Saying goodbye

One afternoon during my last week at AWWD, Tabassum came into our office with Sumita (our lovely office assistant). Sumita proceeded to lay out three empty water bottles in front of Tabassum. I looked on in bafflement, slowly turning to understanding, as Tabassum tucked her dupatta closely around her face, closed her eyes and lifted up her hands, murmuring Arabic under her breath. The three bottles of water were placed so she could feel that she was praying in the correct direction, towards Mecca. In spite of the telephones ringing, conversations, and people walking in and out, Tabassum was entirely focused on her prayers. For a couple of minutes a corner of our office was filled with peace and devotion.

It is these moments that I will most miss – the unexpected and unadulterated, if transitory, window through to another’s world and life. AWWD’s community workers have been open and genuine with me, inviting me into their homes and lives, with no expectation of anything in return except friendship. I know that they have given a lot more than I have given back: if ever I am disgruntled or complaining of life back home, I will think back to a beautiful blind woman living in atrocious conditions, unable to see but able to bring joy and a smile to those she meets, who has experienced the darkness of life that I can scarcely imagine, but who is herself a light to those around her.

Although at times I did find Kolkata as a city fairly difficult, frequently needing the (comparitive) peace of my room to recover, there can be no getting away from the fact that I will miss it. Kolkata is a passionate city: with so much humanity squeezed together in such a relatively small area, it vibrates with life. In spite of the huge divide between rich and poor, and the exclusion of many from the riches the city has to offer, it is relatively safe (with the substantial exception of the driving). I could walk through the slums with little fear of robbery. And it is a city with significant religious and ethnic diversity, of which Kolkatans are justly proud. With a 40% Muslim minority, Christians, Jews as well as Hindus, in the last few decades Kolkata has not seen the religious violence that has affected other parts of India. Lakshmi, a Hindu, could lead Tabassum, a Muslim, freely through the streets.

So, I will miss the children from my street running up to shake my hand every time I walk past; driving through the city in a taxi - the varied scents of the city wafting through the open windows: smoke, drains, fried food, flowers, and incense; popping over to my local fruit stall and picking up a few mangoes for 50 Rs…. No, I am not going to look back at my time here through rose-tinted spectacles: the brutal reality of life in Kolkata for many of the disabled women I met effectively prevents me from doing this. And so I will have no easy answer for all those who ask me, on my return ‘how was India?’

Before I left for Kolkata I visited some Christian friends who mentioned the following verse. This has had special meaning for me throughout my time in Kolkata, so it seems appropriate to end this chapter of my life with this verse, but at the same time looking to the future:

‘I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them, and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them’.

Isaiah 42: 16

Advice for the unwary British traveller in India

'When are you planning to leave Kolkata?’ Judith, fellow VSO volunteer, asked me tentatively during my last week at work. My first thought – what did she mean, planning to leave?! I was definitely leaving, flights booked, tickets printed out, parental pick up at Heathrow confirmed, on the 7^th of September. She continued, ‘I’ve just got a nice little message from the American consulate saying there is an India-wide strike starting at 6 am on the 7^th September until 6 am on the 8^th. They are suggesting American citizens don’t travel at all in West Bengal that day. The airport may be closed.’

So, initial decision – whether to laugh or cry. Deciding on laughing (albeit slightly hysterically) my mind wandered over all my travel plans that had gone awry over the previous month. Was I simply unlucky, or was this all part of the Indian experience? Here follows a brief summary of travelling stresses:

1. Floods in Ladakh damaging 80% of the main city’s infrastructure and the runway, two days before we were supposed to fly there.

2. Power cut at 4 pm on Friday afternoon, lasting the whole evening, just as I was trying to book bus tickets and hotel for a hurriedly re-planned holiday on-line (before flying to Delhi early Saturday morning).

