Kolkata traffic revisited, strikes, and the hammer and sickle

Yesterday I spent FIVE hours stuck in Kolkata traffic. I had thought it would be a good idea to get two things done in one day, and hence travel twice into the city centre, once in the morning and once in the evening. After all – the journey to church on a Sunday morning only takes 20 minutes – how bad could it be? Hmmm. I am now significantly older, wiser and more jaded. I had considerable time to reflect on this mistake yesterday, so here follows my learning that I hope can be of use for any unwary traveler in Kolkata:
a) Don’t travel anywhere in the city on a Monday morning
b) Ditto on the evening before a city wide strike (because you will encounter the rest of the city urgently getting somewhere)
c) If you do find a taxi journey during sunshine hours unavoidable, make sure you have with you:
- A large bottle of cold water (and possibly ORS as well given the amount you will sweat (or glow if you are a lady)
- Calm and soothing music on your MP3 player
- A blindfold (so you can be blithely unaware of the chaos around you)
- Smelling salts (to revive yourself after particularly close ‘close shaves’.

This is how traffic moves in Kolkata during the rush hour – about half a mile before a junction is a jam. The taxi driver drives up as fast as possible, slams on the brakes and beeps the horn (no doubt in the hope that the stationary traffic will magically get out of his way). He then creeps forward into a space that you thought would be impossible (ie on the pavement, between two buses, or in the face of oncoming traffic), stops, and beeps the horn again for good measure, and turns the engine off. The traffic lights, in the far distance, turn green, and there is a sudden cacophony of sound when all the drivers beep their horns and engines are turned back on, revved, and we speed forward all of 5 metres. The traffic lights turn red again. We stop. This continues five or more times until we are at the head of the queue, and can see the problem. Even though there are traffic lights, traffic from all four roads has got entwined together, with each driver trying to creep forward as far as possible and not allowing anyone else through. And it is not only cars. There are hand rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, pedestrians, lorries, trams and men pushing carts loaded with bags of concrete. This chaos gradually sorts itself out, and the lights turn green again, and we speed forward, and I sit back, relax, thinking off we go finally. But no, 5 seconds later the brakes are slammed, and we have reached the tail back before the next set of traffic lights. There are considerable numbers of traffic lights between my house and the city centre. And the closer to the city centre we got the more fractious and irritable got the drivers, so the noise levels significantly increased, as did the number of close shaves.

So, an hour and 15 minutes after stepping into the taxi I step out again at my destination, as limp and as sodden as if I had just run a marathon. I had arrived at the Foreign Registration Office, to pick up my registration documents. My visit actually took all of 5 minutes, as all I had to do was to pick them up. I had a fortifying cold sprite and pasty, thinking I would let the traffic clear a bit, and then fought my way to another taxi. Even at 12 in the afternoon, the traffic had not cleared, and it was over an hour later that I stepped back out at the office again.

Enough for one day, I hear you say. Well, yes. But then Judith and I were meeting the other VSO’s for a meal at a nice restaurant, and I thought that the traffic wouldn’t be too bad in the evening. Yeah, well, it again took one hour and 15minutes to get there – we spent half an hour getting down one side street…

But the restaurant was beautiful – it was on the ninth floor of a hotel in New Market and we sat outside in the cool breeze enjoying the sparkling city lights. Unfortunately not for long. The city lights seemed to be going out in one direction – there was a wave of blackness coming over. A power cut? No, there was a huge gust of wind (and I mean huge – chairs were knocked over) and the air was suddenly full of grit. Everyone staggered inside and stared in amazement at the now bucket loads of rain coming down. Can you believe after a month of being here, with not one drop of rain, the one evening we decide to have a meal in an open air restaurant there is a torrential thunderstorm. But I shouldn’t complain too much, as apparently the temperature dropped by 13 degrees in just one hour. It was cool! A mere 23 degrees at 9 o’clock at night. And just before we left the rain stopped, and we were able to get a taxi without much problem. My optimism that our journey back home, at 10 o’clock at night, couldn’t be too bad, was profoundly misplaced. It took over an hour again of beeping, and inching forward, and we were both profoundly thankful we got home without hitting anyone. There is a city wide strike today, so I guess everyone was trying to get everything done before that – there can be no other conceivable explanation.

Once we reached the street where I live there was another surprise: outside every house and stall there hung a red flag with a hammer and sickle. Apparently I live in the Communist party stronghold of Kolkata. The building opposite Judith’s flat has pictures of Stalin, Lenin and Marx on it! At that time of night, and after such a tiring day I have to admit that I did start freaking out slightly – people were saying that the strike was linked to the Maoists who were demanding the release of two prisoners. But actually that wasn’t the case, and the strike in Kolkata is to do with rising food prices. But it is all very confusing.

