The Shingara as a Geopolitical Testimony

A little over a year ago, I sat across from Raju Bhai at his stall near Nilkhet, watching him fold spiced potatoes into dough with the practised ease of generations. His handwritten price tag had just climbed from Tk5 to Tk7, and his explanation was a masterclass in globalisation's dark arts. "Bhai, Russia-Ukrainer juddho, dollar shortage, Meghna Bridge traffic jam -- everything is in this shingara now," he'd said. 

That conversation became a column for Dhaka Tribune, chronicling how a humble snack had become a deep-fried barometer of a world in turmoil.

I returned to his stall last week. The aluminium kettles still clang against steel pots as Dhaka stirs awake, but the rhythm is different. The line of students is shorter; they buy one shingara instead of two. The price tag now reads Tk 15. Raju Bhai looks older, the flour dust on his hands settling into deeper lines on his face.

"Bhai, ager bar shudhu juddher golpo chhilo," he said, not looking up from the vat of oil. "Eibar toh agun dhoreche amader i shoshane." ("Brother, last time it was just stories of war. This time, the fire is in our own backyard.")

He wasn't just talking about inflation anymore. He was talking about the Strait of Hormuz, about tankers trapped in a line of fire. He was talking about an Indonesian export ban, and a Russian winter that killed the wheat. He was talking about how, in just one year, the shingara had stopped being just a barometer. It had become a testimony.

The Strait of Fire: When Oil Becomes a Weapon

The crisis begins, as it always does now, with oil.

In early 2026, the long-simmering shadow war between Iran and Israel escalated into something more direct. When retaliatory strikes hit strategic targets deep inside Iranian territory, the response was swift and catastrophic: The Strait of Hormuz, that narrow 33-kilometre throat through which 20% of the world's oil must pass, was effectively closed.

Not formally blockaded -- just made too dangerous for insurers to touch, for captains to risk.

For Bangladesh, which imports nearly all its fuel and edible oils through routes that begin in this strait, the effect was immediate. Global oil prices didn't just spike; they convulsed. Brent crude touched $120 within a week.

But the real story was in vegetable oils -- palm from Indonesia and Malaysia, soybean from the Americas -- all priced in dollars, all routed through waters now littered with the memory of missile fire.

"The ship was anchored off Fujairah for 23 days," says a Dhaka-based importer who asked not to be named, referring to the UAE port where many vessels wait before attempting the strait. "Demurrage, insurance, re-routing costs -- by the time it reached Chittagong, a litre of crude palm oil had doubled before a single drop was refined."

Then Indonesia moved. Facing domestic shortages and committed to its ambitious B40 biodiesel mandate -- requiring 40% palm oil blend in diesel -- Jakarta suspended export permits in March 2026. The world's largest producer had chosen its own people over the world's markets. Global palm oil prices, already volatile, soared past previous records.

At a refining plant in Narayanganj, managers watched helplessly as their input costs climbed 74% in eight weeks. "We used to pass on price increases monthly," a finance officer told me. "Now we revise every Monday. The wholesalers don't even argue anymore. They just pay, or they go empty."

The Black Sea's Bearish Winter

If oil was the explosion, wheat was the slow burn.

By early 2026, global grain markets had learned to live with the Ukraine war. Prices had stabilised at a "new normal" -- higher than before the invasion, but predictable. Russian wheat flowed; Ukrainian wheat trickled out through solidarity lanes and guarded ports. The world adjusted.

Then winter came for Russia.

Not a metaphorical winter -- an actual one. In February 2026, an abnormal cold snap swept across the Volga region, Russia's breadbasket. Temperatures plunged to minus 35 degrees Celsius, settling over winter wheat fields like a killing frost. Early estimates from agricultural consultancies suggested 15-20% of the next harvest had simply died in the ground.

The market, which had priced in continuation, not catastrophe, reacted badly. Within weeks, benchmark wheat futures climbed 30%. And while Russian wheat remained available, it now carried a "war premium"—the unspoken understanding that Moscow might, at any moment, weaponize food the way it had weaponized gas.

For Bangladesh, which produces barely 10% of its wheat needs, the math was brutal. The taka, already weakened against a resurgent dollar, touched Tk 123 per USD in early 2026 -- a 30% depreciation since 2022. A 50kg flour sack that cost Tk 1,800 before the first war now hovered near Tk 3,000. But worse than the price was the uncertainty.

"Last year, I could call my supplier and know what I'd pay next week," says Mohammad Ali, the Kawran Bazar wholesaler who featured in my first column. "Now? I sit with cash in my hand, waiting for a call. Sometimes the ship comes; sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the price is Tk 2,600; sometimes it's Tk 3,200. The shingara-walas come to me with fear in their eyes. What do I tell them?"

The Potato Paradox: When Local Meets Global

At Tantibajar, Dhaka's shingara epicentre, Abdul Kader has been frying for forty years. His grandfather fried before him. He has seen wars, coups, floods, and famines. He has never seen anything like this.

