[Reader-list] Bua

[Zainab Bawa]

25th October 2004
Nirala Residential Area
Khulna, Bangladesh

Bua

While I write and muse about the hawkers in this city, I remember Bua and 
her baari (home) which lie right in the middle of the houses in the Nirala 
Neighbourhood.

This is dui number shesh madha Nirala (i.e. fag end of the second cross in 
Nirala). Water bodies abound everywhere in Khulna and dui number also has a 
vast stretch of a pond. Bua resides with her family on a plot of land in the 
middle, built houses surrounding her on all sides. You can also get the 
river view from her home and with a little two-minute walk, the river is 
right before you. (Talk of prime property and estates to a Mumbaitte!) But 
Bua’s setup is not the claustrophobic slum or chawl kinds, the likes of 
which you would frequently encounter in Mumbai. Bua has a comfortable abode 
with ample open and breathing space on all sides. Yet she says she is poor. 
Probably her poverty emerges from her mind, especially when she looks at her 
straw built house as against the concrete structures surrounding her eye and 
mind’s vision on all sides. Then of course, Bua has problems with 
electricity and perhaps some water problems too. But the main issue is that 
of privacy which she skillfully maintains much to a professional architect’s 
chagrin!

Before I proceed, let me tell you who is Bua. I don’t know her ‘real’ name. 
The neighbours used to call her Hafeeza’s Ma (i.e. Hafeeza’s mother) because 
Hafeeza works in their home. I have always known her as Bua. She used to do 
the cooking and a little bit of cleaning in the home where I was living in 
Khulna. She is a fantastic cook, somebody who can dish out a five-star 
affair even with bleak ingredients at hand. She could also be a TV star, 
fitting into the roles of the high society women in the Ekta Kapoor and 
current genre of Hindi serials. She has these bluish grey eyes, is tall, 
fairly well built and has a smart personality. Her gait and her sing song 
voice could reach her to the top of charts if only someone casts the look on 
her (I mean a producer or a casting director or something). But until such 
time, she is Bua, mother of five girls and grandmother to a boy. She belongs 
to the economic category of the poor in Bangladesh, though there are 
segments worse off than her. Her asset is a cycle rickshaw which her husband 
pulls throughout the day. And of course her skills which fetch her 
employment!

We will take a brief journey into Bua’s home, pictures of which I promise to 
load on a nice site soon (and I am holding my ears while making this 
promise!). As an individual who is perpetually thinking in terms of words, I 
entered with my digital camera into her house (and here is where I become a 
schizophrenic, ferociously anxious between the border of the visual and the 
verbal). The plan of the house is simple. From the outside, it is a straw 
structure with an amazing view (open land, like I had mentioned earlier). My 
eyes immediately darted towards Bua’s kitchen. After all, that’s the 
association I primarily draw with her. It was a simple space made of four 
bamboo sticks and weak straw wall. There was a mud cooking hearth and some 
vessels there. Her kitchen is simple, really a space rather than a structure 
made to look full with clutter. The kitchen lies immediately outside the 
house.

We then step inside Bua’s house. Each room has a long wooden bed because 
each room functions simultaneously as a bedroom and a living room. There are 
three rooms in all, each leading to the other. Bua has made an attempt to 
define the boundaries for each room, boundaries which are assertive as well 
as fluid. The boundary which is most assertive is that of Bua’s own bedroom 
which we must take at face value. As I entered her house, I noticed that she 
decorates her home with perfume and talcum powder bottles which we normally 
throw away after use. She even goes to the extent of preserving the 
cardboard boxes in which these bottles are packaged. There is a little 
wooden rack where she displays her other assets including some utensils. 
There are a couple of cupboards, the contents of which are a mystery to me. 
While I navigate between the two rooms, I enter Bua’s bedroom at which point 
I couldn’t resist my temptation and I asked, “Eta aapnar room na Bua, mane 
bedroom? (Isn’t this your own room, I mean bedroom?)” Bua smiled and nodded. 
She has secured the privacy of this room very carefully. There is a cloth 
which serves as the door. The window is a metallic jaali which she has 
adorned with curtains. The view from this bedroom is super, lush green. The 
other open end is also secured with a thick blanket. It is a squashed room 
with only enough space for the bed to fit in. Below the bed are some ducks, 
again Bua’s assets. The bedroom looks like an appendage to the house 
depending on which perspective you see it from. While on the bedroom, I 
began to imagine Bua’s private life, the processes of procreation preceded 
by lovemaking, privacy guarded by thin and thick veils of cloth!

I walk out to notice a little fenced area which Bua explains to me as ‘bagh’ 
(garden). It is a fairly well kept garden with defined boundaries. I was so 
taken up that I have named the photo of her garden as Baghbaan (is it too 
tacky a name???)! The bagh then leads into the bath which is also a toilet. 
The door of the bath is secured with a jute cloth-like curtain which can be 
drawn when the person is inside. It is no elaborate bath/toilet. There is a 
deep hole dug into the earth which I believe serves as the toilet and there 
are two mud pots which serve as buckets. That’s it!

Bua’s is not the only home space like this on a prime plot amidst houses in 
Nirala. There are other Buas with their houses in the middle of other 
concrete structures at regular intervals. Thus far, neither of them is under 
threat or surveillance from the government or the city’s elite to be thrown 
out as illegal migrants or ‘encroachers’ (which seems like the most despised 
term among the cityzens). There is a mutual dependence between Bua and the 
surrounding residents. They need her for their household chores and she 
needs them for her sustenance and livelihood. And in my logical 
understanding, those who need her must take care of her and protect her.

It appears that the hawkers who sit with their wares on the roadside at the 
Nirala mod market are also under eviction (is this becoming some kind of a 
regional phenomenon?). You must note that these hawkers belong to the very 
poor bracket of economic class. Some of them have a simple plastic sheet on 
which they spread out their wares. Apparently, the police are at them too, 
with their lathis and authority. I am not sure whether to associate this 
move against hawkers with the rise in shopping malls but my suspicions are 
in this direction, coupled with increasingly narrow claims on public space 
by the ‘public’ and the ‘state’. I wonder what the hawker is in the 
imagination of the city ‘resident’ – is he just the bastard encroacher? 
During Masters classes in Political Theory, our professor would often state 
how the hawkers are critical because they provide cheap goods and at timely 
hours too and that their eviction would cost a lot to the neighbourhoods.

I am confused …

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