When Dhaka was small enough to just drop by

There was a time in Dhaka when weekends had one simple plan: “Cholo, beraite jai.”

No calls, no WhatsApp, no traffic apps. You simply got on a rickshaw or a wheezing baby taxi and went.

Sometimes, you arrived carrying a box of sweets or a bag of fruits, as if visiting a relative required a modest offering to the household gods. Sometimes, you brought nothing at all. It did not matter. You went anyway.

You went to your nani’s house, khala’s house, fupu’s house, some uncle’s flat where the adults would sit and talk for hours, while you disappeared into bedrooms with your cousins. Someone would make tea. Someone would bring out biscuits. Someone would insist that you eat. Someone would inevitably comment on how much you had grown since the last visit, followed by a fairly aggressive assessment of your weight.

And then, just when you thought you had escaped the inspection, some uncle would look over his glasses and ask, almost casually, “What was your result in your last board exam?”

There it was.

The afternoon had started with tea and biscuits. But somehow ended with your academic audit.

Still, it was fun!

There were cousins on the floor, uncles occupying the best chairs, aunties discussing people who were not present, and one television quietly providing background noise until somebody remembered that BTV had something worth watching.

Someone would shout from the kitchen, “Has the show started?”

“Yes!”

And suddenly, the uncles had stopped discussing politics, and the cousins had been temporarily stripped of their right to make noise.

The house itself seemed to understand that people would come.

There was space for extra chairs. Space for extra plates. Space for children to make a nuisance of themselves. Nobody appeared particularly concerned about whether the sofa would survive.

Then the city grew.

The buildings went up. The drawing rooms became smaller, or perhaps our expectations became larger. Families became nuclear and relatives increasingly became people we loved from a respectable distance.

Everyone moved somewhere.

An uncle moved to Mirpur. Someone bought a flat in Bashundhara. Grandparents stopped living with everyone. Then somebody left for Canada, Australia, or America and suddenly, the family tree had branches in three time zones.

And Dhaka became very difficult to cross.

A visit that once meant a rickshaw ride now requires Google Maps, a ride-sharing app, traffic updates and what not!

“Come over this Friday” has become a proposal requiring negotiation.

Next week becomes next month. Next month becomes Eid. Eid becomes a phone call.

And that is perhaps how ‘beraite jaowa’ disappeared. Not dramatically, but through a thousand small inconveniences.

Now we know where everyone is, what they ate and occasionally what they are thinking. Sure, we are more connected than ever, technically.We just do not show up at each other’s houses very much anymore.

I sometimes wonder whether children growing up in Dhaka today will understand the peculiar excitement of being told to get ready because you were going to your khala’s house.

And perhaps the most remarkable thing about those afternoons was how utterly ordinary they were.

You went because it was Friday. You went because school was closed. You went because your mother felt like visiting her sister. You went because your grandmother lived there. You went because nobody needed a better reason.

Perhaps beraite jaowa did not disappear because we stopped loving our relatives. Perhaps Dhaka simply became too busy, too crowded, and too inconvenient to visit the people who live within it.

Which is a rather strange thing for a city to do: bring millions of people closer together, while making it harder to drop by!