone had once said, and with our collective strength and determination, we can still save our city—and indeed our country—and remodel it to represent the best that there is in our civilisation.
Badiuzzaman Bay is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.