(This article was first published in our October 2008 issue.)
Cities, even as they grow and swell with the passing of the years, are said to retain their essential individual characteristics. But not, it seems, Dhaka. Has there ever been a city so far removed from the incarnations of its past? Now, it is a truism that all cities change with time, and cities in Southasia – which have experienced unprecedented growth, development, urbanisation and industrialisation over the past 50 or 60 years – have almost uniformly metamorphosed from colonial backwaters into exploding megalopolises. Still, though, there is something in Dhaka's extraordinary transformation that seems to go beyond the typical.
Dhaka today is utterly unrecognisable as the sleepy, charming, tranquil town it was even half a century ago. There is something thoroughly startling about this transmutation from a genteel and sedate town of tree-lined avenues, ponds, canals and spacious bungalows set amidst overgrown gardens – to this present incarnation as a dizzying metropolis of 12 million people, blaring automobiles and block after block of unpainted concrete apartments, as far as the eye can see. But the difference is more than merely in the physical transformation; it is also one of tone and feel. Dhaka today is a high-octane megacity, where life is fast and furious (except for the traffic, which remains slow and torpid), where anger and violence simmer beneath the surface.
The city is a tinderbox, where muggers, petty thieves and hijackers are routinely beaten to death by angry crowds of vigilantes; where disgruntled industrial workers take over the streets at a moment's notice; where violence and anarchy are never far away. Dhaka is always seething, swelling, heaving and pulsating. From the rickshaw puller to the taxi driver to the traffic policeman to the garment worker to the college student to the peon to the well-heeled professional – sometimes it seems as though the one thing that everyone in Dhaka has in common is anger. Anger forever bubbles beneath the surface of this once-placid town, threatening to boil over at any moment. It is this anger that differentiates the Dhaka of the 21st century from the Dhaka of the past. And it is this coarsening that is the most wrenching and remarkable of the changes wrought by history.