3. When we did manage to get bus tickets from Delhi to Dharamsala (in the foothills of the Himalayas) my friend, who I was travelling with, and I were surprised to find that the bus didn’t leave from central New Delhi. This would have been (relatively) easy to find. No. Rather our bus tickets were from, I quote, a 'petrol pump' on a random road the other side of the city. There is no way we could have found it by ourselves, but luckily we had a very nice taxi driver who not only found the correct petrol pump, but also waited around with us during torrential rain, asked around to see whether we were in the correct place, found that we weren’t, and drove us a further 15 minutes up the road to a narrow and bumpy side street, at the bottom of which were a few coaches. He then asked around to find out which was our coach, and so we finally managed to collapse into our seats, fairly sure that we were heading to Dharamsala and not Manali, Simla or any other place in India (nothing would have surprised me by that point).

4. The overnight bus journey to Dharamsala was actually OK and I even slept a bit. This was not the case on the return journey. Unfortunately I pretty quickly started feeling sick due to the steep and winding mountain roads. Then unfortunately, I somehow managed to start hyperventilating (or something) and ended up being completely unable to move my hands or arms, which was really scary. I panicked and demanded that the whole coach stop, it’s funny that when you are feeling so ill you want to die all self-consciousness flies out of the window.

5. So, when we arrived in Delhi the next morning neither my friend nor I were at our best. We had train tickets from New Delhi to Jaipur for that afternoon. However, key lesson I had learned: don’t take anything or granted, and triple check everything. On triple checking the tickets, then, I found that the train didn’t actually leave from New Delhi station, which is what the ticket implied, but actually Old Delhi station, which was a lot further away. I also received a text stating that the time of the train had changed, but not saying to what time. It was then we realised we hadn’t left enough time to get to Old Delhi station given torrential rain, consequent lack of taxis and major traffic jams. So we gave up, and decided to enjoy the delights that Delhi had to offer instead.

6. I managed to fly back from Delhi to Kolkata without any problems.

I realise the above may have given the impression that I didn’t enjoy my holiday, which actually wasn’t the case. When we did manage to get to Dharamsala, it was very beautiful and peaceful (particularly compared to Kolkata).

Unfortunately it was the monsoon season, so it was fairly cloudy and rainy, but we managed to do some cooking lessons, plenty of shopping, and a hike up to 3000m (which, given my complete lack of exercise for the previous six months, I felt was quite impressive). We stayed in McLeod Ganj, which is also known as Upper Dharamsala, and where the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan community live. It was interesting, if shocking, talking to Tibetans and hearing their stories. Many had escaped Tibet over high mountain passes, some suffering from snow blindness or frostbite, and now cut off and unable to return to their families. There were many Buddhist monks, and we visited a few monasteries where monks were busy debating the intricacies of Buddhist philosophy: when they feel they make a sound point they stamp their feet and clap their hands.

McLeod Ganj is very much on the tourist trail, and was a very different experience both to living in Kolkata and to visiting the mountains in Pakistan. It was clearly set up to receive a high number of tourists – there were many coffee shops, and it was even possible to get mozzarella cheese (incredible – it’s almost impossible to get even in the huge metropolis of Kolkata!). The hotels, even the budget ones, were nice, with hot showers and comfortable beds. While I enjoyed the experience, it isn’t one I would really like to repeat. Many tourists like to talk about experiencing the ‘real’ India. While I don’t think this is a tenable concept, given a country of 1.2 billion people and 72 languages, the hotels and restaurants of the tourist centres set up to cater for the needs of rich westerners are about as far away from the experiences of 90% of Indians as is possible to get. It seemed to me many tourists expect western standards of comfort and luxury with a little bit of exotic culture thrown in. I even felt I was treated differently as compared to living in Kolkata: particularly in Delhi whenever I stepped out into the street I felt like I had a big notice pinned to my back: ‘tourist is ‘ere: please scam or rip me off’. There were redeeming features of Delhi though – the Jama Masjid was beautiful, as was the Red Fort.

So, my advice for an unwary British traveller in India: travel with an Indian who knows about the intricacies of the Indian transport system and can deal with scams!

And as for my trip home, well I was able to alter my plane ticket from Kolkata to Delhi to fly out a day early, so I spent a day in Delhi before flying home. While Kolkata was absolutely bought to a standstill by the strike (80 flights out of the airport were cancelled), Delhi was hardly affected. So it ended happily (for me) after all.

