Diarist 47 was, until recently, a recycler. He bought used paper, plastics and metals from rag-pickers (often children), then sorted and bundled them to sell on to a wholesaler. That wholesaler sometimes gave him credit for his purchases. He is from a poorer northern District and neither he nor his wife have ever been to school. When we first met him his wife and daughter were in his home village - where he has half an acre of farmland - and he was living alone in a tin hut alongside the his stock of materials (pictured). The daughter was married in 2017.
His work has sometimes brought him into contact with the police and when we first met him he had been accused of murder: the case dragged on but was eventually dropped. He is religious, sometimes very religious, and has spent money, and been funded by others, to perform Muslim rituals, and to go on pilgrimages across the country (though not yet to Mecca for the Haj).
He has two sons, who have sometimes worked alongside him and sometimes not, and sometimes lived with him, along with their wives (until one got divorced), and sometimes not. One reached college-level education. The Covid lockdowns were hard on all of them and Diarist 47 went back to his village for some time, returning in 2022 only to burn himself badly while processing tar. After recovering in hospital he went on a major pilgrimage for several months, living on local charity. When he returned the recycling business didn't recover and in 2024 he started a new business, selling cane, in Chittagong, sometimes living there and sometimes in his village.
