A Whisper from the Heart

End of a Chapter

The workshop has come to an end. The assignment submitted. The Norwegians will be going back tomorrow morn. And I started working at Drik again today.

Now, why did I start on Sunday? Didn’t the workshop end on a Thursday?

Well yes… It ended late on Thursday… And we had a party on the roof again… Where my ah mu did a very nice Bangla dance, and everyone sang songs in their national tongue. Jess & I were at a loss… We sang a Chinese pop song… At some points, it got very awkward… But oh well… Most of the Norwegians and the Bangladeshis never quite got along…

Friday…. Off day… Couldn’t go to work even if we wanted to… I think I had too much time on my hands… Started thinking… And felt lonely and miserable… Perhaps I missed home? Perhaps I needed to have someone to talk to… I don’t know what it was… I just stole out of my room… Headed to Café Mango… I had a latte and a chocolate brownie with ice cream… and sat down to read for two hours… It was a wonderful book about Psalms 46:10 – “Be still and know that I am God”… I felt revitalized after I read it and prayed in a little corner of Mango… Totally turned my day around…

Saturday was a self declared holiday… Mainly because Jess & I weren’t sure if we were going traveling… We didn’t… Instead, we had breakfast at Mango, I went to get my sari blouse tailored, shopped at Aarong & Prabatana (it’s very cool - 2 storeys of shopping, a bookshop, and a cool café that has live performances on Thursdays…), then went to see pet shops and bookshops with Jess at Kalaban & Neelkat respectively…

A lot of the pets were really sick… Otherwise, they’d gotten so miserable and resigned they didn’t bother moving anymore… We found an owl that wouldn’t stop banging its head on the door of the cage, wanting to get out…It was also very nervous when we bent down to look into its cage… Poor thing… It was going for Tk5000… Jess wanted to buy it and free it… There were some darling little kittens and puppies as well… But they were miserable in their small cages… Sigh… I really wanted to buy a pet… And take good care of it… The bookshops and stationery places were also cool. I bought a maker, a crayon, and some very cool books, like “death of a salesman”… I also bought a 2nd hand Archie for SGD$1.50!!

The problem with having too much time on my hands was, once again, I could think too much… My dear Junior made a concession and called me up to see how I was… That conversation was so precious… We both figured I should start work again soon so that I wouldn’t have that much time to brood… There’s just so much a trip to Mango can do…

So I went back to work…

At Drik, Reza and Amin tot I gained weight… (Uh oh… Sister’s gonna call and find out what happened…) Work-wise, didn’t do much… As usual… But there are new people around again… Two Singaporeans from Epson… Nicholas and Timothy… They’re pretty Singaporean looking I must say… Nick looks like an imitation of Glenn Ong… Rather beng… Tim is just softspoken… I did learn more Bangla from my Publication colleagues… My Big Boss was told about my improvement in Bangla and wouldn’t stop telling Nick and Tim about it… He sounds just like a proud dad really… Oh yes… I avoided the weird guy with the v day incident… Like the Plague…

The other major thing was the Norwegians leaving… I didn’t think it would be an issue… but it was…

It was a lot more difficult than I had thought. I don’t think I knew them that well… Only Bjorn… And that was bad already, I think… I’d gotten so used to having them around. People who come and imprint something in your life… I was feeling lonelier than usual today… Jess had her own cool plans… But Bjorn was a great friend as usual. Together, we like Mad hats… Both of us… that’s how I’d describe him and I…. you’ll understand once I describe what we did...

I went down to Ambrosia to meet them all and have dinner with them. (Had no other plans after work anyway…) Managed to help Linn with her Sari! How cool is that? Linn is one of the 3 Norwegian girls… Linn, Elizabeth, Hilde.. Bjorn & I agreed to hang out on his last evening in Bangladesh… We went to rifles square and bought chocolate…. Meant to do shopping but we both didn’t bring much money… Got on a rickshaw… got playfully chased by some of the beggar boys… because Bjorn was too friendly with them and still didn’t give them any money… Then we ate chocolate on the rickshaw while singing lemon tree… Didn’t quite finish my chocolate though… I gave half of it to a little girl on the street selling peanuts… I didn’t have change to buy her peanuts you see… she seemed happy with the chocolate though…

We went to the lake near Pathshala… Meant to have cha and fuchka… But it was too late… the stall closed… We just sat by the lake, eating sweets… And talked… There was a couple sitting next to us who were very intimate… we found them funny… just didn’t laugh out loud…

Went back to pathshala… Played guitar and sang songs… In fact, I used my lappy to record some of the songs… It’s quite funny… Especially the last song… Don’t look back in Anger… Bjorn is convinced that we’re gonna get famous with that one… I dunno about that… But it’s definitely a cool way to record memories… It’s way funny! (Btw... I have a special song for a certain mousy character who just found her other half... She wanted to learn how to say "giant" in Norwegian... I got Bjorn to record it for her... She'll be getting it in her mail soon enough... Once she tells me which email to send it to... There's another thing... I upped it by one notch for her... I asked Bjorn to record "big friendly giant" in Norwegian... Hope she likes it!)

A month of friendship… And I have 6 songs, 3 photos, and tons of laughs to remember it by… Not too bad I must say…

Think this internship has been about changes… People just keep coming and going… You don’t have much time to get used to things and once you are used to it, they change… I have not been able to settle down… And perhaps that upsets me… But there is one thing that I still hang on to that is always unchanging… My faith… The book I read was not merely interesting literature… It really touched me and was a response to what is happening in my life… It maybe difficult but I keep on going back to that verse… “Be still, and know that I am God”…

You might think that I’m anything but still… That’s true… It’s a constant struggle to be still when nothing else is… But I think that’s the whole point… There’s no challenge to be still when everything around you is… The real challenge is to be still, even though everything else around you isn’t… Once you can do that, you can be still and unshaken in any circumstance in your life… And that is something I really want to see in myself…

posted by thebemusedphotog @ 11:00 PM