What's So Great About Gulshan, Anyway?: Instructions for the expatriated

Dhaka, Bangladesh is a city jammed with public lives, where high-rises, minarets, factory roofs and palm trees form a varied skyline. Within Dhaka is the Gulshan precinct, home to embassies, mansions and exclusive recreation clubs patronised by affluent deshis (locals) and bideshis (foreigners). Together with Dhaka's five-star retreats, the clubs form a private realm where members may forget their troubles, the time or even the world outside. That is what is so great about Gulshan- and also what is so dangerous. With reference to the space the privileged colonial spectre occupies in a modern 'developing' country (Brah 1996, Deen 1998, Said 2003, Ware 1992), this prose poem explores the elite bideshi/ expatriate sanctuary in reaction to the Dhaka beyond its walls. While framing various facets of this club culture, the piece uses the form of the prose poem to reflect the mutability of Bangladesh's 'inside' and 'outside' spaces (de Certeau 1984, Lather 1991).