Rakhi, Ramazan, and a 'normal' Kolkata day

One of the things I will really miss about Kolkata is the fact that I can get out of bed at 8.30, then leave my house at one minute to ten and still arrive at the office on time. It’s great! Office hours are from 10 until 6 (but actually the day for me doesn’t start properly until after 10.15, when Sumita brings the chai around). I spend most days in the office, and I have been working on three main areas: reporting, information management, and communications, which I will now explain in detail. Those interested can read on, others of you skip to para 4 (smarties may be available for those of you who read on).

For many small NGOs, their project work is their area of expertise, but they have few resources (time or money) to put into aspects of organizational effectiveness – tasks like reporting, documenting their work, or monitoring the impact of their activities. These tasks – particularly reporting for donors - are often viewed as chores rather than an exercise that will benefit the organization. So, my first objective has been to develop a reporting system which will enable the organization to analyse and learn from their work, and also fulfill the requirements for donors. The first stage is the daily reporting for the field workers' project activities. The organization needs to know how many visits they have done, what problems they have come across and their achievements. So I worked with the team developing a format for them to capture this information. Simple, I hear you say. Well, yes. And no. Most of the field workers are disabled women from the slums themselves, which is wonderful and what the organization is all about, but some have not completed primary school, and most did not complete secondary school. Developing a format that they were happy to use and which captured the necessary information, therefore, was actually quite challenging, and involved many discussions. We will see if it will actually be used….

The next level was collating this information on a monthly basis, to assess whether the team has met their targets. This involves collecting both quantitative and qualitative information – for example how many girls are undertaking tailoring training, but also what kind of problems the community workers faced when going to the hospital. And then the information from this can be used in quarterly monitoring – to see whether we are achieving the indicators of success established when the project was designed. It has been quite fun (really!) designing a whole system from scratch - everything was done on a very ad hoc basis before. The reporting has linked closely with my work on information management – it is necessary to be able to store the information systematically so the organization can access and use it!

The other major area I have been working on has been communications: helping the organization publicise their work through developing communications materials and a brand identity. The individual stories of women with disabilities involved with AWWD challenge the endemic stereotypes of WWD, illustrate their capabilities, and the challenges that they face. So I have developed a series of three communications materials based on the stories of individual WWD – a series of posters to grab people’s attention at events, an introductory leaflet explaining about AWWD and the work we do, linking this with brief stories of some of the WWD, and finally a booklet of case studies, based around certain rights (eg the right to livelihood, the right to education) and how WWD have claimed these rights. As you can probably imagine, one of the best parts of my work was visiting some of these women and hearing their inspiring stories.

So, on this ‘normal’ day in the office I spend the morning working on these types of tasks. I have a few options for lunch: often Judith and I go to the local Barista (coffee shop), which is rather expensive, but does have a wide variety of chocolate milkshakes, and is air conditioned. We have to take an auto rickshaw down our crazy road for 3 minutes, careering past lorries and taxis and hanging on for dear life. This deposits us at the crossroads, where we have to somehow navigate across the road without being run down, and then down a footpath dodging past sleeping dogs and motorcyclists who think that driving down the pavement is a good idea. Or Judith and I go to a Chinese restaurant opposite the coffee shop, which does good veg chowmein. Or, sometimes I go with some of the field staff to our local ‘hotel’. This is rather an unusual hotel: it is situated by the side of the road, has wooden benches and plastic sheeting for a roof, and a plate of rice, dal and veg costs 10 Rupees. The food is actually good, if I ignore the ants crawling across the table and don't sit on any rusty nails.

After lunch, on this 'normal' day, all the community workers arrived in the office because it was Rakhi: a festival where sisters celebrate how wonderful their brothers are. Yes, really. Sisters give their brothers pretty bracelets – sometimes bits of string, but sometimes ornately patterned. Now, however, the festival has expanded, and friends give each other bracelets as a sign of affection. Also, one girl told me that it is a good way of warning off guys who are too interested: if a girl gives a guy a bracelet it shows him that she considers him as a brother, and nothing more! I asked whether there is any festival where brothers celebrate how wonderful their sisters are, but apparently not. So, part of this afternoon was spent tying bracelets on each other and eating Bengali sweets that the girls had bought in.