So today there is no transport at all – no trains, no taxis, no flights, nothing. But I could still get into work, living as I do within walking distance.

Disabled women and the slums

It takes a certain amount of courage to step out into the streets of Calcutta, when even the simplest actions like crossing a road can be life endangering (I have witnessed three accidents so far). But for a blind woman to step out into the streets takes courage in a completely different league. Yesterday I walked home with Tabassum, a blind community worker with AWWD; she was not born blind but became blind as her family could not afford the necessary $300 for medical treatment. She is not able to see whether there is a bicycle coming up silently behind, whether a motorcycle is driving directly towards her, whether there is a parked car or a dog in her path; I jumped around wincing and squawking, ‘watch out’, ‘take care’ like an overprotective clucking hen. However Tabassum walked with a serenity and complete trust in her (also disabled) friend, Lakshmi, who guided her with confidence around the multiple hazards endemic in Kolkata street life. But the physical hazards are not the only things that Tabassum has to face, stepping out of her house.

India has a disabled population roughly equivalent to the population of Great Britain. To be a disabled woman living in the slums is to push at the boundaries of marginalisation, poverty, and powerlessness. For most Indian women, their role in life is set out to be a wife and a mother, but for many disabled women this is culturally not deemed to be possible. They are therefore dependent on their family, often considered a drain on resources, and stigmatised by society. In a survey undertaken by the Association of Women with Disabilities (the organisation for which I am working), only 3% of disabled women in West Bengal have completed secondary education, and in Jharkhand 70% were illiterate. Disabled women are much more likely to face abuse and domestic violence, and they are often subject to verbal and physical harassment on the streets. So not only do these girls have to face the daily trials of living with their impairment, but they are also stigmatised, teased and subject to deeply entrenched prejudices.

By stepping out onto the streets Tabassum and Lakshmi are challenging these endemic stereotypes and negative images, which takes considerable courage. Through their actions daily they are making a powerful statement: ‘my life is worth as much as yours, I can achieve what you can achieve.’

Saturday morning saw me waiting on the edge of a vegetable market in the blazing sun for Pinky, a friendly community worker. I was to accompany her on her field visits to disabled women. Pinky herself lives in one small room with her parents and two brothers in a slum area, and is orthopaedically impaired. AWWD supports disabled women in the slums through forming self help groups, providing money so girls can continue their education, providing loans so women can start a small business, and teaches them of their rights.

It is difficult to find words to describe the living conditions in these slums – ‘Dickensian’ springs to mind. The narrow streets were packed with bustling activity, not too different to the area where I live only slightly more compact and intense, with an intricate criss-crossing of hundreds of electricity wires above us. Each slum is different and has its own character. In this first slum I visited the streets were lined by two and three-storey houses, complete with colourful saris and shalwar kameez hanging out of the windows (and on the electricity wires), damply fluttering in the breeze. We entered down a narrow alleyway: it was pitch black and smelt of damp: like entering a cave. I felt my way through until I came into a small indoor courtyard, where there was a pump, puddles of water, and chickens clucking around. There seemed to be innumerable small rooms leading off this courtyard, some where whole families were living, and some rooms which were hives of industry. Small boys were making gaudy gold hand bags, and in one room 20 or so young boys looked up at me as I walked past, the room full of colourful bits of material. I wanted to shout out ‘child labour’ in protest, but carried on walking past, my complete inability to do anything to help them starkly apparent. We climbed up some steep, black and narrow stairs, Pinky with some difficulty due to her lame leg. At the top was a narrow corridor, and a seemingly constant succession of people appearing out of the blackness, squeezing past me, and disappearing just as suddenly. Outside each room was a small stove: burning hot coals underneath and boiling dal on top. Three of us squeezed into the nearest room, two of us sat on the bed which took up 90% of the space, to talk to Saira, a disabled girl. Saira’s sister, mother, and various other interested bystanders stood outside, every so often giving the dal that was bubbling away a stir.

It is difficult to imagine how anyone could cope living in these circumstances – in the dark, with six or seven people in a room not much bigger than a small-sized UK bathroom, and with no water or toilet. But as a disabled girl, Saira must face challenges beyond belief, and not only the indescribable difficulties of daily living. She showed me marks on her leg where she had had successive operations. She also said she didn’t like going outside because of being teased and harassed, but with a smile said she has got more confident since she has been involved with AWWD, and likes going places now.

