In the 1920s the phrase was a black American euphemism for
suicide.
Travelling by road through Bangla Desh can take longer than
expected. Not so much because of the roads or the traffic — the roads, though
narrow, are often asphalt or at least pounded-down rubble, (one sees gangs of
women labourers at the soul-destroying job of smashing bricks), and the
traffic, once one is away from the pullulating honking chaos of the cities, is
almost non-existent — as because of the rivers, many unbridged. One must wait
for the little flat shuttle-ferry with a ramp at each end to come back — it’s
invariably at the other side, or worse still has just left this side of a wide
river.
Where there are bridges they’re usually ones made by the
Brits in colonial days; the ones made later tend to fall down, more by design
than accident, as then a new UN bridge-building grant can be applied for. But
even some of the old Brit bridges can be alarming — I know one that carries
road, rail, and pedestrian traffic, but is only about six feet wide. Pedestrians
simply squeeze up tight against the side railings when a car or train comes
along, but if a train starts at one end just as a car has entered the other
end…
The ferry disaster that has just happened in Bangla Desh —
and similar disasters have happened so often I was surprized this one made
international news — did not involve a river crossing: this one was a boat that goes up and down river. It’s the
standard means of long-distance travel for most people, though no-one who can
scrape together enough to buy a car would dream of going by ferry. They are
notorious death-traps: foreigners, of course, never, ever, use them.
What, never? Well…
yes, I have, but I didn’t tell anyone about it until I got back. If I listened
to all the people who are so concerned for my welfare I would have nothing to
write about here. It was an overnight ferry — the most dangerous of all — going
from Dacca down the Jumna river to a village on the delta. You buy your ticket,
find the right ferry, and barge your way up the gang-plank among hundreds of
others, most of them carrying suspicious-looking white-cotton-shrouded long
floppy bundles over their shoulders, and try to find a place to sit or, if you’ve
paid a bit extra, lie down: space can often be found on the very lowest decks,
below the water-line, to which only the foolhardy descend.
If you have seen ‘Fitzcarraldo’ you will remember the ship:
imagine something like that — shallow draught, and far too many upper decks,
all of them full water-line area. And imagine such a craft left abandoned,
unrepaired, unpainted, up some forgotten creek for decades before suddenly
being brought back into service.
There was no attempt to count the number of people boarding;
it was much like the London Underground at rush-hour. Nor did there seem to be
any navigational rules: every few days one heard of yet another collision,
usually at night: the ferries would sink in minutes, and people on the lower
decks stood not a chance.
I made my journey — evidently I survived it — more than
thirty years ago. Even then the government was under pressure to introduce some
sort of regulation of the river-ferries. Radio news reports of the latest
disaster show that nothing has changed.
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