Reason Number 376 Why it Sucks to be a Rickshawalla

The other day Jen and I decided to go out for dinner. This is not unusual. We’ve been sampling the local restaurants with considerable frequency. There’s an excellent Thai restaurant halfway between Gulshan 1 and Gulshan 2. Right next door is a Chinese place that makes excellent soup but lousy tofu. Some blocks away is a Korean restaurant that ranks among Jen’s favorites. For cheaper eats there is an assortment of Bengali restaurants. The unifying theme in all of these is rice - rice and oil.

The other night, partly in an effort to avoid rice and oil and partly just to satisfy our curiosity, we decided to try the local Pizza Hut. We both recalled seeing a Pizza Hut somewhere in the vicinity of Gulshan 1. In fact both of us were pretty convinced that it was somewhere near the Thai place between the two Gulshans. Donny, another Fulbrighter, claimed that it was south of Gulshan 1, which was at odds with my recollection. The point is we didn’t know exactly where we were going. Which, of course, makes it a little more difficult to get there.

Our transportation options typically consist of either a rickshaw (three wheeled human powered vehicle) or a CNG (three wheeled compressed natural gas powered vehicle). Rickshaws are cheaper, quieter, less smelly, and generally nicer. However, they are restricted from traveling on certain big roads except for at certain times. And there always seems to be some confusion about what roads and what times those are. This past Saturday there was some rickshaw traffic between on the big road between Gulshan 1 and Gulshan 2. So we decided to try our luck and hired a rickshaw to take us toward Gulshan 1.

Traffic was moving along nicely until we came to an intersection where a police officer was waving the rickshaws off the main road. Unbidden by us, our rickshawalla tried to plead his case with the police officer, pointing to the white people on his rickshaw. No exceptions! We were forced to take the side road. Normally this would be fine, except this time we didn’t really know where we were going. So we didn’t know how far down the main road we needed to go before getting off.

The rickshawalla took us around the block and back to the main road. O.k. fine, we probably didn’t miss it yet. We continue down the main road. Ahead there is another cop at an intersection waving the rickshaws off the main road. This time our rickshawalla doesn’t stop in time to make the turn. The police officer yells at him. The rickshawalla pleads his case pointing to his bideshi cargo. No exceptions! But this time we have to turn around a full 180 degrees in order to get back to the side road. The rickshawalla dismounts to make the turn. But he’s not moving fast enough, apparently, because the angry police officer comes over and WHACK! WHACK! with his baton, hits him on the butt. That was totally unnecessary, but Jen and I are both speechless. Nothing comes to mind fast enough to say in the rickshawalla’s defense.

Having turned around, we continue several more blocks down side roads. At this point it seems there’s a fair chance we’ve missed our desired destination. So we take the next opportunity to get back on the main road and dismount. We give the rickshawalla 50 taka (nearly twice the normal rate) for his trouble. That amounts to about 74 cents, and he’s totally psyched.

The story is basically over at this point. We walked back the way we had come until it was obvious that we hadn’t missed the Pizza Hut yet. Then we turned around and walked the other direction until we got to Gulshan 1. Still no Pizza Hut, Donny must be right. At this point we were hungry and tired of stumbling up and down the dark and muddy streets (the power was out in lots of places on account of the storm the night before). So we decided to stick with the familiar – Thai rice and oil.