Chapter 7 Dacca
Hotel S----- is the best hotel in Dacca, capital of East Pakistan. As I waited to register, an American, with raised voice was telling the Manager what he thought of the hotel and its of survival once the new Inter-Continental Hotel was completed. The Manager, a young, good-looking Pakistani, emerged from the encounter with credit and dignity.
"Why," I wondered later, "do tourists get so worked up over trifles? This is an old-style hotel; the dining-room is gay with white-and-red uniformed waiters, swarthy, bearded and turbaned; the headwaiter has an engaging smile and a patriarchal beard some three square feet in area; the doorman is a midget with large, soulful eyes; a four-piece string and percussion ensemble plays music of the 1890's, giving the illusion of a recession in Time as well as a shift in Space; barefoot porters trot around with suitcases, briefcases, or hatboxes perched on their heads; everything so strange and fascinating! Why criticise it for not being a different sort of hotel?"
Towards midnight, when I was trying to fall asleep, it occurred to me that this business of "old style" could be overdone. In practical terms it meant that the hotel had been built to allow maximum circulation of air, for coolness. This, inevitably, gives maximum amplification of noise, and Goodman or Wharfedale would instantly have recognised and approved of the design principles. If someone on the ground floor coughed, it could be heard throughout all floors. A large proportion of the population of Dacca apparently lives in the corridors of the hotel, and I judged that in different parts of the corridor were being held a political meeting, a religious campaign, preliminary heats of the Asian Games and - immediately outside my door - the "Noisiest Men in Dacca" contest.
By one in the morning, the tumult and the shouting had died. I adjusted my head on the pillow and started, mentally, to recite the last section of "Lycidas”, from "Weep no more, woeful shepherds". For an examination I had committed this to memory two decades ago and I have since found it far superior to counting sheep, as a soporific. Then the dogs began to bark. There were six or seven of them, sometimes working independently, sometimes in concert. They were galloping around the grounds and into a new, unfinished wing of the hotel, adjacent to my room.
In the morning, I tackled the Manager.
"Why, yes'. I too heard dogs!" he said, clearly happy to be able to confirm a guest's story. When I had enlarged on my feelings, he promised that he would "complain" - to the dogs no doubt. The two following nights were just as bad, but at least, I reflected, summoning as much philosophy as I could muster, there is nothing new in all this. As long ago as July 1st, 1667, Samuel Pepys was noting in his diary: "Up betimes, about 4. o’clock, by a damned noise between a sowgelder, and a cow and a dog, nobody after we were up being able to tell us what it was".
East Pakistan, separated from the West "Wing- by over a thousand miles of India, is about the same size as England, and with its population of 60 millions is one of the most heavily populated countries in the world. Much of the year it is hot and humid. It is a green and watery place, plagued by cyclones and attendant floods. The mighty "Father Brahmaputra" and his tributaries provide a network of waterways of great commercial value. The main language is Bengali as distinct from Urdu in West Pakistan, but in both "Wings" English is spoken widely and we11.
In Dacca I met a local journalist, who interrogated me on some of the more abstruse points of Shakespearean drama and wanted to know whether I considered that Shakespeare thought of himself as a "man of his time or a man writing for and belonging to future times".
In England I would probably have been tempted to answer: "That's a very interesting question. Now, would you mind telling me what the hell it means!" - but courtesy here required that I struggle through to some sort of answer. At school he had read Shakespeare first in a simplified English Version, then in the original and had played Desdemona to his friend's Othello in a school production. During my stay, the two of them insisted on taking me to an entertainment by foreign artists - a rage event. There was some initial confusion about whether we would be seeing a ballet dancer or a belly dancer, but this was cleared up when we learned that we were to see a Soviet Cultural Group.
Apart from my main business in Dacca, I had to investigate an enquiry I had received in the post, from a firm with an impressive name - let us call them Trans-Orient Traders, in the hope that no firm with this title exists. I was having some difficulty in locating them. Taxis had twice put me down in the commercial heart of Dacca, taken their fare and departed before I could discover that I was not where I wanted to be. Policemen knew no English, and shops where I enquired pointed vaguely towards the north. At last I was put down by Fakirapool Bazaar and started to search for Trans-Orient Traders.
Their address: "1st Floor" had caused me to look for a multi-storey office block but there seemed to be no building higher than one storey. As I penetrated deeper into the maze-like bazaar, I passed a pool where the local ladies were beating their washing on stones and spreading it out to dry in the sun. I moved on along cobbled tracks accessible only to pedestrians or cyclists in the dry season and navigable by boat in the wet. I was now in the heart of a somewhat squalid bazaar, with its multitudes of tiny shops, most of them little more than a hole in the wall. The building which housed Trans-Orient Traders was certainly superior to these. It was about twenty-four feet square and the ground floor was given up to four shops, each about six feet in every direction, and selling a variety of useful articles from buckets to betel nuts. I walked round this edifice twice before I found the wooden steps leading to the first floor, which consisted of a storeroom and a ten foot by six-foot office – the home of Trans-Orient Traders. In line with the more austere outlook of industrial giants today, the office was simply furnished. it contained one rush-bottom chair, a small table with a battered portable typewriter, and on the red-splashed floor, a spittoon, obviously necessitated by the Proprietor's pan-chewing habits though recalling the ancient quip: "I miss the old spittoon." "Yes, so I see!"
The room was empty and I left my card with a note suggesting that the Director should telephone me at my hotel.
He did not; he knew the game was up if anyone visited his establishment. He was one of the thousands of small "indenting-houses" who, for a few rupees, obtain tender specifications when they are published and try to obtain quotations and agencies from overseas suppliers.