used clothe

In 1971 as America entered its second decade of the Vietnam War and American families  were entertained by Archie Bunker and “All in the Family” on their TV screen, in Bangladesh, a freshly independent nation, on the other side of the world as we reached our teenage years, a bleak future greeted us. The new nation’s economy broke down, politicians became corrupt and nepotism became the governing force of the day. We became the latest saga of an all familiar post colonial countries: another national story of nepotism, corruption, and inept administration mismanaging the nation’s resources. The nation in the midst of a famine, with its economy hitting the ground, and with seven children at that time, my parents had no more money to afford new clothes for all of us. Situation compelled us to be innovative and adapt to new ways of living. One such new adjustments was to buy clothes from the secondhand market that we called “Taal Company Bazaar”. The Chittagonian (local Chittagong dialect of Bengali language) word for huge unsorted piles is “taal” and thus the name of the whole marketplace for used clothes imported from the West was “Taal Company Bazaar”, a name never officially sanctioned, but a name that resonated in the hearts and minds of millions of poor and beaten down middle class; an unpretentious name, a name that conveyed the simple truth and symbolically portrayed the status of the whole nation at that time. These vendors of old clothes imported from the West used to line up their stores in shacks on the two sides of dark dirt alleyways piling in large heaps. The clothes were all mixed together, shirts, t-shirts, pants, slacks, sport jackets, formal wears, undershirts, under wears, pajamas, all together, auctioning off sometimes one piece at a time, sometimes in a bulk to individuals whose self-pride and dignity had been beaten down by the realities of failed economy of a newly liberated country, a country that promised them prosperity not poverty.   At the very inception of this market this was a shopping place only frequented by the very poor, destitute and marginalized segments of the society, the ones you see living in the slums, in card-board shacks near the swear drain, the ones near the garbage dumps, and yet ignored by the society as if they were non-existent in this world. Now, with the economic worsening of the nation, what US secretary of State Henry Kissinger dubbed as “basket case” even the middle class started loitering in these dark alleys of used clothe market. For the middle class, at the beginning buying and wearing second hand clothing from the West was embarrassing and shameful, something less than dignified. A middle class in Bangladesh in those days was the one who still had the stubbornness of mind to tolerate hunger and not begging for help openly. A poor was one who had accepted his fate and was not hesitant of begging anymore.   As proud members of the middle class, with great consternation in our hearts, we started visiting this market in the most unpopular hours of 2 or 3 pm when the heat and humidity was intolerable turning the black pitch of the road into a soft dough consistency, hoping that no acquaintance discover us in the act of buying old clothes. This was the time with intense tropical heat and people preferred to stay indoors and avoid outdoors. To avoid the discovery, it was a common practice among the middle class to alter them to the right size and then wash and starch them meticulously so as to pass it as new. Although the first users were all poor, later with further deterioration of the economy, young boys, girls and teenagers of beaten down middle class started shopping and frequenting in the dusty smelly hills of used clothes. It was still a taboo for adults or anyone with sense of self-dignity to wear them not to say for the rich. Once I discovered this bazaar, I liked it outright: my fashion started changing in such an obvious way that people around me took notice. At the beginning like any other middle class with a sense of self-pride, I started altering them to fit my size, at times my mother used to undertake the task herself using her skill of sewing facilitated by the rare fortune of having a Singer sewing machine powered by foot paddle. Then as I evolved with the changing of time, and as I got more and more amorous with the notion of the United States, perhaps by age 17, I refused to alter these clothes any more. By now the middle class children have also evolved and the shame, stigma and embarrassment associated with the use of secondhand western clothes had dissipated largely, although not completely from the middle class who were aggressively competing with the poor to get the best pick out of the pile of old used clothes by the side of the dusty road. As the years went by, new industry and culture grew around this Taal Company Bazaar including tailoring business for instant alteration, tea stalls, fruit and snack stalls and what not and within a span of few years it evolved into a whole new shopping experience complete with all amenities of shopping. Around this time, one could watch the occasional whole families shopping in these dark alley ways, the stigma and shame was finally gone. This was also the time around which people had incredible thirst for news and information. Knowing all well that they could not trust their government owned radio broadcasts, people resorted to listening to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Voice of America (VOA). The public habit started around the tumultuous days of liberation war in 1971 but even after the liberation and creation of newly minted Bangladesh, the situation never improved dashing all hopes of prosperity. So, people continued to listen to these foreign broadcasts for the real news. In