An Audio Diary (03) in Outlook, BBC, London
Today I'm going to tell you the story of Mukarram, who is a rickshaw puller. He is 26 years old and has been working in Dhaka for the last three years.
He used to live here alone, but he brought his family to this huge city last November after cyclone Sidr blew away their village home. There are six members of his family, including his wife, his three children and his mother. I had a little talk with him in the queue for rice yesterday morning.
He blamed himself for his misfortune because, before he brought his family over, everything was stable. Bringing his family to the city brought bad luck to the city as well as to the whole nation.
But what could he do? The cyclone gave him no choice. Mukarram went out with his rickshaw by 6:30 this morning without having a meal, as they did not have enough rice to cook.
He said, "You know, rickshaw pulling is not an easy job. You have to eat a huge amount of rice to keep your strength up."
Generally he used to go out with his rickshaw at 6:30am and go home for the second meal of the morning at around 10:30. Today he went home at 10:30 as usual, but not to have a second meal. He left his rickshaw at home and fetched an empty bag to put rice in. Then he hurried to join the queue outside one of the goverment's subsidised rice selling centres, so he could buy 3 kilograms of rice with the 75 taka he had already earned this morning.
Poor people are getting rice here for 25 taka per kilogram. It is at least 10 taka less than at the market. People in the queue are simultaneously happy and sad. They are happy because they are getting rice cheaper, but they are sad because 25 taka for one kilogram of rice is no joke for people on this level of income.
Mukarram is not going to buy anything other than rice today. It will be the third day in a row that he has eaten nothing but white rice.
Mukarram wants to go back in both time and space. He wants to go back to his village, but he also wishes he could turn the clock back to November 2007, before the cyclone changed his life.
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