"Look," he says, pulling out a notebook -- the kind schoolchildren use, with a Bollywood actress on the cover. His accounts are recorded in pencil, the numbers rubbed out and rewritten so many times the paper has worn thin.

January 2025: Potato -- Tk 30/kg. February 2026: Potato -- Tk 65/kg.

"Double," he says, tapping the page. "Not in five years. In one season. And for what? Fog."

He's not wrong. In January 2026, unseasonal cold and dense fog settled over northern districts like Rangpur and Bogura -- the heart of Bangladesh's winter potato crop. Harvests were delayed; yields dropped. The Department of Agricultural Extension would later estimate losses of 25-30% in some areas.

But nature only started the fire; middlemen poured the oil.

With global uncertainty driving overall inflation past 10%, cold storage owners and wholesalers began holding stocks, anticipating even higher prices. By March, potatoes that should have fed Dhaka's kitchens were sitting in warehouses, waiting for the price to climb just a little more.

"The small vendors suffer first," says a Gulistan spice trader who, like many, requested anonymity. "They buy daily, sometimes twice daily. They have no storage, no bargaining power. When I raise my price for garlic -- Tk 300 per kg now, can you believe it? -- they just nod and pay. What choice do they have?"

Garlic, cumin, coriander, chilli -- all have followed the same trajectory. India's export taxes, local crop switching, the general inflationary drag of a currency in decline -- each spice tells a story of somewhere else, someone else's decision, landing like a weight on a street vendor's already bent shoulders.

The Vendor's Calculus: Survival in Four Dimensions

Let us pause here and do the math Raju Bhai does every morning at 4 a.m., when Dhaka is still dark and the day's oil waits cold in the drum.

The shingara's cost breakdown, early 2026:

• Flour: Tk 2.50 per piece (up from Tk 1.50 a year ago)
• Oil: Tk 3.00 per piece (up from Tk 1.20)
• Potato-filling: Tk 2.00 per piece (up from Tk 0.80)
• Spices, fuel, labour: Tk 2.50 per piece (up from Tk 1.50)
• Rent, bribes, mastaan fees: Tk 2.00 per piece (unchanged -- the only stable line item)

Total cost: Tk 12.00 per shingara.

Selling price: Tk 15.00 for three? No -- Tk 15.00 for one.

Profit: Tk 3.00.

"Before, I sold a hundred pieces and fed my family," Raju Bhai says. "Now I sell a hundred pieces and pray no one gets sick."

Because here is the hidden cost no ledger shows: The oil that once was changed every three days now gets strained for a week. The potatoes, bought at peak price, are stored in the damp corner where rats find them before customers do. The flour, mixed with cheaper maida to stretch the sack, produces a shingara that looks right but tastes wrong.

"The students don't complain anymore," he adds quietly. "They just don't come back."

The Gravity of Our Time

What, then, is this new shingara?

It is a witness. It carries within its fried folds the testimony of a year in which the world's fault lines finally reached Dhaka's streets.

That slight bitterness at the edge of the crust? That is Indonesian palm oil policy, refracted through a dollar shortage and a tanker stuck off Fujairah.

The softness where there should be crunch? That is a Russian winter killing wheat in the Volga, and a Ukrainian port struck by missiles, and a Bangladeshi importer paying cash for a shipment that may or may not arrive.

The missing garlic, the muted spice, the potato that tastes of storage rather than earth? That is climate change arriving not as flood or cyclone, but as fog -- slow, silent, devastating.

And the price -- that Tk 15 handwritten on a scrap of cardboard, held down by a stone against the wind? That is the final accounting. That is what happens when global systems designed to be invisible suddenly become visible, when the abstract machinery of geopolitics grinds down to the most concrete question of all: Can I afford to eat today?

The shingara has become a geopolitical testimony -- not because it chose to speak, but because it had no choice. Its silence was broken by forces it never voted for, wars it never declared, policies it never shaped. It simply sits on its paper plate, crisp or not crisp, full-flavoured or not, and waits to be bought or ignored.

That is the gravity of our time. Not that great powers clash -- they always have. But that their clashes now land, with full force, on the smallest anvils. On a street vendor in Nilkhet. On a student counting coins. On a shingara that once cost five taka and now costs fifteen, and still might be the last one someone eats today.

Last Crumbs

Next time you bite into a shingara, pause. Listen past the crunch.

That sound carries:

• An Israeli jet engine over Isfahan.
• A missile striking a Ukrainian grain silo.
• An Indonesian minister signing an export ban.
• A Russian farmer walking frozen fields in March.
• A Bangladeshi cold storage owner refusing to open his doors.
• A mother in Dhaka deciding which meal matters most.

The true recipe for a shingara, circa 2026? One part flour, two parts oil, three parts potato -- and the entire weight of a world on fire, pressed into a single, golden, impossible bite.

Zakir Kibria is a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He once smuggled a lighter through three continents. He is still chasing the perfect shingara, though he suspects it now exists only in memory. His email address is [email protected]