Agamical, Ami Kolkata Geachelam

I stumbled out of bed at 10:15am yesterday and ran out to the front gate to wish goodbye to Catherine and Chris. They had been at CRP for the last 4 months. Catherine is a Physiotherapist and Chris, a IT geek who helped with (more like designed it from scratch) the website. They are off to SE Asia, then Australia and New Zealand. Please read all about it in their blog www.expectedresult.co.uk/Personal/.

I wish them and the rest of the volunteers well.

I mentioned earlier that CRP felt a little like sleep away camp. The last few days were had the same feeling as the end of summer. Everyone was exchanging gifts and gathering emails and talking smack about possible reunions. They were very sweet and got me two lungies as going away presents.

After seeing C and C off, I took the bus down to Dhaka. I was in much need of the airconditioning and ATM at the Standard Chartered Bank. The clouds were low and the wind pushed black waves across the marshlands dotted with brick-making smokestacks. This final day should have been filled with reverance, but I was reading "The Running Man." A beat-up Stephen King pulpy thriller immortalized by the awful movie starring my governator. I was embarressed to be reading it, but I've read all of the other books in my flat. I folded the cover around the back to avoid showing the beaming arnold to unsuspecting Bangladeshis.

I miss my stop on the bus and have to walk a kilometer back to Mirpur road. Along the way I stop again to oggle Louis Kahn's National Assembly Building (I've visited it three times so far). It hits me - I am stalking a building. It was the reason for our initial border crossing into Bangladesh and here I was staring at it again. I imagined the building pulling down a great window shade from the sky, calling me a "Masher" and threatening to call the police. Instead of sliding down the fire escape and running into the night, I sit down on the curb.

The building is astonishingly simple and so beautiful, especially from the 3/4 mile marker where I sit. It is a concrete structure with gridlines of marble. The marble shares the same hue as the sky. As such, the clouds seem to seep into the structure and roll down the sides like rain. Window's peek out from huge incisions into the concrete. Repetitive triangles, circles and squares gape for several stories, then return to the marble mesh. There is a solitary flag of bangladesh and a chorus of mullahs ring from surrounding masjids. Across the immense grounds flow a steady procession of burkas, hijabs, and multicolor plaid lungies. The lighting is the only feature that places the building in a time frame. Mod-style arrangements of glass bulbs on steel trunks bring one back to the mid 70's.

I attract a small gathering (12 people) of gawkers gawking at me gawking, but it starts to rain so I beat it for the shelter of Parbatana, a women's rights organization that houses a quiet cafe a bookstore and several handloom goods boutiques. I buy my mom a tshirt for exercise class - It is a drawing of a Bangla bus full of people. They hang out the doors and are crowded on the roof. Although, the salesperson told me that the quotation in Bangali read "Travel safely" or "Have a safe journey," I like to think that it says "You will know that an accident has turned fatal when the bus pilot absconds - As such, always watch the pilot." My timing is tops, as the rain falls heavily now. I much on samuchas and wish that my lassie was from Sharma's in Kolkata.

I'm due back in Savar at 3, so when the rain has stops I'll scuttle to the bus with a bag full of things for Michele, a couple of posters and the T-shirt.