Essential Bengali phrases

The standard greeting. Rajshahi speaks a northwestern (Varendri) Bengali that is close enough to the standard that nothing will be unintelligible to you — the opposite of the Chittagong situation.

Silk. Rajshahi is the silk city and the Bangladesh Sericulture Development Board sits here, under the Ministry of Textiles and Jute. 'Rajshahi silk' is a real regional product, not a marketing phrase.

University. Rajshahi is a university town before it is anything else — the University of Rajshahi, RUET and the medical college between them define the city's professional life and its English-speaking network.

Mango. Between roughly May and July the whole region reorganises around the harvest — the orchards, the wholesale markets, the freight. Being here in mango season and not noticing would take real effort.

The Barind Tract — the raised, older, drier land the region sits on. It is the reason Rajshahi's problem is groundwater rather than flooding, and it names the museum, the development authority and a good deal else.

The river on the city's southern edge, and the Bangladesh border with India for much of its course here. The Padma embankment promenade is where Rajshahi walks in the evening.

The central market and commercial heart of the city — the reference point for directions and the place you will be told to go for almost anything.

In Rajshahi this usually means the battery-electric rickshaw rather than the CNG three-wheeler. The shift to battery autos was part of what cleaned the city's air, and they are still the default way to move around.

Brick kiln. The single biggest local source of Rajshahi's dry-season air pollution, and the reason a city that once led the world in cutting particulates has lost ground.

Drought. In most of Bangladesh the seasonal worry is water arriving; on the Barind it is water not arriving. Groundwater levels, irrigation and tube wells are ordinary conversation here.

'Brother', attached to almost any man's name and used for strangers; 'Apa' for a woman. The fastest way to sound less foreign anywhere in Bangladesh.

999 is the national emergency service — police, fire and ambulance on one number, the same across Bangladesh. 333 is the government information helpline. 109 is the national helpline for violence against women and children.