We’re due at The Press Club at six for a briefing 

on the Padma Bridge. Rivers here drown 

in their own plenitude. I don’t normally wear pearls, 

but shalwar glamour has boxed me into a corner. 

All I can see of our driver is his left arm and watch. 

Koranic verses swing from the rear-view mirror. 

No safety belts in this air con bubble, all doors locked. 

Every swerve is a punch as he weaves between 

trucks of workers back from the brick kilns, their faces 

streaked with ash, arms dangling to catch air. 

It’s all tuk-tuk fracas, log jam, rickshaw horn-honk 

like geese calling to each other across water. A woman, 

shawled and angry, hits our car with her fist, shouts 

something at me in Bengali. Our host refuses to translate.

These pearls are beginning to burn my neck; iced air 

can feel as suffocating as heat. A young boy hobbles

alongside the car, knocks at my window. Bananas, lady? 

I shake my head apologetically. He holds up a bigger bunch.