When the day finished at 6 I walked home, past the kids flying kites at the side of the road. When I walked into my place the girls doing a tailoring training course were still there, and were seriously eyeing my bottle of cold water. For it is Ramazan at the moment, and these girls had fasted all day. I also had bought with me some of the sweets we had had in the office, so I sat down with the girls on the cement floor, and they broke their fast with sweets and cold water. They also wanted to see photos of my family and home: they could not believe that my parents house had a separate bathroom, kitchen and dining room. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea showing them.

Evenings chez moi aren’t such fun, and usually consist of reading, writing my blog, collapsed on my bed due to the heat, going stark crazy because the fan is squealing again, or watching one of my 6 DVDs that I had bought with me (again!). But actually, I am usually too tired from working and from the heat to do anything constructive and lying on my bed is the best option. And so ends a normal Kolkatan day.

Floods

Ladakh: the Buddhist part of Indian Kashmir, and apparently one of the only parts of India not affected by the monsoon. According to Lonely Planet, it receives about as much rainfall as the Sahara desert. Imagine our surprise then, when, two days before we were due to go there was torrential rain causing mudslides: 80% of the infrastructure of the city of Leh was damaged or destroyed, and 150 people were killed. So we had to quickly change our holiday plans. More of that in another blog entry. But I can’t talk about floods and strange weather patterns without mentioning Pakistan, although I am almost at a loss to know what to say. This time two years ago I was in Ghizer, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush enjoying the beauty of the blue skies unaffected by monsoon rain. Now I am getting emails from friends in that area saying the roads are destroyed, there is no clean water, little power and little food in the markets. And even friends who are in areas not flooded are struggling with inflation. I have never felt so powerless to be able to help friends in trouble.

The media have been highlighting the slowness of international aid in comparison with the extent of the need – the Secretary General of the UN has said that more people are have been affected than the tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake and the earthquake in Haiti combined. It is thought that international aid has been slow because of concerns about terrorism, and, combined with this, possible misuse of aid (although the UK public have been one of the most generous donors). I have read several good articles arguing that because of the negative image Pakistan has, the crisis has been viewed first through the lens of the threat of terrorism, and then as a humanitarian catastrophe, which has affected the response of the international community and therefore is compounding the suffering of those affected. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8931886.stm
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/19/why_doesnt_the_world_care_about_pakistanis The vast majority of Pakistanis - those who have lost everything in the floods - have not only been victims of terrorism for many years, but now are trying to survive and keep their families alive. The Pakistan that I remember is not constituted solely by corruption, Islamic extremism and terrorism: it was the most beautiful place with the most hospitable people I have ever visited. Not only is the suffering that they are experiencing heartbreaking, but it is even worse that this is compounded by such a negative image. These are some of my memories of Pakistan:

To finish – here are some things my friends have been emailing me from Pakistan: ‘all the bridges are gone, there are many communication problems’, ‘may God help us get through it all’, ‘there is no water, no electricity, no food available in the market and life is miserable. The flood has swept away most of our beautiful lands’, ‘our country is being pushed back to the stone age’.

To donate to support the DEC appeal: http://www.dec.org.uk/.

Monsoon!

There have been several clear signs that it is the monsoon season, in addition to the almost daily bouts of torrential rain and massive thunderstorms. It now takes approximately three days to dry my clothes, several clothes have started sprouting a variety of types of mould, and my walls are now a lovely mottled pink colour - darker where there is damp. I can't really decide which season I have liked least - the intense heat before the rains, when prickly heat was the order of the day, or the humidity of the monsoon - after it has rained going anywhere is like wading through a steam bath. But apart from these few minor inconveniences (as well as the increase in number of rats and cockroaches due to drains being flooded) the monsoon hasn't really affected daily life as much as thought it would. I've only had to wade once - I don't think it has been as heavy here as usual. So life is going on pretty much as normal, I'm still bewailing my significant hair loss due to anti-malarials, drinking frequent chocolate milkshakes, and negotiating the Kolkata traffic with a shudder. The most exciting occurrence of the last week has been the discovery of a street food stall opposite my house where I can get a paratha (fried chappati) and vegetable curry for 8 Rupees. That's about 10 pence. That even puts the chicken chow mein I was getting for 23 Rupees in the shade. So as you can probably conclude, my attempts at Indian cookery have come to an abrupt end!

