The weight of Monsoon in ‘Troubling Rain’

My first instinct, when walking into "Troubling Rain" at Alliance Française de Dhaka, was to recall how often rain has been romanticised in this city's cultural memory. Generations have sung about it, written about it, danced to its rhythm. The monsoon, in Bangla literature, has been the backdrop for longing, love, and lyricism. From Tagore's verses to Nazrul's songs, it has always been imagined as something that enhances beauty and deepens emotion. And yet, what Abir Abdullah does in this exhibition is strip the rain of its poetry and return it to its grit.

For over two decades, Abdullah has turned his lens toward the monsoon not as a muse but as a menace. The resulting body of work is not cynical but honest. We see images of knee-deep water swallowing busy streets, cars stranded like helpless vessels, pedestrians balancing their dignity against muddy currents. There are upturned umbrellas, collapsed pavements, and rickshaws stalled mid-journey, their passengers staring into the void of yet another wasted day. These are not the kind of photographs that hang like decorations; they press against you, reminding you of how rain shapes this city not through metaphor but through lived disruption. And yet, "Troubling Rain" is not a collection of complaints. What makes it compelling is its ability to capture resilience without romanticising it. There is no glamour here, but there is dignity, the kind that comes from simply enduring, from carrying on.

What becomes clear as you move through the frames is how intimately Abdullah understands Dhaka's contradictions. The city, home to over 20 million people and stretched to its limits, exposes the fragility of its infrastructure with every monsoon. Roads collapse, drains overflow, electricity falters; and yet, somehow, life does not stop. The photographs are less about governance failures, though those are implicitly present, and more about how ordinary people navigate them with improvisation and endurance. This quiet resilience is what makes the work haunting. It is not only about the hardship of rain, but about the human capacity to adapt, again and again, to the same seasonal trial.

Standing before the photographs on a rainy day, I kept thinking about how rarely this side of the monsoon is documented. Rain is usually framed either as something to be endured with bitterness or celebrated with nostalgia. Abdullah refuses both. He does not reduce his subjects to victims, nor does he cast them in the glow of poetry. He allows them to exist as they are: tired, drenched, irritated, yet still moving forward. Perhaps that is the most Dhaka-like thing of all; the art of carrying on, even when everything around you seems determined to stop you.

The longer you spend with the series, the more it reveals itself not just as photographs of rain, but as meditations on time. Rain alters the pace of life in Dhaka. It slows movement, bends schedules, and forces detours. In Abdullah's work, these disruptions become records of temporality: the endless waiting in traffic, the dragging of footsteps through water, the sudden inversion of an umbrella. His lens does not seek spectacle but captures the quiet, raw moments that define the collective experience of Dhaka's rain; a woman holding her child as she steps into floodwater, a child carefully balancing across a submerged alley, the frustrated stare of a rickshaw puller caught in stagnant traffic. They are neither sentimental nor apocalyptic; they simply are.

Despite everything, "Troubling Rain" does not sink into despair. In many ways, it is also a celebration of human adaptability. It reminds us that rain in Dhaka is not only a test but also a rhythm; one that reshapes the city's time and space, etching stories of survival and improvisation into its streets. By refusing to romanticise and instead choosing to bear witness, Abir Abdullah presents a monsoon that feels both familiar and unsettling. It is the Dhaka we know, but rarely pause to see; the Dhaka that is vulnerable, chaotic, yet endlessly alive.

"Troubling Rain" will remain open to visitors until August 23, from 3pm to 9pm daily.