Dhaka. A city of just over 14 million.

Perhaps described best as unrepentant, relentless, charming, because of and not despite the filth that piles in the streets, because of the density of the lush green foliage that only just provides cover for the steady patter of monsoon rains, because of the bright splashes of brightness and color that the salwar kameez’s and the unslacking backs of the wrapped women provide as they parade their children provide.

The first very days, I noted the sheer sensory overload; the spice of the curries will burn your throat, even the smallest bite has multitudes of flavor that will send you running for more (and to the bathroom) as your tongue stumbles over the names. Pronunciation will come with time; it’s the effort that counts and is appreciated by locals. Be prepared, you’ll dodge gaping puddles a foot wide, and accept the dust that will inevitably settle in the cracks of your hair and clothes.

Steel yourself for the possibility of an ice cold shower; hot water is a luxury that will occur happenstance.

Note the beauty; green ivy dangles from the drop balconies of eleven story apartment buildings as rickshaw’s hurdle through the air and tree roots burst between the pavement, curling for an scrap of sunlight sandwiched as they are between the buildings. The embroidery set in the fabrics of the women’s clothing with send you goggling, their elegance and grace undefinable.

From our apartment, the city stretches forth in swathes of gray, the corrugated sheen of tin from a slum set on stilts glints in the middle of a river, the other side of which the ramshackle skyscrapers painted various hues of salmon pink, orange, blue and creme, pepper the skies.

Note the beauty, for it is immeasurable, and without number but also the poverty. The beggars will tap at your car window with gouged eyes and mutilated limbs as you sit stuck in limbo in a two hour traffic jam; there will be barefooted children who clamber after you, following your footsteps halfway up the streets, all vying for your attention with their cheap goods, calling out Auntie, Auntie. There are half naked babies happy as can be with their plastic bottles and puddles to muck about in.

Dhaka feels familiar, for reasons wholly inexplicable after living in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Bangladesh feels as if it is a conglomeration of both poverty and modernity, wearing its cultural banner draped over its shoulders. The hustle and bustle soothes something in my soul; the noise and the sound is reminiscent of being and reverberate at every corner.

This a city of great struggle, but also of burgeoning life that continues on, despite the overly apparent political corruption, and poverty, where the average person lives on 957.82 US dollars a year (2013).

It’s filthy, it’s dirty, and the poverty is high, sitting astride the modernity caught in leaps and bounds. Here, everything moves, lives, breathes, the chorus of honking horns providing the backdrop for a city astride a jungle. Here, there seems space for all to coexist.