Dhaka’s Hindu Heart

It beats and throbs like an adrenaline-soaked sprinter racing through the heart of Dhaka’s old city.

Hindu Street, a long, narrow road with cracked sidewalks where bicycle rickshaws and pedestrians jostle for space on its narrow throughway while women in day-glow saris with bindi-dotted foreheads pass by lugging scuffed tin water jugs.

Dhaka’s Hindu minority makes up 9% of the city’s population and concentrate along Old Dhaka’s Hindu Street. Some say the city’s name comes from the Hindu goddess Dhakeshwari (which translates to “Goddess of Dhaka”) whose 12^th century temple is the holiest Hindu sight in the country.

As I explored the street’s clutter, buying a few souvenirs and checking out Hindu idols and relics, I slipped down a narrow alleyway that opened into a courtyard scorched by the afternoon sun.

3 or 4 story homes surrounded the 20-foot by 50-foot paved space, populated by generations of families living together.

We shared smiles.

Life seemed to slow down.

And with a traveler’s patience, I watched the silence of the mundane while 30 feet away, through a crumbling doorway and dark corridor, Dhaka’s hyper energy blew by in clouds of exhaust and dust and rickshaw horns unending drone.