This is definitely the country of very stark contrasts. Walking home last night I walked down a road half of which was completely adorned in beautiful gold lights. The lights were strung across the road forming a very long canopy, and then from top to bottom of a six storey apartment block - it was absolutely stunning. Gold coloured drapes, with gorgeous bouquets of white flowers, had been fitted to the entrance gate to the apartment block. It was utterly stunning. At first I though Christmas had come somewhat early, until I found out that this was a wedding!
This was clearly the wedding of people who had money - from the number of expensive, unbattered (very unusual here) cars parked outside, the guests in their beautiful wedding finery, and, of course, the number of lights adorning the road and building. The electricity bill alone must cost a small fortune!
Contrast this with the rick-shaw drivers, with their battered rick-shaws, which have seen better days and their ragged dirty clothing, and warn faces which tell their own story of poverty and hardship. I know many come from the slums of Dhaka where they live in a cramped one-roomed tin shack, no running water, where raw sewage runs openly straight in front of the doorways of the shacks, where the stench is truly appalling, where disease is rife, and where child mortality is high and life expectancy low.
Makes you think...
