Dhaka is a city of overlapped realities. Clearly one single Dhaka doesn't exist not just in spaces but perhaps in imagination too. It's a city full of questions which are never fully answered and that perhaps are one of its most strangely enchanting parts. It's a city of questions too but hazy answers that can be reborn as questions again. It makes Dhaka that much more mysterious, and let's face it, more intriguingly attractive.

But it's also true, this is not a city for everyone. By scientific indicators, Dhaka is probably the worst in any urban living standard steeplechase race. Nothing works here, jams crowd and choke the city and no city services work. Future offers no hope as think tankers constantly remind us and so many of us know whether we admit it or not.

So many citizens flee elsewhere out of fear because of that, so many run to resorts whenever they can, a sylvan reminder of a past never shared but an escape for those who must stay. That they do is largely because of economic reasons.

Whether it's a job, trade or inherited property, the pull to stay is too deep to be ignored. It's not a choice for most as they sit in hot humid Dhaka and dream of cold Toronto winters as snow covers the land in a peaceful blanket of white.

And there are also the ones who return even if they leave.

The rickshaw puller's advice

The girl greeted me as I was leaving the University campus for home looking for a rickshaw. She tried to get one for me from the crowd that is parked nearby. I took one and asked her in. She was going towards the Police Plaza to catch a bus and then on to her hostel a distance away. She was in her finals and was already getting ready for this or that exam. Most do whether it's for banks or IELTS, the first step towards leaving Bangladesh. I encourage them in both.

The girl was more concerned about my health and economics than her own. I told her my age helps, not too many days of uncertainty left. She was a bit distressed. We chatted till the crossing of Hatirjheel and Badda and we came out of the world of Badda alleys. She got off there as she saw a bunch of friends hiring CNG together. She bade me good-bye and left after I refused to share the fare.

As the rickshaw puller strained his tesla engines to handle the Hatirjheel bridge, he suddenly said, "That girl is very nice, asking about an old man's future who has no future instead of her own plans when she has so many plans to try. Such girls once held the sangsar strong. But we took girls for granted and now that we need them even more, they are going out to work and have less time. Men spoil everything."

A brief conversational interlude among an aged part time academic with no future, a young student with a future ahead and a vehicle puller with a constant past. They are part of a world where wisdom comes from life and right or wrong has a space to exist, one layer upon another, no final answer to the problems that huddle against each other like crumbling houses in a cramped alley lane.

The tailor and his customer

The father brought the boy to the tailoring shop to be measured for a pair of trousers. The boy was finicky and the father was losing his patience. But the tailor kept on smiling, measuring him again and again till the boy was happy that his first adult clothes would look good on him.

They paid an advance and left while the tailor plied his scissors in the sprawling market that had grown up in that part of the city where none had defined or strict socio-economic status. Most of his clients came from the awkward class. Those who are considered 'bhadrolok' - very middle class - but whose pocket economics don't match the social stamp mark.

As the duo left, another person sitting quietly in the shop asked, why does he work in the slightly rickety part of the city when he could have worked in fine posh shops? The tailor worked on it and then looked up to say, "Here I don't have to worry where my customer's money came from. They don't have any money in the first place. Here I know none of their work is important so they are all innocent of the sins the fancy shop customers have." The tailor went back to his scissors and the man to a printed newspaper, an increasingly rare commodity.

The city doesn't provide answers to the questions about who it is because it doesn't have answers. Perhaps the answers are known to none. As a dying artist had once said, "the answer is not what I sought. The answer is always known. It's the question that matters."

This city neither asks questions nor gives answers. it just prefers to embrace those who seek its arms.