The Auto-walla.

Between the diffident humming of old Bengali film songs by Nawab-ji, the auto-walla, and my restless fascination with where we could possibly be going, I found deep serenity travelling along the empty dust road on this Friday afternoon in a remote village north of Dhaka.
While most of the men were at Jummah prayer, the women were at home preparing daal bhaat - lentils and rice, if they’d made enough that week, awaiting the arrival of the men. Gangly coconut trees and lush green paddy fields filled to the brim with the rain from the passing monsoon season consumed me, reminding me of the entire world between myself and the man in front.
The ritualistic holidays we practiced as a family every three or four years, usually in sync with the FIFA world cup (Zidane’s head-butting made 2006 rather memorable) to the country my parents fought for would seem rather damp. However, the familiar stench... smell of urine and mosquito repellent upon landing at Dhaka Airport, perpetuated a certain familiarity within me, which I lacked from the country that birthed me. As much as I enjoyed answering questions about how often I ride a kangaroo to university to the florist in San Francisco or the butcher in Firenze, the laughs which ensued upon their stark revelation that this was not actually the case was just about as attached as I could get the country which makes me pronounce my R’s as ‘ah’.
‘Eije madam’ – we’re here, nawab-ji smiles as we pull into a field of mustard flowers which coats the horizon with a wave of bright yellow hues. I enjoy the idiosyncrasy in what I realise was his entire backyard. This man, whom I’ve known for the past 20 minutes, in an attempt to fulfil my requests of him to show me around the village, gets it right.
The gentle whispers of the wheat grass swaying in the wind coupled with the azaan – calls to prayer, heard in the distance, paints a gleaming smile on my face. Nawab-ji, jumping the gun, asks if I would be so kinds as to pay his house a visit, to his surprise I immediately reply ‘absolutely’! I put my trust in his modest, somewhat torn bata sandals and follow him through the maze of chaotic banana trees, arriving at a house of cement, reflecting the sky that afternoon, a clean blue. Inside, the sunlight seeped through the wired window, falling onto the bicycle in front of it. Not an utter out of either of us, I take a seat on the cold concrete floor and bless myself for the most memorably mundane moment of my life with this stranger.