Bangladesh Diary: Laughing Buddha

His face is a little thinner than last time we met, and his brow a little more furrowed, but there is no mistaking the old Mitoyan. When I lived here eight years ago, I got to know him through my driver, who was a Buddhist, and so began my acquaintance with this jolly and radiant monk, whose eyes disappear into crescent moons when he laughs.

Getting to the temple involves another scuttling ride across town by baby taxi. I'm learning now to lean each way as we screech on three wheels at impossible angles. So this is how speedway must feel, I reason as we jolt along, other vehicles so close it would be possible, if you were truly insane, to reach out and touch them. It's early afternoon and the cars, trucks and rickshaws among which we dart gleam with bright daubs of sun.

I am training my eyes to look again, rather than just see, so that things which have long seemed normal come into focus once more. Here, for example, is a family of four balanced precariously on a motorbike, a miracle of physics, the wife sitting elegantly side-saddle, a shopping bag in one hand and a toddler in the other. Another tiny child straddles the engine, leaning back against his father, looking utterly at home in the turbulent rush.

We pass a man with five bird cages on a long pole. Flashes of turquoise and emerald catch my eye, and then are lost to view, obscured by a crowded double-decker bus, painted in green and red. Over there on the pavement is a man with a tiny drum, and two monkeys on a lead. He beats the drum and the sharp little monkeys dance, their black eyes flashing and curious. A string of political posters flutter on the walls, each party represented by a strangely banal symbol, so as to be recognisable to illiterate voters. The ones I catch sight of are a football, a ladder and a bucket. Underneath the pitiful shade of a dust-laden grey umbrella, a group of women breaks bricks, hammering endlessly, as the red powder rises into the hot air. As ever, the sky up above is punctuated by logos from another world: the tall neon-lit signs advertise Toshiba, Sony and Mitsubishi.

During my forty-minute journey, Mitoyan phones me four times to check my progress. Mobile phones are a godsend for Bangladeshis, for whom communication is everything, and a goldmine no doubt for the corporations who run them. It is as well to phone - forty minutes is a long time in Bangladesh - there may be delays, changes of plan, changes of mind. Anything could happen. Not for nothing is the word Inshallah the first and most important word you must learn here...

He meets me at the agreed spot and we take a rickshaw, an odd sight: a foreigner and a monk rolling serenely by. For once, I am the less-stared at of two people - the onlookers initially baffled and unable to decide who merits more of their attention - the bald orange monk or the blue-eyed hairy-armed foreigner. Final score, (to my amusement): Mitoyan wins hands down.

Once at the temple and school compound I sit in his room, enjoying a cup of weak coffee, and a bowl of delicious roshmallai - a sweet milky pudding, and we laugh at his smart watch and his trendy mobile, buried deep in the folds of his dark orange robe. I take a picture of him speaking into it and this delights him. Now I look like a film star.

I look around the room. There is a sink, some plastic flowers, a poster of a Yamaha motorbike. Over on the other side there is a case full of assorted crockery and, bizarrely, a tennis racquet. A shopping bag full of books bears the legend Lady Diana Department Store, and there, indeed, is a picture of the fairy-tale princess, looking wide-eyed and innocent in those early unknowing years. Above the bed there is a panoramic picture of a monastic convention in Taipei. Mitayan, grinning, challenges me to find him in the crowd. I look in panic at the eight hundred or so monks, all identically bald, all identically clad in saffron. But there, suddenly, he emerges from the crowd, his face serious for once as befits a gathering of such solemnity, and I am able to point him out with some relief.

There is something troubling Mitoyan today though, and soon it emerges that his sister has recently been killed in a car accident, her rickshaw smashed by a careering jeep, one more victim of the lethal roads. I am very gloomy these days, Andrew, and very thankful. He has lost 14 kilos in the last two months. His mother is old, and has no-one left to look after her, apart from a few distant relatives, and sits, bewildered, in her village, drowning in the grief of all mothers who live to see their children die.

After this tragic news, we sit in silence for a while, while the Buddha looks down from a picture on the wall. In fact, Mitoyan and I never actually say much anyway - but there is something calming and laid back about him which makes every encounter something to look forward to. He is one of those rare characters with whom it is enough just to sit, to take in the pearly late afternoon sky and to enjoy the quietness of true companionship.

Before returning home, there is a visit to the Abbot, an imposing man who speaks in accurate and careful singsong English. As we talk of how he needs a teacher in his neat monastery school in the Hill Tracts (what a wonderful job - any takers?) a couple of parents of children at the school come in and prostrate themselves in front of him. They are still there, now on their knees, when we leave five minutes later.

We return for a final cup of tea to Mitoyan's room. Perhaps is appropriate that the evening ends, as usual, with a power cut. He lights a candle on the table and I take in the flickering light, the dancing orange glow, and the last few moments of peace before heading out into the roaring traffic.