I kept hearing about the rickshaw mafia in Dhaka, but never
really believed it much. Supposedly, all the rickshaws in Dhaka are under the
tight management of a few rickshaw lords who take in their daily money from the
skinny wallahs. To tell you the truth, I am not exactly sure what they would
take from them since the hapless wallahs seem to make somewhere around nothing
to 50 cents a day. It must be tough to be a rickshaw lord and to maintain a
lavish lifestyle in this business. But it does exist. In fact, couple of years
ago, in a generous move some USAID-related organization decided on an awesome
project and gave away 10 rickshaws to poor people to help them earn a living. Would
you know it, overnight the rickshaws were gone as the livid rickshaw mafia did
not find it amusing that someone was messing up with the business, USAID be
damned.
And now, I have an entire trash mafia drama on my hands (and
nose) that can easily rival the New Jersey mafia’s trash collection business.
As you might know, the New Jersey mafiosos traditionally own garbage businesses,
which is super useful when you want to dispose of bodies. At least that’s what
you learn from HBO and Toni Soprano (man, that was a good show!). For the past
two weeks, the trash from our 4 trash cans in the open ground-floor garage had
not been emptied. Besides the obvious festering and incubation of critters, the
piling garbage also looks rather unsightly and as of today – smells putridly.
Initially, I thought it hasn’t been collected because of the massive random
dugouts on our street (fyi, we are told that while it took less than 2 weeks to
dig the holes for the pipes and then to cover them up, it apparently will take
5 months to remove the tall mounds of soil and stones covering our street and making
it look like a moon surface and then PERHAPS the street will be paved again).
Today, I learned that our garbage collector vendor (read, a REALLY skinny guy
with a beaten-up old rickshaw cart who collected our garbage) has been threatened
over the past few weeks and apparently was beaten down this morning while
trying to collect the trash. Apparently, he is the victim of an extortion
scheme and his rickshaw trash wagon (!) was taken away from him. So, much like
in NJ – do NOT mess with the trash mafia in Dhaka.
This week the Diplomat was gallivanting in NYC celebrating
10 years of his business school graduation while I slogged away at home. OK, I
did not slog that much – I admit to going out almost every night of the week
after putting Son to sleep. As a matter of fact, on Friday night I did my favorite
thing in Dhaka – I MC-ed another fabulous fashion show at the Radisson Hotel.
Now, if you are a regular reader, you’ll recall that I love doing those fashion
shows and one of my favorite parts is the hair and makeup before the show. I
just love saying to people who call me on a show day, “oh, I can’t talk now, I
am going into hair and makeup!” Now,as I have said before, makeup is a whole different beast in Bangladesh. It is a vastly lucrative
business here, especially during wedding season where unsuspecting but
welcoming brides get so much cosmetics slathered on their face, neck and arms
that they are typically unrecognizable by their relatives. In fact, during a
recent wedding I did not realize the person next to me was the bride (whom I know pesonally) and so I asked her how she was related to the family...Awkward...
My makeup usually is no exception. I have a running joke
with myself how much the artist will botch up my face. I have learned by now
what NOT to allow them to do – create raccoon black eyes (looks particularly
hideous on white skin), put superdark eye shadow that makes me look like a mass
murdered from a zombie movie, or give me bright-red lipstick which makes me look like an ageing Liz Taylor. On Friday, I warned my makeup artist against all of these
pitfalls. I saw her choose great colors, put a lot of good attention to the
right places and gave her a menacing look when she reached for the black
eyeshadow. I thought it was going great. The offensive touch came right out of
left field and was completely unexpected. I noticed that she was spending an
inordinate amount of time on my eyebrows – you know, after you have painted the
whole face thickly with foundation, you have to repaint some stuff hidden
underneath, like the eyebrows. I get that. What I wasn’t prepared for were the
two giant eyebrows painted on my face that did not even start on the same
level. Combined with my huge painted lips, I was an uncanny replica of the
ugly stepsister Doris from Shrek. OK, I did not have the poignant mole. I
probably should have, for completeness sake.
So, for my next show, I think I will cool it off with the
makeup. Despite everyone’s assurances that one needs embellished makeup when
they are on the stage because of the bright lights and what have you, I really
do not think anyone needs to be exposed to eyebrows like that. They were so
thick and long that I think even some folks in Nepal saw them that night from
their balconies.
The Diplomat is coming back tomorrow morning. He asked me on the phone what I would
like from NYC and gallantly offered to get me a bottle of perform from the
airport duty free. Yup, nothing says “I thought about you while I was in NY and
wanted to get you something special” like a duty free perfume. I declined. I am
afraid I wasn’t particularly gracious about it though.
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