Mouchak: Anatomy of a modern dystopia

What defines a dystopia?

Is it the slow dissolution of freedom, the heavy constants of control, or the insatiable breakdown of individuality beneath a relentless machine? These abstractions stopped being just that in Mouchak, a suburb of Gazipur. They loomed in the air—oppressive, undeniable, as tall and stark as the great factories dominating this place.

At first glance, Mouchak could look like any other industrial hub. Intensely sleek towers stretch off to the horizon, rows of mute factory testaments to the ethos of globalised consumption. Yet, when you reach just a step closer than this unmemorable façade, its actual condition rises from its ordinary surface: intricate, disturbing, and profoundly malignant. There is a rhythm specific to Mouchak —an ecosystem, unyielding and self-contained.

The factory clock controls the pulse of life here. When its hands align, a precise choreography begins: workers come one by one onto the street like a metronome. This artificial tempo governs eating, working, even resting. Forced to decide and act without the room to deviate, you can’t pause and reflect. Watching these synchronized movements, I couldn’t help but wonder: are the workers giving in to this relentless routine and feeling their autonomy slipping away, or have they been consumed so completely by it that they no longer realise its loss?

The factories, massive and unyielding, are more than mere workplaces. They are omnipotent entities, exerting a quiet yet total control over life in Mouchak. Residents speak of the corporations with a mix of reverence and resignation, as if acknowledging gods that both sustain and dominate them.

Take Mizan, for instance, a middle-aged worker who has spent over two decades stitching garments. He likens the factory to a parent who feeds and shelters you but demands your complete obedience in return. “We are all children of the machines,” he says, his voice carrying a note of bitter acceptance. The factory decides when he eats, when he rests, and when he returns home to his family. He describes it as a pact: survival at the cost of surrender.

The factories discard mountains of surplus fabric as a byproduct of their vast operations. To the untrained eye, this might seem like nothing more than waste, but here it forms the backbone of a secondary economy. Vendors comb through the scraps, sorting and selling what others deem worthless, crafting livelihoods from the detritus.

Consider Shirin, a mother of three, who collects discarded joot (fabric scraps) to sell at the market. “It’s strange,” she says, folding bright-colored scraps into neat piles. “What they throw away keeps us alive. But we never know when they’ll stop.” In this intricate cycle of dependence, it’s worth asking: who holds the real power—the one who discards, or the one who survives by reclaiming the discarded?

What does it mean to live in a place where individuality is submerged in the collective? In Mouchak , every resident is tethered to the garment industry, whether directly or indirectly. Families function as units in the system—children sorting scraps, mothers sewing, fathers transporting goods. Even those outside the factories find themselves drawn into the ecosystem, selling fabric in the bustling markets or ferrying discarded materials in makeshift vans.

This collective existence leaves little room for personal identity. Even dreams seem tethered to the machines. Take twelve-year-old Sumon, who dreams not of a life beyond Mouchak but of owning his own joot stall. “It’s what we know,” he says with a shy smile. His mother nods approvingly; for her, this is the safest dream in an unpredictable world.

The market itself is a chaotic labyrinth, its narrow alleys lined with rooms hidden behind metal rolling doors. Inside, piles of fabric scraps are sorted with painstaking care, each piece a fragment of the life force that drives this place. Wandering through, it felt less like a marketplace and more like the veins and arteries of a living organism.

But what kind of organism is this? Is it alive, thriving in its single-minded purpose? Or is it decaying, held together by inertia and sheer necessity?
The machine that breathes

Even the air in Mouchak feels as though it belongs to the factories. There isn’t always a chemical tang to every breath, but the faint scent often rides on the whispering winds of machinery. The roads and landscape are riddled with potholes and strewn with pieces of fabric. These scraps are not discarded carelessly; instead, they are collected and skillfully sorted to sustain the hive’s unrelenting hunger.

Watching the workers move through this industrial terrain, I wondered: do they see the city as I do—a machine that breathes and hungers? Or has familiarity made this world so ordinary that its strangeness is invisible to them?

The streets emptied just as quickly as they filled. Once again, the clock strikes, pulling everyone back into the same gravelly rhythm, the same unending routine. The factories swallow the workers, their long, dark silhouettes stretching unnaturally under the midday sun. It is here that Mouchak bares its deepest truth: the rhythm is not their own.
To the corporations, this rhythm signifies efficiency. To the workers, it is survival. To an outsider, it feels like quiet annihilation. There is no rebellion, no resistance, no hesitation. The rhythm is absolute. But what remains of a person who has moved to its cadence for so long?

As the last light of day waned, the factories’ shadows consumed Mouchak, stretching farther and farther as if to devour it whole. Standing at the edge of this relentless hive, I felt overwhelmed by its hum. The air vibrated with the buzz of motors, the shuffle of countless feet, and the distant clatter of unseen machines. The hive continued, indifferent to my presence.
And yet, as I turned to leave, one question lingered:

If Mouchak operates as a machine, what might happen when it forgets how to stop?

* Shuparno Rahman has just wrapped up high school and is currently I am looking for something new and trying to wrap his head around admissions.