A study in Dhaka domesticity
The first thing a visitor notices about the Dhaka skyline is its density. The second is that almost every square inch of its domestic life is viewed through a lattice of iron. There is a peculiar tension in the way we inhabit our homes — an unspoken agreement that to feel safe, one must feel slightly trapped. We spend our lives behind an intricate embroidery of steel, installed to keep the world out, to ensure that the midnight thief remains a character of folklore. Yet, in the aftermath of 2025, these very cages have become the focal point of a quiet, collective anxiety.
The recent tremors have not helped the nerves. On a Friday morning this past November, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake decided to remind the capital that it sits upon a geological faultline as restless as the city’s traffic. It was a brief, violent shove from the earth — lasting only twenty-six seconds — but in the vertical villages of Dhanmondi and Banani, it felt like an eternity. As the ceiling fans swung like pendulums and the bone-china tea sets rattled in their cabinets, people performed their now-standard ceremony of rushing blindly toward the nearest exit. For Dhakaites, the earthquake drill is less about “Drop, Cover, and Hold” and more about “Run, Panic, and Facebook.” By the time the dust settled on the Narsingdi epicentre, the collective heart rate of 36.6 million people had collectively spiked, leaving us to look at our walls with a new, suspicious intimacy. Are those cracks new, or have they always been there, hidden behind the framed Dhakayeah map?
Fire, by contrast, is the city’s most persistent and constant risk. In the winding, ancient arteries of Puran Dhaka or the crowded blocks of Khilgaon, the mixed-use building is the architectural norm — a romantic way of saying there is a high-pressure gas cylinder and a biryani kitchen directly beneath your toddler’s bedroom. Following the tragedies that punctuate our news cycles with smoke, the conversation in the city’s tea stalls and gyms has shifted. We no longer ask if a building is “luxury,” we ask if it has a second staircase that actually leads somewhere.
To inspect a typical flat for fire-readiness is to find a collection of good-enoughs. The fire extinguisher, if it exists at all, is often a lonely, crimson cylinder tucked behind a stack of old newspapers. Its pressure gauge is usually firmly in the red. The wiring is a spaghetti of cables and copper, buried behind walls or dangling from ceilings. We add more load with every new kitchen gadget, placing an unearned trust in a circuit breaker that has sat uninspected and forgotten since the last power cut.
Then, there’s the Bangladeshi grill adorning our windows and balconies. There’s a particular irony to it. In any other part of the world, a window is an opening, but here, it’s a decorative barricade. The Fire Service and Civil Defence department has spent years pleading with building owners to install at least one hinged section — a small hatch that can be padlocked from the inside and opened in an emergency. Yet, walking through the alleyways of Mohammadpur, one sees only solid, welded iron. We are so terrified of the intruder on the ledges that we ignore the possibility of the fire in the kitchen.
The Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) exists, of course. It is a thick, authoritative document that outlines everything from seismic reinforcement to the exact width of an emergency exit. But in the theatre of Bangladeshi real estate, the BNBC is often treated as a suggestion rather than a mandate. Developers speak of earthquake-resistant foundations with the same breezy confidence they use to promise “ample parking,” while the residents rely on a mix of Inshallah and the hope that the building next door is sturdy enough to lean on if things go south.
There is, perhaps, a bit of Sisyphus in all of us. It begins with the anchoring of the heavy almirahs that we favour, bolting them to the wall so they do not become falling barricades when the floor begins to pitch. It continues with the habit of turning off the gas valve before bed — a ritual as sacred as locking the front door. It is found in the refusal to daisy-chain multi-plugs or ignore a charred socket. It is in the decision to finally buy a smoke detector, even if the neighbours think it is a bit foreign.
We learn to identify the safe zones and have the difficult conversations with our loved ones about who, in an emergency, is accompanying the kids to safety, who is reaching for the pets, and who is staying back with the elders to evacuate at a slower pace. It is in the realisation that security is not a perk you buy from a developer, but a stubborn, daily habit of the person holding the keys. We know that the earth may shudder again tomorrow, rendering our bolts useless, yet we continue the ritual nonetheless. We must imagine Sisyphus happy, or at least well-prepared.
As 2026 begins, we continue to live in our beautiful, precarious towers, stacked atop one another like a high-stakes game of Jenga. We look at the grills on our windows and, for the first time in a long time, we wonder if they are there to protect us, or pin us in. For now, we keep a torch by the bed, a whistle in the drawer, and a sharp eye on the gas stove.