Around and about in Kolkata

Thousands of people work and sleep in the area where I live: not only are small houses squeezed on to every available inch of land, but many also sleep on the streets. And everyone knows that I am here: Judith and I are the only westerners in this area, so to say that we stand out is a slight understatement. But not so many people have talked to me yet, apart from the children, although I’m trying to say ‘namaste’ to all I catch staring at me, and to smile at the women. Unfortunately most people seem to speak Bengali rather than Hindi, and when they do speak Hindi I am sure that they mix many Bengali words in, which is definitely the reason I am finding it so difficult to understand!

My accommodation is down a little alleyway off a rather busy road. At the head of the alleyway is a pond where the locals wash their clothes, themselves, and where the children happily splash around: a haven of peace in the otherwise frenetic city. The road is like any other road in Kolkata – an overpowering mixture of dogs, children playing, street vendors, men pushing cartloads of fruit, bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, cars and buses. There are no traffic rules here – each is for their own. That means that people drive as fast as they can through the narrowest of gaps, and there is no concept of hazard awareness or planning ahead, so they drive straight up to a hazard and then beep their horn. Riding a bike or motorbike down the road must be like playing dodgems, swerving to miss a pedestrian here, a dog there and a cartload of fruit here. It is impossible to walk on the pavements as they are taken up by dogs sleeping, open drains, and the small stalls, so walking down the road entails looking behind every so often.

There are dozens of little vendors very close to my accommodation which is great for buying bottled water. I bought some bananas the other day, though, and there were strange hard black stones in them, which rather successfully put me off from doing that again. But to buy anything more than this I need to go into the centre of this area. To get there we have to catch an auto rickshaw, which entails standing on the edge of the road in the blazing sun, wincing at the frequent near misses and waving at all the auto rickshaws until one stops and you can clamber in. We then go careering dangerously down the road, overtaking slower vehicles with absolutely no regard for any traffic that may be coming in the opposite direction, until the intensity of the traffic and people incredibly increases, and we have reached the market centre. This is a little more upmarket than where I am staying, as there are larger shops as well as the road side stalls. It is a major junction, which is almost impossible to cross unless you step boldly forward and hold your hand out firmly as if to say: watch out you crazy drivers, pedestrian here. The pavements are full of mangy dogs, children playing, men washing, men working, women sitting and chatting, open drains: the streets really are the centre of life (and death and decomposition given the amount of rubbish.)

A couple of minutes up the street is a large supermarket, and it may be a cliché, but stepping in really is like stepping in to another world. It is air conditioned, it sells any number of western goods, and all items are marked in price: there is no haggling here. There is a restaurant and it is possible to get fish and chips and pizza; this may become my haven when the heat and frenetic activity all get too much.

And this is as far as I have ventured so far – the centre of Kolkata is about a 45 minutes to 1 hour journey away in blistering temperatures and crazy traffic. I have yet to experience that particular pleasure.

Apart from the pond at the head of my alley, I can’t think of any open space in the vicinity where I work and live. Every conceivable bit of land is filled with street stalls, houses, and plastic covered shacks. It is a funny thought that I am surrounded by so many thousands of people who have such different lives to mine: the women who run roadside stalls and who pack up their wares and move on every single day; the men who have to cycle people in their rickshaws in this blistering heat; the men who push cartloads of their wares down the middle of the street being narrowly missed by taxis and motorcycles; the women who sort through rubbish separating the paper from the rest, day after day. Even sitting in my bug filled and basic accommodation, I am immensely privileged, and it is not fair. Yesterday a boy came up begging: we started talking and he asked me where I was from. When I replied London, he got very excited and said ‘tomorrow I go in a plane’, and zoomed off down the street pretending to be a plane. For me, flying is normal. For him, it is but a dream.