Reading

There are none of the distractions of home in Dhaka so I can concentrate on things. Current projects are a book (collection of essays by colleagues) on the Bangladesh media. Surprisingly (may be not) there's nothing out there apart from a few attempts to promote development communication and a few dispersed essays, so we have high hopes. A second book is also being worked, which is much more polemical- an attack on the dominant development communication paradigm that is so popular with NGOs here in Bangladesh. I'm also toying with an idea for a coffee table book on the markets of Dhaka with Shahjahan Siraj. More of these later.

I als get the opportunity to read a lot and have just finished Shazia Omar's Like a Diamond in the Sky(Penguin India), which is a young persons' novel about the rich brats of Gulshan and Banani, who drink, take drugs and have sex -frequently in all cases - and generally behave as another species. It's certainly difficult to relate them to the poor you see in the street or the students I teach although I'm reliably informed Shazia reports pretty accurately a stratum of Bangladesh society few people know about. Its a sharp reminder that you can't generalise about Bangladesh as there's too much diversity. It's also a sharp reminder of the discrepancies that exist; between the very rich and the abject poor. What's interesting is that the most attractive and positive character in the book comes from the poor and its not a saccharine portrayal; Lalliana, knows her place, recognises the injustice but gets on with it anyway. I can't say I felt much empathy with the rich kids or really enjoyed the book but it is an interesting take on contemporary Dhaka that avoids the earnestness of much contemporary Bangladeshi writing.

The other reading is Willem van Schelden's History of Bangladesh (Cambridge). Brilliant!