And this was no one-off case. I then met Saeeda, an older lady who had lost her leg in a fire, and who looked at me with dead eyes. Her life was now confined to sitting in the one roomed house, preparing food for the family and comforting innumerable children. We then visited a family where there were three disabled girls. The first sister we spoke to couldn’t walk at all, was obviously in pain even sitting down, but still greeted us with a beautiful smile. She has had the same operation three times by a bogus doctor as the family could not afford to send her to a properly qualified doctor. We spoke to her sister next, who also had a beautiful smile, and was also disabled. She was all of twenty years old, and had been married for three years. She introduced an eleven year old girl as her daughter: I was initially fairly bemused by this, but she then explained that she was her elder sister’s child, but she had adopted her as her sister could not afford to look after her. I don’t know what to write in conclusion. In one way I think I have subconsciously distanced myself from it all, I can’t take in so much suffering all at once. It shouldn’t be like this: so many of the girls are disabled due to poverty – from polio, from accidents, from poor medical treatment, from malnourishment.

A week of discoveries

Last week I made several interesting discoveries. I am writing this listening to an instrumental version of ‘Abide with me’ gently pervading its way through an air conditioned café, and at the same time happily imbibing a chocolate milkshake. Yes, I have found a barista café quite close to where I live, and it is currently using up a significant proportion of my allowance. There are four different types of hot chocolate on the menu, and innumerable wonderful milkshakes. And they don’t make me sick. Bonus. But, on the other hand, one milkshake costs about the same as the average daily wage that people earn in the slums, so it is difficult justifying wasting so much money. Hence I am going through a difficult internal struggle, and may have to sadly reduce my daily chocolate milkshake intake, and keep it as a luxury….

And last week I finally ventured into the ‘big city’ all by myself, to go to church. I was able to go to the same church that I went to when I was here four years ago – it is run by Emmanuel Ministries, with whom I volunteered. They run many amazing projects, including informal education for slum children, several children’s homes, and work with HIV positive women. It was wonderful walking into the church again and being greeted by so many beautiful smiles, and hearing that the work is going from strength to strength. I volunteered in an informal education project in a slum, and apparently, about 80 % of the children now attend formal school, and so they may be able to bring the project to a close in a little while – fantastic! And I was able to meet some other ex-pats, so no longer feel as alone in this big city.

And my final discovery was a different side of India, one that I had never experienced before. On Wednesday evening I and Judith (the other volunteer) were invited out for dinner with an investment banker and his wife. Their house was in central Kolkata, and to describe it as ‘rather large’ is quite an understatement. His wife runs an art gallery, so the air conditioned rooms were stuffed full of wonderful paintings and sculptures. When we went into dinner there were four different dishes, and the servants were summoned by a little bell to bring us the food. Wow. Both the husband and the wife were incredibly welcoming, and so friendly – it really was a great example of Bengali hospitality. But during the taxi journey home we drove past rows and rows of men sleeping on the streets, some in huge pipes that were being laid as part of a new sewerage system. Apparently some Bengalis get frustrated with the abiding way that the image of Kolkata is linked with abject poverty; many say that it is the cultural capital of India. And indeed it has a rich cultural history and a current thriving cultural scene. Maybe its poverty now is no worse than the poverty of Mumbai, or Delhi, or Karachi. But that doesn’t make the daily confrontation with such suffering and exclusion any easier, or any less unjust.

Since writing the above I have made another, very unfortunate discovery. Last night on a trip to my bathroom a rat was staring up at me from the drain. On my birthday!! I can cope with many things but rats are definitely not one of them. Help! There is a possibility that I may be able to move in a couple of weeks, so really hoping that works out….

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.

VSO Part the Second: India. The first week

So, ladies, I have discovered a foolproof, albeit fairly painful, way to a flat stomach – simply visit India for a short time in summer. Or it doesn’t even have to be summer – today’s balmy spring temperature in Kolkata reached 37 degrees, and a mere 29 at night. This means that, a) it is too hot to eat, b) you are too exhausted to contemplate either cooking or going outside to forage for food, and c) if you do manage to eat more than a simple banana you are likely to get sick. Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy to be back in the craziness of Kolkata, but it has been much more of a shock than I was expecting, mainly due to the heat (and being slightly ill).

I spent a mere two days in Delhi after arriving, supposedly for in country training and orientation, but myself and another volunteer actually arrived in time for the new volunteers farewell party. A new batch of volunteers had arrived at the beginning of March, and they were just ending their four week training – as a short term volunteer VSO let me come out later, and initially I thought it quite funny that we arrived for the farewell party. I have now realised that it wasn’t such a good idea – two days hasn’t given me enough time to acclimatise and adjust or to get all the necessary information and advice from VSO. I didn’t want to spend longer in Delhi though as I preferred to have the company of two other volunteers on the 20 hour train journey to Kolkata.

