Holly in Bangladesh: You can steal flowers and books

The first Bangla proverb I learned is "You can steal flowers and books." It was explained that it's okay to steal flowers because they are natural and from the earth, and you can steal books because books give you wisdom. I really like this proverb, and I think it has even more meaning because I am in a city where nature is hard to find and education is not available for all.

In the last week or so I have stolen both with my camera. The other day, my roommates and I woke up early and headed down to Shabagh flower market. Shabagh flower market is the largest bulk flower market in Bangladesh and from early in the morning until 11am you can find mountains of gada flowers (marigolds), bouquets of roses, baskets of petals, and strands of exotic flowers for hanging and decorating. The market materializes every morning under a footbridge right on the street and by seven it was a slurry of people and flowers. The sun was rising and the air had a wonderful (and unusual for Dhaka) sweet fragrance, and for just about an hour we talked, played and photographed the flowers, each other and the vendors, and almost forgot we were in Dhaka.

Mountains of gada flowers.

Rows of Gada flowers.

Graffiti at Shabagh flower market.

Scale for weighing your flowers.

Covered in flowers, heaven!

Showing off his strands of flowers.

Strands of flowers being uncoiled.

Just outside the flower market.

Fully loaded CNG.

Another day, I went down to Boi Mela (Bangla for book fair). During the entire month of February there is a massive book fair down by Dhaka University where there are thousands, maybe millions of Bangla books for sale. I was told that it was the largest book fair in the world and although I do not know if this is true, I do know that it was massive. An entire street and courtyard are blocked off for the fair, and publishers set up small little stalls displaying their books. There are literally hundreds of stalls, and what is interesting is each publisher seems to have a specialty. There are the poetry publishers, the political publishers, female writer publishers, etc. Bangladeshis are very proud of their language (they have a special day in February called Mother Tongue Day, which celebrates Bangladesh keeping Bangla as their national language), which was very evident as I walked through the stalls seeing all of the Bangla books.