Image:Dhaka street crowds.jpg

Original description: There is no way to imagine Dhaka's crowds repeating themselves without hearing their sounds. Staying the night in the hotel room from which this photo is taken doesn't give you sleep. Instead it teaches you what KAKAPHONIA really means: it means hearing any possible human sound you can think of at the same time, so that you provide yourself with the feverish threats for your culture shock (also if you're accustomed to In-dia). You'll hear what you think of - and you don't stop thinking. Actual sounds - including (in the middle of the night) marriage parties, political demonstrations, sirens, drums, shouting, market screams, passengers and riskah drivers hitting busses, claxoning, and who knows what kind of anguish - all combine into every known and not-yet-known rhythm. To be sure, you know the same pattern is repeated endlessly along Dhaka's long roads where urban specialisation is not measured into neighbourhoods yet around every single building: in front of it: on the street, the pavement, below the pavement's market; the building's ground floor markets, its back yard, the first, second and higher floors, all with floor-specific businesses and characters, yet seemingly similar in every next building.

originally posted to Flickr as Dhaka streets (Bangladesh)

2006-05-17 12:14:36

Ahron de Leeuw