Beacons
My suspicion, before coming to Chittagong, was that it would have a vigorous and well-informed public culture. That suspicious was based on two romanticised scraps of knowledge. First, when I came to Bangladesh in 1995, I was thrilled by the degree to which meaningful debate and well–informed conversation pervaded the entire society. Bengali has this wonderful word আড্ডা (āḍḍā) which means a proper, satisfying conversation, but it was the reflexivity and intellectual depth of the conversations, whether I was talking with colleagues at Oxfam, schooteachers, or local leaders of landless women’s movements, that inspired me. Second, well, it’s Chittagong, one of the great old crossroads of the world, connecting the Indian Ocean trade routes with the montane southeast Asian hinterlands, a prosperous international port well furnished with universities.
Friday night I went for a walk to a recommended local bookshop, Bhatighar (বাতিঘর). I went at night, because like many hot places, Chittagong comes out at night. The neighbourhood has low benches and alcoves along walls decorated with murals, and in every alcove was a cluster of people engaged in āḍḍā — it felt very much like a Mediterranean market plaza, but even more animated and conversational. The bookshop itself was heaving! Piles of recently published work in Bangla, a decent selection in English, long shelves with a mix of useless cruft, books by despised authors, useful tomes, fine volumes by great authors, and unexpected surprises: a proper bookshop where the shelves are as much a mix of opinion and taste as the customers. Bhatighar means ‘lighthouse’, an apt name if ever there was one. I though of other lighthouses— Girdle Ness and the Stevensons, Bradbury’s foghorn, or even Farallon Computing which was in its time a beacon of sorts.
Even so, I had a rude shock when I asked how long it would take to order a book from Delhi: one month. I understood, again and uncomfortably, how hard it is for university librarians here to plan and provide for teaching and research, and just how glinting a sign of privilege is access to university libraries like the Regenstein at Chicago, the Bodleian at Oxford, or the Robarts at Toronto. A lighthouse on a rocky island, far away from the great lanes of book exchange. Their shopping bag says this:
