Lost
Belaluddin
Did you ever get lost? I did. A few times during my life. Here are a couple of my LOST stories.
It was the late fifties and I hadn’t started kindergarten (path-shala) yet. We lived in Rongpur at that time, in a large gated community with walls on all sides. It sprawled over a large area with dozens of fruit trees and several homes. There was only one large gate to enter and exit the compound and it was always guarded. The gate had a large peep hole and sometimes I used to put my face through the hole to see the outside world. One morning while doing exactly that, I saw a one horse carriage trotting along the street in front of our complex. A small street kid a little older than me was running behind it trying to hop on to the small seat on the back of the carriage. We exchanged glances and he said “come, come”. Suddenly it felt like the adventures and excitements of the whole outside world was calling out to me through him! How could I refuse!! So, I slipped outside gate and started running with the boy. He hopped on to the seat, then grabbed my hand and asked me to do the same. Trying to prove that I was no less, I did the same and the two of us sat on the back seat unbeknownst to the carriage driver and his other passengers. It was unbelievably exciting for me and I was totally consumed in the moment. There were so many things to see! We passed many houses, different colors, different people, different children playing outside the homes. We saw a very large bird like an ostrich with a rope tied around its neck with a child pulling it in a direction it didn’t particularly want to go. After a while totally out of the blue, my new friend said he was leaving and just jumped off the seat and disappeared! I wanted to jump off as well but was too scared to do it, so I hung on. Time went by and soon I started missing my parents. I wanted to go back home but couldn’t jump off the seat. I sat there for what seemed like an eternity. The sun was setting and it started getting dark, the carriage slowed down a little but I still was unable to jump off. The carriage then turned left leaving the main road and started moving slowly through a field. At one point the terrain got really rough and the carriage slowed down to almost crawling speed. It gave me a chance to jump off and I did! As the carriage moved away from me and disappeared into the darkness, I found myself in a field all alone in the dark. Instinctively, I started walking towards the main road in the direction we had come from. I had no idea how I was going to return home, or even where home was!
As I walked along the main road, I saw a man on a bicycle with a light coming towards me. As he came near me, I stopped him and told him that I was lost and that I wanted to go home. He asked me where home was. All I could tell him was “I live in the Dimla Raaj compound in Dhaap”. He seemed shocked and asked what I was doing so far away from home! I told him I had jumped on the back of a horse carriage and couldn’t get off. He asked me my father’s name and I told him. He said “your parents must be worried sick, don’t worry, I’ll take you home”. He pulled me up and made me sit sideways on the bicycle rod in front of his seat and took off!
It was quite late in the evening by the time he dropped me home. The whole neighborhood was in frenzy! My parents were very grateful and thanked the man many times. My father shook his hand so hard that I thought it was going to fall off! I expected a good telling off but my parents were so relieved to have me back that they must have forgotten about it. Needless to say, I never ventured out again.
While we are on the subject, let me tell you about the second time I got lost. It was 1961. We were living in a two story house in the BG Press colony in Dhaka. My father had been transferred from Rongpur to Dhaka. I was a proud class 1 student at the Catholic Primary School in Farm Gate. The area we lived in was called Monipuri Para. There was some kind of an exhibition in the city and my older sister who was around 12 at the time wanted to see it. So my father took her and me to see the exhibition. It was warm summer evening. We moved slowly from one stall to another. There were a lot of people. At one point we were watching a dance performance. I tried watching through the gaps in the crowd but couldn’t see anything, so I let go of my father’s hand and moved forward a little for a better view. When the show finished I looked up to find my dad but amid hundreds of people I couldn’t find him anywhere! I shouted “ABBA” a few times but there was no response. As I frantically looked around, I saw a loud speaker on a bamboo pole spitting out announcements. It suddenly dawned on me that if I screamed through the loud speaker, my father would certainly hear me! So I followed the wire from the loud speaker to see where the announcements were actually coming from. As I followed the wire, it led me through a maze of stalls and ended in a tall tower with a ladder leading up to a small office. It was like a high bamboo watch tower in the old movies. I climbed up the ladder to the office and found a couple of men making the announcements. I walked over to one of them and said “my father got lost, I’m looking for him”. He looked at me surprised and repeated “your father got lost?” I said “yes”. He asked me my father’s name and I gave it to him. He promptly picked up the microphone and announced through the loudspeaker, “Mr. Sayeed Uddin, you are lost, your son is looking for you. Kindly come to the office immediately”. He repeated it three times. Very soon my father appeared at the office looking disheveled, huffing and puffing – and we were happily reunited.
