In the skies; then back on the ground.

During my layover in Kuala Lumpur, I stayed at the airport terminal because I didn 't have a visa to the country. Somehow I made the 11 hours go by...kept myself busy writing drafts of my travels (a total of 7 so far!), napped in a seating area upstairs which overlooks more seating areas, watched the last 20 minutes of a Liverpool vs. Arsenal football game, an Olympic women’s weight-lifting competition, and a Malaysian news program, and wandered around window-shopping.

When I checked the monitors for a listing of flights, I noticed that only about three hours worth of flights are displayed at a time. So, I had to wait quire a few hours before my flight was included among them. This is how I came to know, about two hours before my 10:20 p.m. flight, that my gate number had changed. Incidentally, a flight to Hyderabad, India was switched with my flight, so that my flight would leave from that India flight’s original gate.

The gate was in another part of the airport so after I arrived there by train, I saw a whole crowd of Bangladeshis already waiting for the flight, all men. I tried to not care because as the first Bangladeshi young woman arriving at the gate, everyone was looking at me. Instead I went for a stroll, continued walking past the remainder of the gates and then turned back at the end.

Bangladeshis are naturally curious and feel kinships with people. They try to get to know people and try to maintain relationships with people. Because of the way they grew up, living with extended family and always being with each other, many just haven’t developed the sense of personal space or privacy that say, people in the West have. Individualism is more prevalent while community, society, and family are the main themes in the lives of Bangladeshis, and actually, most Easterners.

From my perspective, I always get the feeling that over the years, more Bangladeshis have come to understand this need for independence, privacy and personal space, and don’t ask too many questions, but few feel the need to not be, as some would put it, inquisitive. Consider a conversation I had on the plane with an old woman in the seat next to mine. I was kind enough to let her keep her glass of water on my food tray. I didn’t mind because I’d kept mine on there anyway. That was an opener for the following [my explanations are in brackets and are not part of the conversation]:

She: Thank you. Where are you flying from?
Me: The United States.
She: What were you doing there? Your Ph.D.?
Me: No, my Masters.
She: Oh, in what subject?
Me: English.
She: Where’s your family home? [Incidentally, this is a common question and refers to my paternal grandfather’s birthplace.]
Me: In Shilaigara [This is a village beside the port town of Chittagong].
She: Where are you going to?
Me: Dhaka.
She: Where in Dhaka?
Me: Dhanmondi [Residential area]
She: Oh, where in Dhanmondi do you live?

By this point, I was feeling like she was getting too inquisitive and failed to answer her. Instead, I pretended to watch the movie on the big screen. She got the hint because she didn’t repeat her question again. I didn’t want to come off as mean or rude, but I may have seemed like it ignoring her like that. I can’t just tell her to stop asking me questions because that would be rude; direct, yes, but rude.

It’s just uncomfortable for me to be that open to strangers. I felt like she was asking for my address and she’s a total stranger. I don’t care about telling her what I already had. Everyone asks those questions anyway. Plenty of Bangladeshi students and graduates come back from studying overseas, whether Europe, or Australia, the U.K., or the United States. I was just one of those many. I just had this feeling that she’d crossed the “personal space” line. Of course she didn’t look at it that way but at least did realize that I was getting uncomfortable.

We didn’t converse again, but just before landing in Dhaka, I’d asked her if she wanted her cup. She didn’t want it, so I gave away it and my cup to the flight attendant. Soon after, I landed and went through immigration, got my brand-new passport stamped, stood by the baggage area, among the crowd, to get my luggage (I’d brought a carry-on, my purse, my coat, and two suitcases) and then met my uncle outside in the visitor area, and then, met my grandmother and mother near the car. Tired of dragging and carrying my luggage, when they all wanted to share the load and carry something, I promptly answered their request and handed one to each person. Freeee…as a bird!