The last couple of weekends I've been meeting up with other VSO volunteers for mutual emotional support, a little bit of grumbling, and touristy sessions, which has been great. The other saturday we decided to go to Babu Ghat - I had read that it was by the river, so I thought it would be a nice calming place with a little river breeze, perfect for a saturday afternoon stroll. But, actually, it is a gathering place for Hindus, so at the entrance was a seething and jostling mass of Indian men and women, some ambling around, many sitting around ornate statues of Gods and Goddesses decorated with brightly coloured and beautifully scented flowers, the smells mingling with the many incense sticks. We made our way past all these people, hoping not tread anywhere that would cause religious insult, and made our way down to the river. Well, or we tried to, but it was very muddy, so decided instead we would take in the view from the top. Hundreds of men, women and children had come here to bathe in the Hooghly, and were splashing happily across the mud and submerging themselves in the river. Some boys were diving off the rusty hulk of a ship near to the shore. We took in the view for a while, enjoying the people-watching, but then Debs mentioned that it was a bit like staring at people going for a swim in the sea, so decided perhaps our staring should cease.
We thought we would walk up to the flower market, as that is also by river. Unfortunately there was no riverside path, so we had to walk along the main road. And not only is Babu Ghat a special place for Hindus, it is also a main bus station in Kolkata, so the road was fairly busy. There was also a pretty constant succession of porters with huge weights on their heads coming from Howrah station. So all in all walking down the road was quite an intense experience - checking behind to jump out of the way of careering buses and motorcycles, diving out of the way of porters who didn't look like they could change direction even if they wanted, and avoiding open drains and urinals. And all in the glaring sun - it would be an understatement to say after 10 minutes I was a little sweaty, drenched would be the correct term. We walked past an expensive hotel, one that is actually floating on the river, and decided to go and have a look at the menu - less to see that and more to benefit from a couple of minutes of a/c. We walked in and immediately felt out of place given our sweaty-ness, but in the restaurant they invited us to sit down, and gave us free drinks of salt lemon soda - this was the first free thing I had been given in India, and it was perfectly timed! After this rejuvenating drink we felt more energised to walk to the flower market, which is under the Howrah bridge, and is where the Kolkata population buy their flowers for puja, or prayers. By this time it had started to drizzle, so we got onto the bridge and were able to stand in the rain staring down at the craziness below - the packed street lined with stall after stall of bright pink, orange, purple and yellow flowers contrasting oddly with the black and blue plastic sheeting. Men with huge baskets of strings of orange and yellow flowers on their heads jostled their way through the crowds, and every so often a small van barged its way scattering everyone to either side. And walking through the market was an experience for all five senses - the dampness of the drizzle, the pushing and shoving and beeping of horns, wafts from the scents from the different types of flowers - it was great. And I think this is first market I have been to where I didn't buy anything, tempting as it was!

Bits and pieces

I thought that things reached a new low on the rat front the other day: there was a half eaten rat outside my front door. It literally was half eaten, but I won’t go into gruesome details for you. But then yesterday I was talking to Lakshmi and Tabassum and I realized actually I have nothing to complain about. It is monsoon season at the moment – although the rain hasn’t been as torrential as I expected there is still enough of it around. And in the slums this means flooding – Tabassum says it sometimes the water comes up to her waist. And with the flood waters the rats come out. I came across Lakshmi laughing with another girl in Bengali, and I asked what was funny. It was this: Lakshmi lives in a one room house with 7 people and one bed – so she has to sleep on the floor, with rats running around. She can’t sleep, she can’t cook, she can’t keep things dry. All she can do is laugh about it. And for Tabassum - when the shacks flood there is no place to cook so they have to cook on a shelf above their bed. Some people in their slum shelter in a primary school when things get too bad, but there is never space for Tabassum and her family because three of them are disabled. I thought I was beyond crying, I thought I had reached a subconscious level of acceptance of the poverty here, but how can I accept this? What can I do? These are no longer just work colleagues, they are friends, and I am powerless to help them in any substantive way. Kolkata is really challenging some of my most basic beliefs – it is not possible to always be the good Samaritan, the extent and level of suffering means that in many cases I do have to walk on the other side. But then, more positively, it never ceases to amaze me the tenacity of the human spirit, and the way the girls are able to continue living and smiling, even in such awful circumstances.

