Songs At the Rivers Edge: Stories From a Bangladeshi Village by Katy Gardner

Songs At the Rivers Edge: Stories From a Bangladeshi Village Reviews

• 
  Andrea

  In my year of reading the Indian sub-continent, having already discovered quite a few gems, this is the one amongst all of them so far that is going to stay with me. Thirty years ago, Katy Gardner conducted the fieldwork for her PhD in Social Anthropology in a small rural village in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh. Ten years later she wrote this book as a kind of companion to her thesis, weaving together her observations and experiences into a series of stories that together describe her 15 months of living in the village.
  
  Chapter 1: Katy arrives in the village and is quickly drawn into the warmth and somewhat chaotic everyday lives of her host family. They are not wealthy, but they are not as poor as many of their neighbours and other characters that populate the small village. They despair at Katy's (western) inability to wash, dress and feed herself properly, as well as her propensity for occasional solitude.
  
  Chapters 2-5: a birth, a marriage, an apparent spousal abandonment and a tragic death in the village. Children die in the villages of Bangladesh too often for public mourning to continue for very long. It is not that they are forgotten, or that their relatives do not grieve deeply; every family has its own dead children, its own small graves to remember and mourn when another household loses a child.
  
  Chapter 6: an unaffordable new sari is the cause of laughter to the other women, but not so to the poor woman who bought it, as we read about domestic violence in the village. I still found it hard to reconcile religiosity with the uncompromising and unflinching acceptance of violence amongst most people in the village.
  
  Chapters 7-9: evil and mischievous spirits are blamed for things that go wrong; the power of mother nature; and the importance of faith for maintaining a healthy body and soul.
  
  Chapters 10-11: the stories of Alim and Ambia; one who attempts to leave the village for a brighter future, and the other who arrives at the village to put their past behind them and hopefully to make a brighter future for their family.
  
  Chapter 12: Katy makes a tearful departure from the village. Rather than a cause of shame, public tears are given the utmost social approbation, so instead of repressing them as I had done when I had left Britain a year and a half ago, I now gave them every encouragement.
  
  In amongst all of these stories we come to understand about economic migration, the subject of Gardner's thesis. The bad side of it - the poverty that causes it to happen - is the thread that ties the stories together. No one paid them any attention as they passed on the village paths. These were the ‘garib’, the poor who are always present in rural Bangladesh. They are in the background of every scene, always there but seldom noticed as they watch village life on its margins. And the good side - the success stories of those who leave and are able to support the family that stays behind.
  
  This is not an ethnography as such, but a really accessible window into Bangladeshi village life. Gardner has gone on to become a successful novelist, and this is no surprise to me, as
  Songs At the River's Edge: Stories From a Bangladeshi Village reads like a novel. Recommended for anyone with a cultural curiosity about Bangladesh or the region.
• 
  D.K. Powell

  I wanted to like this book, I really did. A book about my beloved Bangladesh where I spent nearly six blissfully happy years written by a British woman who was a social anthropologist and should therefore have written with wonderful insight - how could I not like it? Unfortunately I was to be disappointed.
  
  To be fair to the author, there may be many mitigating reasons for this. She visited Bangladesh in 1987, only 16 years after the terrible birth of the country, ravaged by a war the scars of which are still felt today. By contrast, the Bangladesh I knew was from 2005-2013 and much has changed. Likewise she lived for 16 months in a village in Sylhet - the region where most Bangladeshis living in the UK hail from, but one often seen as very different to the rest of Bangladesh. Moreover, Katy Gardner is a woman and I am a man. In Muslim-dominated and heavily patriarchal Bangladesh this inevitably means we both had very different experiences. I had the freedom to do almost anything I wished, talk to who I wished, wear what I wished. The woman who wishes to do the same invites hassle; if not, trouble.
  
  Nevertheless, I've read many books on Bangladesh by foreigners and many articles, novels and stories by female Bangladeshis such as Niaz Zaman, Rizia Rahman, Tahmima Anam and Monica Ali and all of these writers tell stories I know and understand as true to my experience of this beautiful, terrible, contradiction of a nation. So there is only so much leeway I can give to Gardner.
  
  Pinning down exactly why I didn't enjoy the book is harder. Her words were right; the stories she told, the events which happened; the people she met - they all resonated with me. Though I was critical of how she portrayed Bangladeshi society I couldn't disagree with the problems she highlighted. No one can come to Bangladesh and ignore the injustices, the poverty, the troubles and the corruption which pervade throughout. But there was something...missing.
  
  I did struggle with her attempts at Bangla: 'Dunndo bad' instead of 'dhonnobad' for 'thank you'; 'Sassa' and 'sassi' instead of 'chacha' and 'chachi' for father's younger brother and his wife; and so on. But these were probably more to do with the extreme regional dialect of Sylhet than the author's errors of understanding. I did find it irksome however and, again, never experienced such issues with other authors no matter which part of Bangladesh they were discussing. Perhaps most annoying was her insistence of using 'elder sister' in English to describe how the women referred to her. Why not use the Bangla term especially as she includes a glossary in the back and uses so many other terms frequently?
  
  I think the biggest problem for me which bugged me from the start (and I'd hoped would change as the book progressed and the author learned of the culture) was that Gardner simply didn't get it. She saw herself as the outsider, longed for western life, fled to Dhaka for a taste of 'civilisation' every month and generally seems to look down on the country even when she's doing her best to tell the tales lovingly and with affection.
  
  In short, it wasn't that I didn't recognise her Bangladesh: I didn't recognise the author herself.
  
  I've met too many 'bideshis' (foreigners) in Bangladesh who have similar attitudes to her, desperate to hold the people at bay, irritated by their closeness yet feeling isolated away from their western lifestyles. I never 'went native' in Bangladesh and, if anything, was made more aware of my own 'Britishness' by being there, yet this country is my heartland even if it isn't the land of my birth. I may not be able to say "ami Bangali" (I am Bangladeshi) so truthfully as those born there but when I returned to the UK I certainly couldn't say "I am British". Gardner, I feel, never took off that mantle and couldn't wait to throw off her Bangla trappings once she returned. You can almost hear her breathe with relief as she left despite trying to portray a very different attitude.
  
  This would all be okay except that the author went to Bangladesh to live like a Bangladeshi woman for research into her Ph.D in Social Anthropology. Worryingly, there must be a thesis out there based on her findings and, if it is anything like this book, it won't really truly reflect the deeper reality of what Bangladesh is. The author at least admits that her understanding can only be superficial. She was there just 15 months and was 23 when she went - barely old enough to understand her own self and culture let alone anyone else's - so her reflections could only be limited.
  
  This is not a book I would recommend to anyone coming to visit or live in the country. It will only reinforce stereotypes of the people which are so easy to form when arriving as it is. Read instead the works of Bangladeshi authors or those of foreigners who have lived for many years in the country; not a handful of months. Yes, there are immense issues in Bangladesh which haven't changed in the slightest since Gardner's time there. But there is a beauty, a majesty, a peace and an honour there which is much greater. It is not all about 'sharom' (shame). Far from it.
• 
  Jonathan Ammon

  An honest and poignant view of Bangladeshi village life from a young Western outsider. Well written and often heart-wrenching the author does not romanticize Bangladesh or herself in it. She is honest about her own reactions and responses, her own foreignness. This is by far the best view I’ve been given into Bengali village culture and folk Islam.
• 
  Kelly

  See my review for More Women Travel. Great book! Read it!