Shortly after that incident, my older brother started working for the National Shipping Corporation. I don’t know what his job was, but he often had the chance of travelling on large ships. On one such occasion, he asked my father if he could take me with him on a two-day trip to Barisal. I was in class three at the time. It was summer vacation and I was getting bored at home. Upon my repeated persistence, my father gave in and allowed my brother to take me with him on the trip. We boarded the oceangoing vessel in Narayanganj and settled in for the journey. Suddenly, my brother remembered that he had left the Barisal office keys at home. Since we still had a few hours until departure, my brother decided to make a mad dash home for the keys. He told me “Stay in the cabin and do not leave until I return.” I said “ok”.
Minutes passed by and turned into hours; my brother didn’t show up. I started to worry. Soon it was departure time and with a few loud whistles the large vessel left port – without my brother! I waited. When the ship started moving steadily towards Barisal and the departure commotion died down, I came out of the cabin and started looking around the deck area. Soon I saw a good-looking young man in a uniform. I went over to him and asked him “are you the Captain?” He looked at me, smiled and replied “no I’m not, but I can take you to him”. I followed him to the control deck, he introduced me to a well dressed older man and said “here’s the Captain”. The captain looked at me inquisitively and asked “what can I do for you young man?”. I explained the situation to him. He gave out a loud laugh and said “don’t worry, go back to your cabin, eat and drink in the canteen as much as you like and enjoy the journey. We’ll be in Barisal tonight; you can stay with me. Tomorrow I’ll be bringing another ship back to Narayanganj. You can come back with me, but you’ll have to make your own way home. Will that be okay?” I thanked him and asked him “can you please contact my brother’s office and let them know about the situation? Also, can you please ask for my brother to meet me at the port when we return?” He said “no problem, I’ll do that”.
We arrived at Barisal port on schedule, the Captain took me with him to his home. I slept good. I remember hearing a lot of crows early morning and thought Barisal must have a lot of crows! After breakfast I accompanied the captain to the new ship and headed back home. I don’t remember anything at all from that trip. It must have been uneventful. Upon arrival at Naraynganj, my brother picked me from the port and we went back home. I am sure he had received and earful from our father but that must have happened before my return home because I didn’t notice anything. I was glad to be back home.
Now that you have read some of my lost stories, allow me to digress a little and tell you a different story. My Khalu was a very flamboyant character. Among many of his flamboyance was his cottage in Savaar on the bank of the Karnatali river about nine hundred feet upstream from The Doleshwari river. I spent much of my childhood at his cottage. Swimming across the 150-200 feet wide Karnatali river was a favorite sport for my cousins and myself. In the rainy season the river used to swell up a lot and the current pulling us towards the wild Dhleshwari was unbelievably strong. That is probably why we liked it so much. During one of those rainy season days in the late sixties an incident took place. I was a young teenager at the time. Our home was in Shamoly, a few hundred feet from the Asian highway opposite the Shamoly Cinema which wasn’t there at the time. My uncle’s house was in College Gate about one kilometer down the road. It was about 10am in the morning. It was going to be a hot and humid day. There was no school and I was wondering about what mischief I could get into when Liakat, one of my cousins barged into my room and almost screamed “Quick, let’s go, we’re going to savaar to the cottage to swim, there’s a young white couple who want to swim in the current, come, come, hurry!” Many questions rushed through my mind in milliseconds like “who? What white couple? From where? Do they know how strong the current is?” Etc. but before I could verbalize any of them, he said “don’t ask questions, we’ll talk in the taxi. Now let’s go!” When I ran with him to the taxi, I saw Mahabbat, Hashmat and Barkat in the taxi with a young white couple in their twenties. Everyone seemed very eager and excited. Seven of us cramped in the 3 wheeler taxi. During the half hour trip, I found out that they were journalists from Austria. I asked them if they had ever gone swimming in strong current. The young lady said “I swam the English Channel, don’t worry about me”. That promptly shut me up.
By noon we were all ready to jump in the rough and rowdy Karnatali tributary flowing very fast into the Dhaleshwari river about 900 feet downstream. The young lady wore a bikini which was an anomaly in that part of the world but none of us cared, there was a challenge to be conquered! The white man stepped in the water, felt the current and immediately changed his mind. He said “you guys go ahead, I’ll wait here!” Five of us got in the water, I noticed Barkat was missing. Then I heard a loud yell like Tarzan and saw him dive into the current from the cottage roof! He was clearly showing off. Anyway, we started our swim and found ourselves being pulled towards the main river. By the time we got across, the current had carried us almost to the mouth of the main river about 600 feet downstream! When it was time to go back, Mahabbat, Liakat and Shahadat said they’d take a boat back. They asked the white girl to join them, but she was adamant and said she wanted to swim back. In order to avoid being swept into the main river Barkat, the girl, Hashmat and I walked back about 600 feet up stream and started our swim back. Everything was going great. I was comfortable in the current. Barkat who swam like a fish was ahead of everyone, the girl was a few feet behind him and I was a few feet behind the girl partly keeping watch over her, feeling responsible in some way. Half expecting the unexpected.
