The Gamchha Factor

A 'gamchha', I reckon, is about the most massively useful thing a terrestrial Bangladeshi gentleman can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can use it to pat dry frequent sweats or wrap it around you in case of sudden showers, and if it gets too wet you can easily squeeze it to near dry as it is made of lightweight cotton; you can use it to mask off the dust and pollution as you go about your activities in the heady streets of Dhaka; you can cover your face with it if you are caught red-handed on camera as well as when you have time for a quick outdoorsy nap between errands; use it as a fly swatter or as a substitute seat belt when approaching a police check point in case your seat belt has just malfunctioned; wrap it round your head to avoid the scorching sun rays from frying your brains, as a designer bandanna, turban or a scarf; you can drape it around a cut in bleeding emergencies, and of course wipe your body with it as its name গা মোছা (gā mochha) suggests.

The gamchha is indeed used by froods from all walks of life in this tropical humid delta. It is often thrown on one shoulder or just tied around the waist, by the Bede to the rickshaw puller to the billionaire 'dhakaiya' businessman. The poorest mad beggar uses it as a loincloth, laborers cushion their heads with it when carrying heavy loads on their heads, it is used by fishermen to sift out fish larva, farmers holster their tools in it, and the boatmen, thought they may not particularly use it as a sail, their attire is unimaginable without one. It can be, according to the Wikipedia, turned it into an effective weapon against wolfs, leopards, wild dogs or feral dogs or even dacoits, by knotting a large stone pebble into one end and using it like a sling. It is the local cheese cloth when making many a luscious delicatessen like the yogurt drink 'borhani', the curd cheese known as 'chhana' and its derivatives like the fresh farmer cheese 'paneer'. With its colorful cross stripe pattern, this coarse piece of cloth has found many uses inside the household as well - a newborn's head will shape up nice and round if you use a pillow with a hole, made by circling the gamchha into several rounds; and if your window pane is broken, the gamchha can serve as a makeshift curtain or, in a similar functionality, is at times worn during outdoor bathing by the deep tube well. In a budget traveler's baggage, it occupies less space and dries easily. If you are a feisty designer like Bibi Russel, you can get Antonio Banderas to use it to promote craftsmanship.

More importantly, a gamchha has immense psychological value. For some reason, if an ordinary civilian discovers that a government official has a towel (a thick western version of the gamchha, symbolizing upper class-ness) laid on the back of his mighty office chair, he will automatically assume that the official is also in possession of the connotative sponge damper, an Econo ball pen, 14 types of seals, a stamp pad whose ink has almost dried, a box of metal thumbtacks, a desktop diary cum note paper with pen holder, time to chat about his accomplishments, interest in your family matters, misplaced morale, etc., etc. Furthermore, the common man will then happily make a deal under the table that the official may need to get the sense of duty working that he might accidentally have "lost". What the civilian will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the corruption ladder, rough  it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Now it is a well known fact, for those who keep TED on tabs, that if all Americans used one less paper towel a day, 571,230,000 pounds of paper would be spared over the course of the year. So it may be pointed out that, not that we like to make a point unless pointing four fingers at ourselves, our visceral attachment to the gamchha has curtailed our disposition to disposable paper towels, hence saving the nation a lot of trees, bucks and disposal efforts.

There is a theory that cleanliness is next to godliness. There is another theory that ignorance is bliss. Irrespective of these theories, for theories are merely conjectures that have survived the space time continuum or been theorized by the theoreticians, it is worthy of note that the Bangladeshi humanoid can sail nonchalantly through the harshest of times and situations. The phrase from 'opar' Bangla's Anjan Dutt's song "golae gamchcha bedhe korlam fele biye" perhaps best describes how we manage to feel secure and be prepared for what’s coming, or going for that matter. We perhaps have governed ourselves in to an inglorious corner in the world stage, not a corner with no possibilities, but a corner with endless possibilities. It is now only a matter of removing the gamchha from around the neck and tying it tightly around the waist.