There have been two telling bits of news in the last week related to India and poverty – the first is that an Oxford research report has concluded that 8 states in India (including West Bengal) have in total more poor people than 26 of the poorest countries in Africa. Unbelievable. And almost on the same day it was reported in the Indian news that DfID may significantly reduce aid to India. They cite the reason as being the India’s substantially growing economy. Why has India’s wealth not trickled down to people living in circumstances that can best be described as inhumane? Why can I sit in a rickshaw next to a girl using an Iphone and drive past a little boy suffering from diarrhea on the street, as he has no other place to go?

I didn’t mean for this to be a really depressing blog, because actually I have been more positive recently. I have less than two months to go, so I am trying to relish every minute (well, as far as that is possible with the heat, humidity and rats) as I know I will miss it when I am back home. And, after 3 months of living here, I am finally becoming more comfortable with Kolkata as a city – I am enjoying wandering around the market after work now instead of getting stressed about being run over etc. And I am going on holiday soon to Ladakh!!

I will finish with some things I have learnt in the last couple of weeks:

- how to slam the door and assertively walk away from a taxi driver who shouts at me insisting I pay triple fare (as well as learning ‘I may be a foreigner but I am not a fool’ in Bengali and Hindi)
- how to hold a conversation in three languages (I speak in English, someone whose mother tongue speaks in Bengali, and someone whose mother tongue is Hindi speaks in Hindi, and we all kind of understand)
- how to work in an organization when at one point only 2 other people spoke English
- where to get good food – there is an expensive restaurant down our road which we went to the other day – we all ended up with swollen and itchy feet due to MSG. From now on I will stick to the outdoor fast food vendor – at least if I get ill I’ll know it is because of good old dirt.
- h ow to deal patiently with bureaucracy (keeping my temper when I have to fill out exactly the same form twice, with exactly the same information that the official already has in triplicate in front of him. Once I had filled it out he ticked my answers, obviously making sure that the colour of my eyes (yes, really) and my father’s name hadn’t changed since last time.

A haven of peace, ponds and palms

It felt very much like a ride at a theme park: an Indian jungle adventure. I was sitting in an auto-rickshaw, tightly squeezed between two Indian ladies, being alternately shaken up and down and lurched from side to side as the auto crashed its way down a mud and brick jungle footpath. Lush green vegetation, palm trees, bamboo, and banana trees encircled our route, and we could almost see the steam rising, so intense was the humidity: it had just stopped raining.

Twenty bone-shattering minutes later and we had arrived at the end of the auto-navigable path. Where there was no brick, the monsoon had created a muddy swamp of a path, so we had to continue on foot. A couple of minutes later, however, and we had reached our destination village. Behind a pond, where women were squatting cleaning their pots and pans, were a cluster of houses, some made out of mud, and some out of a combination of bamboo, plastic sheets and brick. I had to pinch myself to ensure I was really here, it was so like going back in history, or walking into a museum on rural life.

In spite of the beauty of the area, the whole situation spoke of intense poverty. Houses made of mud, women cleaning kitchen implements in a pond, a 45 plus minute walk to a road: life must be hard. And for a woman who was unable to walk for much of her childhood: the challenges must have been almost unimaginable. We were here to meet Moumita, who had suffered from polio as a baby. For many women, such a combination of circumstances would result in absolute dependence on her family and isolation within her house. Not so for Moumita. She was introduced to me as the only woman in her area who had completed higher secondary school, who had graduated, and who now was studying for a Masters in Social Work. Up until the age of 15, her mother had carried her to school – first to her primary school, and then the 45 minute walk to the main road where she caught an auto. But in class 11 she was introduced to AWWD, who were able to provide her with callipers. These enabled her to walk comfortably, thus changing her life: she was able to continue her education.

