“How long are you going to stay here?” The midwife kept going.
I resisted the impulse to tell her that I didn’t have anywhere else to go, that London was as good a home as I would ever get, and instead said, “Don’t know.”
Her question haunted me for hours on end. Irrespective of how innocent or well-intentioned a question like this is, it prods you out of your amnesia. You tend, during a busy day immersed in routines and practicalities of work, to forget ‘who’ you are, or at least the ‘who’ you are being perceived as. I am just a doctor like any other, doing doctor stuff. But the question sets you on a vicious cycle of doubt. It spurs a sense of insecurity, and with that a series of other ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ of life. After all, this is not your home, and – hideous as it sounds – if your presence is not a necessity, then maybe you are not a necessity. Your very existence in the world comes under scrutiny. With roots in nothing solid, I could as well float and dissipate.
This never-ending otherness, always being the other to someone else’s ‘I’: as a woman and as a foreigner you are always the other to some strong autonomous presence that rules your little existence, tolerates your co-existence under this or that condition, but never fully permits your presence.

We rode against a backdrop of clear, starry sky, a shimmering full moon and a cool breeze that kissed my face…or so I wished! It is Bangladesh, as the locals keep saying. There was smog, the stench of gasoline, a throng of people and vehicles mixed with dissonant honking and whirring noises – an ordinary weekend night. Our ride followed in the expected fits and starts. Nonetheless I relished every second the bike was moving, and along with it the rush of air.
People were staring at me. Once, at yet another imposed halt, three boys huddled on a neighbouring bike hollered some excited words in Bengali and took a picture of me.
“You are sitting on the bike like me,” Belal said. “Not like a Bangladeshi woman.”
I was sitting astride the motorbike. I looked at the other women. They had their legs firmly closed on one side. However, like them I too had my arms tightly wrapped around the rider.
There was something erotic in the texture of Dhaka’s streets tonight. The swarm of bodies and the myriad of gazes, the anonymity and invisibility in the multitude as well as the reckless invasion of one’s physical space, evoke a sense of panic and intimacy in equal measure – an intimacy that by the very nature of its imposition was charged with a sensual and intoxicating energy. One’s ego dissolves into the crowd, into the darkness and into the heat – it evaporates into here, there and everywhere.