It was a little after six in the early evening, the sultry weather still unbearably hot so close to sunset. After the relative comfort of my room, the heat wrapped around me like a shawl as I hit the streets to go for a walk. The sky was still blue with traces of grey and the impending blackness of night, the sunlight was still dominant over streetlights that were coming on. People walked languorously on, to catch a bus or some other mode of transport. Some would just walk home. Many were sweating profusely; others not so much. I walked on and neared the grand mosque.
The scene on the pavement took me by surprise. There were four of them. The first one was standing in his dirty clothes with a dirty cloth hanging from his shoulders like a shroud, he uses the shroud to cover himself when he falls asleep on the same pavement. A little farther on was another. He was smoking a cigarette with relish, he must have scored recently. He was talking at the speed of a freight train, no one listened to his babble, except maybe his real self, long in hibernation, listening to the grotesque alter ego firing away.
Then there was this man who had his face turned away from the hustle and bustle of the streets and was looking instead at the little kids playing inside the mosque compound; a little fun and frolic before the evening prayer. He was sitting on the pavement with his bum resting on a multi-coloured mat made of rags; he was holding a staff with a knob at the top and colourful rags hanging along its length.
Then I came across this woman, maybe in her mid-20s, she was disheveled with dirty clothes and eyes that looked lost. No one knew when was the last time she had had a bath or when her hair had the workings of a comb. She was getting ready to retire for the night, maybe as soon as all the blue vanished from the sky and the encroaching black took over.
A few weeks ago, I went to the old part of town. I wanted to visit my old school at Laxmi Bazaar. I chose a weekend morning, a Friday to be exact. I entered Nawabpur going southward from Gulistan point and there stood the old sweetmeat stores of my childhood and other shops customary to that road; all closed in the early holiday morning. But I was not prepared for the next scene.
Near the court area, Johnson Road, and near Azad cinema hall, I saw a number of addicts, sitting, standing, walking off to nowhere in particular. My heart sank. I reached the Laxmi Bazaar area and I was not at all taken by the new building of my old school but by the scene opposite that structure on the pavement: Addicts in a line; some sleeping, some just getting up. Their disheveled looks and dirt-besmirched clothes left me in no doubt of what they lived for, day in and day out.
I saw a similar scene, while walking along Karwan Bazaar Avenue, in the park opposite Sonargaon Hotel. A place strewn with addicts and not suitable for normal people to take respite from the bustling city life.
When I was a little boy in the 70s, marijuana or ganja was the drug of choice. Later on came hashish from Pakistan. Their use was rampant among even university-goers, but it didn’t seem to be such a detriment to society. In most cases they proved harmless.
But later on, in the 80s, heroin took hold among some well-to-do people but it was still a rarity. When Phensedyl, the cough linctus, hit the market big time, the drug problem started getting noticeable. Heroin use was also on the rise. Pethidine, the synthetic opioid, used mainly as an analgesic, was vastly abused too. There were also Qualuudes in circulation; known by the name Mandrax or more popularly as “Mandy.” The drug abuse scene was getting bad with the nation coming out of back-breaking poverty.
The rage now is yaba, a methamphetamine of the vilest kind. The word “yaba” means horse drug, given to horses to make them climb steep hills and make them do hard labour.
We see, with clockwork regularity, shipments of red yaba tablets being nabbed. It begs the question of how many more evade detection.
The virulence of methamphetamine is well known. Methamphetamine is highly addictive, with many long-term users taking several pills a day. Post come-down effects include irritability, insomnia, confusion, tremors, convulsions, anxiety, paranoia, and aggressiveness. Hair loss can also be an indicator of a long-term user, either as a direct result of the drug’s intake, or indirectly, through the user becoming withdrawn and anxious and contracting behavioural habits, such as hair-pulling. Other reported symptoms also include lower back pain, possibly from damage to the liver or kidneys.
I was utterly dismayed and sat down on a part of the pavement a little away from the four addicts that I had just met on Gulshan Avenue. Despondence took me over as I wondered about the life-changing effects of chemicals and the people who were thrown to the margins of society and then shoved off. The battle of life proves too much for some.
As I sat there for several minutes, the call for the evening prayers rang out but it was Neil Young who was singing in my head: “I've seen the needle/ and the damage done/ A little part of it in everyone/ But every junkie's/ like a settin' sun.”