Everything seemed great, but suddenly I heard the girl say “I Can’t”. She said it only once almost like a whisper and disappeared in the murky water right in front of me! I was a confident swimmer, but on that day with the strength of the current I couldn’t find the confidence to go after her. I immediately screamed out “Barkat, Barkat, she went down!!” Immediately, like a fish Barkat dove into the fast-flowing current, found her and pulled her up. She had lost consciousness. While we held on to her in the deep fast flowing current, I started screaming for a boat. Luckily there was a boat close by carrying a village woman across. They came right over and we rolled the unconscious woman onto the boat. The village woman in Burqa saw the unconscious white woman in a skimpy bikini and started screaming! We were only about 30 feet from shore where this happened. As soon as the boat docked, we carried the woman ashore, pumped her stomach and thank God, she regained consciousness soon. Right next to us another boat pulled up with an unconscious Hashmat. It was quite an experience that day. I don’t think the white journalists ever went swimming in Bangladesh after that.
The backdrop of my last “lost” experience is UK, late 1974. I was living in Wimbledon at the YMCA at 200 The Broadway at that time. The YMCA was like the United Nations of young people. I think we had all nationalities there. I made a lot of friends in a short time and was really enjoying my stay. During the last week of December 1974, around 15 of us decided to go to Trafalgar Square to celebrate the coming of the new year, 1975. So around 7pm on December 31st 1974, we took the “Tube” (underground railway) from Wimbledon to Trafalgar Square. The sight at Trafalgar Square was mind boggling, even for a young man from Bangladesh who was used to seeing large gatherings. There were thousands and thousands of mainly young people, all screaming and happy, wishing each other a great new year, hugging everyone. We all were in wonderful spirit. Trafalgar Square well known for pigeons – appeared devoid of pigeons that night, we must have scared them away.
Shortly after midnight, I got separated from my group and found myself quite lost. People started disappearing and soon, by about 1am, there was hardly anyone around and I started panicking because soon there would be no buses or “tube” and I didn’t have enough money to return to Wimbledon by cab. I asked people where the nearest tube station was and soon found myself going through a dark and deserted alley looking for the tube station. The alley was long and as I made my way through the darkness, I saw two shadows coming towards me from the opposite direction! I was scared but kept moving forward. The shadows were on the other side of the alley and as they moved closer, I noticed that they were two very menacing looking young men a few years older than myself. As they came closer, they saw all 98 pounds of me and made a bee line towards me crossing the alley. It was about 1:30am in the dark alley. There was no one else around. As they came closer, I noticed one was a white man and the other black. Both very fit and around 6 feet tall. They kept walking looking straight ahead and pretended not to notice me, but as soon as they came face to face with me, they attacked me violently without provocation. The very first strike was a low kick aimed directly at my groin area by the black man. With both hands crossed I blocked the kick but I hand to bend a little to do that. Immediately, the white man threw a high kick which struck my forehead with a loud thud. It shook me up and I felt dizzy but I knew I must not fall because falling down would mean the end of me. From the way they stood, I could tell that both assailants were well versed in martial arts. I only had two options, fight or flight. Flight option was taken away because they blocked in a triangle and there was a wall behind me. I couldn’t escape. The only options were to fight back or accept the beating. Since I had no idea how the beating would be with no witnesses around, I decided to fight back. I put my fists up and took a fighting stance. I knew I could reach more than 5 feet with my straight lefts, plus during 1971, the Gurkhas had taught how to gauge eyes out – but I knew nothing about kicks and I had already received two! I bobbed and weaved a bit, but didn’t step back. As soon as I started to fight back, I noticed hesitation among them and realized that they didn’t know me either! They didn’t know what I could or could not do. I decided to take advantage of their hesitation and keeping my fists up, stepped over the extended leg of the black man and started walking towards the train station. I didn’t look back because I was half sure that they wouldn’t run after me because bullies are essentially cowards and they’ll almost always back away from a real fight. Luckily, after a few seconds of hesitation, they decided to give up and continued walking in the other direction. I was ready to run anyway and they would never catch me if I got a good start. I got back to the YMCA around 3am and found my friends all worried and tense about me.
Next morning, I heard on the news that a man was kicked to death by “one or more” assailants very close to the area where I was attacked!