If you go to Dhaka, Bangladesh, you may come across a place called "Bangla Motors." Buses stop there, and rickshaws, CNG’s, and taxis can get you there. It stands at the intersection of Mymensingh and Moghbazaar roads, roughly halfway between the Shonargaon and Sheraton hotels. Do not, however, look for a business by the name of "Bangla Motors." There isn’t one.
    There never was. The name is testimony to the determined way Bangladeshis were eager to wipe out the legacy of Pakistani rule after the country became independent.

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For a short minute this summer, it looked like the end had finally come for rickshaws in Kolkata.  But the latest news suggests that the 19th century relic has found a new lease of life.
    In the streets of the capital of West Bengal, more than 20,000 men, mostly poverty-stricken migrants from Bihar, pull human beings on a two-wheeled carriage, walking on their feet.  Among themselves, they share the income from 6,000 licensed rickshaws — of course after paying the owners their ounce of flesh.  This is the only part of the world where humans still pull rickshaws with their feet on the ground.  Rickshaws originally came from China, but after the 1949 revolution, that degrading form of labor was done away with.  
    I have heard many times of plans to do away with Kolkata’s rickshaws, but each time, nothing comes of the effort.

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    Often, after Nature hands us the first punch, the second comes from the Man.
    Witness, in the face of Katrina, the shameful failure of response by the most powerful government on earth to the survival needs of its poor, mostly black, residents of New Orleans.
    But Katrina only exposed that long before Nature’s assault, the punches had been raining down from the Man.  Most of those left stranded could not evacuate because they were too poor.  Where would they go without cars, without cash, credit cards, or bank accounts to pay for hotel rooms?
    You cannot kick Nature’s ass for bringing Katrina on shore.  But the disaster made by the Man should have consequences.  “Toss the scoundrels out” is a sentiment that has often been heard, post-Katrina.
    Sometimes it does work out that way.  My memory goes back to the November 1970 cyclone that hit the southern coast of East Pakistan, today’s Bangladesh.

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The week that Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, a friend of mine from New Orleans escaped from the storm and drove, first to relatives in the south, then later up north. I spoke to her as she was driving along a highway. I asked her if she’d eaten, and she said she had bought a breakfast sandwich and had not quite finished it yet. Somewhere in the conversation, I called her a refugee and she bristled at my use of the word. I’ve read of other black folks rejecting the word, too, considering it demeaning and not worthy of being used for someone who’s a citizen of the United States. But why?

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