Popagandhi

I’m out here in the middle of nowhere, Sirajgonj, where the food is terrible, in that terrible way I never knew Bangladeshi Bengali food could be (having such intimacy with that cuisine), where the longest piece of clothing I’ve got is still a head dress too short.

I leave for even-more-middle-of-nowhere in 15 minutes just to write and shoot some cases of elephantitis, then try to wrap up before the weekend (that’s Friday here), get out of this country by Monday before our visa runs out but then Pete’s Indian visa will only be ready on Sunday, which doesn’t give us very much time at all before we’re considered overstayers.

So much of travelling and working in South Asia is about being frustrated. Getting to the Indian embassy at 12.03pm, missing the visa application by 3 minutes - just trying to ask a simple question like “how long does the application process take” results in an arbitrary “sorry close come back tomorrow 11am (even if you want to ask simple questions)”. Imagine the frustration involved in having these two options:

Route 1 (in the ideal world)
Sirajgonj (2 hours, car)
Dhaka (7 hours, train or bus, or 30 min flight)
Sylhet (1 hour, car)
Tamabil (border with India, Sylhet-Shillong road, 50km)
Cherrapunjee (Destination)

Route 2 (the real world)
Sirajgonj (2 hours, car)
Dhaka (45 min, flight, too bloody expensive)
Kolkata (18 hours, train)
Guwahati (3 hours)
Shillong (3 hours)
Cherrapunjee (Destination)

All the odds are against us for the “most common sense approach” - our Bangladesh visas say we can only leave by air, and I am racing against time because term is going to start and have yet to start on my big story, and I’m homesick.

I’m homesick, finally, for the first time: homesick for Mother India! Homesick for Dempsey Road wine nights and Villa Bali’s gardens. Homesick for our Arab Street. Homesick for the restaurants I love; there is nothing more I want right now than a good bottle of wine at Godma’s, her lovely wasabi crab mayo and veal, you with me and our proud godmothers beaming. Homesick for late nights in my kitchen talking with my father, who is my greatest fan and biggest strength.

I am so sick, officially sick, of having hundreds of people following me everywhere I go, blocking out light so all photography is a strenuous enterprise, of being mobbed by children, of sitting in front of leprosy patients having their bones and tendons removed (with 3 toes left) and having to try to interview and shoot them at the same time.

I think I won’t be going anywhere for a while once I get home, and my mother will be pleased to hear that. Except maybe Thailand.