The Foreign Service Journal, April 2004

76 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 4 W e were coming around Gulshan Circle toward the bridge to Baridhara when Shaun said, “This would be a great way to start a book.” “What?” I said, dodging a beggar in a dirty dress. “The sense of potential?” We were heading we knew not where through the noisy heat of a Dhaka night. At 9 o’clock on a Friday night, when you are not yet 18, there still is a sense of potential. “That, too,” said Shaun, sidestep- ping an oncoming rickshaw as he fend- ed off the eager wallah (driver) of another. “I was thinking about the sen- sory overload, though.” Nighttime activity was at its peak. The traffic around the circle was the usual swirling hell of three-wheel bicy- cle rickshaws; lawnmower-powered baby taxis; old cars; battered buses; laden trucks; hand-pulled bamboo carts; the tank-like SUVs of the expats and upwardly-mobile Bangladeshis; and pedestrians like us. The noise from this jumble was correspondingly confused: horns blared, engines growl- ed, rickshaws rattled and their bells rang, baby-taxis coughed consumptive- ly, and taxi wallahs and tea hawkers called for customers. Shouts, snorts, the entreaties of beggars, and ordinary conversation added to the din — all topped off by the piercing wail of Hindi movie music. On the ground, it was an impene- trable web of humanity. From above, the complex weave of traffic, light and life at Gulshan Circle must have ap- peared as one more element of an in- tricate earthly mandala (the holy Bud- dhist circle of the universe) — precise and perfect. As we crossed Gulshan Avenue to the east side, I said, “Potential and sen- sory overload. Good combination.” “You could do something with it,” Shaun agreed. I can’t remember the rest of the conversation as we followed Kemal Ataturk Avenue to the bridge. I’m sure it fell into the usual vein: movies, school, friends, life and other triviali- ties. But I remember what we saw. In the darkness, the bridge to Baridhara was awash with myriad mov- ing points of light — headlights, street lamps, flickering candles of roadside tea stands, squares of brightness from windows — all standing out brilliantly from the indigo of the sky and water. And on the far side of the lake, golden arms of light from street lamps reached across the water. But, above this, the sky was aglow with a faint luminescence. I had ob- served that fluorescence many times — sometimes rosy pink, sometimes gold. On nights when I came home late, I would stop and look at the dark sweep of the lake, framed by the scat- tered lights from buildings on each bank. I suppose it was just light pollu- tion, but it had an ethereal, unearthly quality. The human lights around us were solid, clear, and one-dimensional. In contrast, the halo of Rickshaw Bridge pervaded the skyline, formless, translucent, always fixed in the same curl around the bridge. It seemed to promise infinity, clarity, peace, an end to the chaotic city. That luminescence drew the aimless, man-made lights toward it. It was the fixed point, the center of the circle. Yet, the center of the circle is forev- er empty; all paths bend toward it, but no path ever leads to it — at least not in our geometry. After that brief pause over the lake, we continued into the trees on the Baridhara side. Off the main thoroughfare, things were qui- eter. Five blocks down U.N. Road, and we were well into the “George- town” of Dhaka. As we ambled into Baridhara, the sensory overload faded away to the familiar — just the rush of headlights from a passing car and the heat resting on our foreheads. Po- tential likewise dissipated into the quiet. It seemed to promise infinity, clarity, peace, an end to the chaotic city. Max Uphaus, an English major at the College of William & Mary (class of 2006), spent his last two years of high school in Bangladesh, where his father was stationed with USAID. The stamp is courtesy of the AAFSW Bookfair “Stamp Corner.” R EFLECTIONS Rickshaw Bridge B Y M AX U PHAUS