I had come to AWWD’s rural office to interview girls for some case studies, and Moumita was not the only inspirational lady I met. Deep in another part of rural west Bengal, after a 30 minute walk meandering through lush green fields I met a proud proprietor of a village shop. Niberdita can’t walk at all: she can only get around by crawling. It is difficult to imagine a more challenging set of circumstances - being unable to walk would be unbearably difficult in any situation, but living 30 minutes from a road in a poor rural area - the mind boggles. But Niberdita is living with dignity and determination, and greeted us with a beautiful smile. AWWD had provided her with a loan, which enabled her to expand a shop, so now she is selling all sorts of groceries. She says: 'I meet with many people every day and this is very interesting. I cannot go outside and I cannot stay in the home alone. But now I can meet people who come to my shop'. And Sikha too, can’t walk. She gets around using a hand operated tricycle, which she uses to get to work - an hour journey either way on the awful mud and brick footpaths. And she has not missed an AWWD monthly meeting, even though to attend them involves a 12 kilometre journey in either scorching sun or torrential rain, depending on the season.

It was an immense privilege to meet these women who have faced challenges I can't even imagine, yet are still smiling and have an impressive zest for life.

I stayed for a week in the rural office in a little village called Subhi, which was really wonderful (apart from the toilet, a point to which I will return to later). The office had two bedrooms, so I slept there, as did several of the field staff. Every morning when I stepped outside I could see lush green fields, cows, palm trees and lemon trees. That was wonderful.

However, the whole village could also see me as I made my way blurrily to the bathroom, (which was actually four walls and a roof which contained a few buckets of water), which was less wonderful. And I don’t know whether you have ever had to use an outdoor toilet in a monsoon, situated next to a pond and with no light, but I wouldn’t recommend it. What made the whole situation even worse was that often at night dogs would prowl around, and I had nightmares of being trapped inside the spider-endowed toilet with yapping dogs outside, or venturing out and getting rabies. Neither of those untoward events happened, thank goodness, but it did make life that little bit more interesting.

One wonderful lady cooked for us in the evening. At first I tried to help, but I was obviously superfluous, and often ended up observing and writing notes in my little book instead (don’t expect wonders of Bengali cooking when I return, however, as I tried cooking tonight. The end result was a soggy green mess with bits of charcoaled garlic. Not quite the effect I was intending). All food was bought fresh – there was no fridge. We used to chop up the vegetables on the path outside the kitchen (complete with ants crawling around). But the end result was absolutely delicious: there were invariably three dishes and rice: how Mina managed to do this with only two gas hobs I do not know.

Another noteworthy aspect of life in rural West Bengal was both the variety of the types of transport available, and their capacity to expand to take an ever-increasing number of passengers. At the bottom is the lowly bicycle – you may assume that a bicycle can only take one person, but you would be mistaken. I espied a bicycle carrying four people, although admittedly one of them was child. One person was pedalling, one was sitting on the crossbar, one above the rear wheel, and a child balanced precariously between them. The next step up is a bicycle attached to a wooden platform on wheels. This platform is designed to carry a vast variety of items, from bricks to people. One evening when we were coming back from the field six of us clambered on to one of these wooden carts and one guy cycled us back to the office, which took about 30 minutes. Slowly meandering through the lush green West Bengal countryside was a wonderful experience for me, less wonderful for the cyclist though – beads of sweat were standing on his forehead. He did boast that he could take a max of 8 people on this crate. Below is a picture of one of these bicycle crates just visible below a rather large load of hay:

The next step up is the motorcycle: there were a fair few of these whizzing down the narrow lanes with little regard for pedestrians or animals in the way. And a similar form of wooden crate could be attached to the back of a motorcycle, which seemed to be able to take about 20 people in total. And a level above this contraption is the auto rickshaw. It was not uncommon to squeeze 5 people in the back and 5 in the front, plus a couple hanging on to the back for good measure:

And then there are the vans, which seem to be able to squeeze an ever expanding number of passengers. The picture below is of a van where the field staff wanted me to hang on to get home (it was rush hour and there were few options). As adventurous as I am, I downright refused to do this. Not only would it be difficult to hang on, but the buses come down the narrow roads at tremendous speeds, often passing other vehicles with only inches to spare. Being squished between two vehicles would not be a pleasant way to die.

Anyway, I won’t end on that less than cheerful note – I will say that experiencing this for a week: re-energised and motivated me to better deal with the craziness of Kolkata traffic.