There followed the second strangest Easter weekend I have ever had (the first being in Islamabad, when I went on visits with new volunteers to sites relating to all major world religions except Christianity (a Sikh gurudwara, the Buddhist remains at Taxila, a Hindu temple and a Mosque). Anyway, this Good Friday we caught the train from Delhi to Kolkata. Travelling on Indian trains is no doubt one of the great un-missable Indian experiences, but while I can now wear the T-shirt I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to repeat the experience. We’ll fastforward through the craziness of Delhi traffic and arrive at the point of lugging 6 months worth of (previously considered indispensible) items in an incredibly painful rucksack up a steep flight of stairs. The crowds of people made Waterloo rush hour seem like a walk in the park, and the sauna levels of heat did not make this unwanted physical exertion any easier. It was necessary to keep a tight grip on handbag and laptop, and an eye on the volunteers in front of me – I felt that if I lost them I would disappear in this swamp of seething and sweating humanity. But, once having reached the right platform, and vowing to bring nothing but a change of underwear next time, things looked a little brighter. We could collapse in the midst of our mountains of luggage and observe the thousands of others scurrying about their business. In the half an hour we were waiting on the platform there were announcements for two other trains to Kolkata – the mind boggles at the number of people who want to brave the 20 hour train journey that they have to lay on three trains within one hour. Half an hour before our train was due to depart it chugged into the station. Before it had even stopped the thousands sat waiting on the platform jumped up and started jostling for position, trying to find their carriage. The train is so long that, as we were sat in the middle of the platform, we couldn’t see it’s either end.

Once the enterprising passenger has pushed and shoved their way to their correct carriage there is the subsequent jostling for seats (or berths) within the limited space of the train corridor. As most people seem to have a lot of luggage, and there are six people in each small compartment, the overwhelming impression is one of claustrophobia. When at last I found my berth there was a row of Indian men sitting on it. The thought that I would have to share this tiny compartment with strange Indian men overnight was not pleasant, but thankfully some of them left, and an Indian family remained with me. Unusually they were very quiet, and didn’t try to make conversation with me at all, which to my frazzled brain was initially quite welcome. I managed to squeeze in my luggage under the berth, and locked it with my padlock (other volunteers had emphasised to be very careful with luggage, and keep all valuables with me at all times, which entailed the happy experience of taking my laptop to the toilet with me.)

Notwithstanding the confusion and chaos that boarding the train entailed, it departed on the dot of 5 o’clock, its scheduled time, and soon after departure a guard came round with a snack for all passengers. And later on in the evening a hot three course meal came round for everyone – no mean feat when there must have been thousands of people on the train.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see out of the window so soon retired to my top bunk and escaped from the claustrophobia of the small compartment and the stares of the Indian family into a Phillippa Gregory book. Sleeping was interesting, as I was wedged in between a highly inadequate rail preventing me from falling out, my handbag and my laptop, and the train often gave jarring shakes. Unfortunately the Indian man below me snored rather loudly, a problem the other volunteers had said was rather common, but out came the earplugs, and actually I didn’t sleep too badly given the air conditioning.

The friendly guard came around at 6.30 am with chai, and then at 7.30 with breakfast. Needless to say I slept through both – the point of getting up so hideously early when the train didn’t arrive till 12.40 was beyond me. The morning actually went by quite quickly, as I struggled down the narrow corridor (complete with laptop and handbag) to see the other two volunteers who were sleeping in a compartment a little way down from me. I also went outside the carriage to have a look at the scenery of Bihar – the state through which we were travelling and one of the poorest in India. It was very dry, but there were a large number of electricity pylons.

Impressively we arrived into Howrah station 10 minutes early. I waited until most others had got off before heaving my rucksack onto my back and stepping out into Kolkata and the heat. Lost is the best way to describe how I felt standing on the platform with hundreds of Indians pushing past in both directions. I didn’t even know which way to go to the exit as both the train and the platform were so long it was impossible to see either end. Thankfully the other volunteers appeared out of nowhere, and then Judith, the volunteer who is currently working at my organisation, came to meet us.

Apparently 1 million people pass through Howrah station in one day, which I can easily believe. The heat, sheer numbers of people, announcements and frenetic activity do not make it a place for the fainthearted. Getting a taxi wasn’t easy either, and involved stringent bargaining from Judith, before I sank happily back into the relative comfort of an air conditioned cab.

Judith took me to the office to meet the Director of the organisation for which I will be working, and I managed to smile weakly and shake her hand, but it was clearly evident to all that I was in severe need of a shower and a sit down, so Judith then took me to my accommodation.

The most diplomatic way of describing my accommodation is ‘basic’ and ‘close to nature’. It is clearly in a fairly poor part of Calcutta, that looks little different to a slum, and I have one room with a bed (and a garden table and chairs), and a separate kitchen and bathroom. The floor is concrete plus dirt around the edges, and the doors don’t close properly. I have to go down a hallway to get to the bathroom and kitchen. Don’t visualise a UK style carpeted corridor hung with pretty pictures though, this one has an open waste water drain, concrete floor, and hundreds of cobwebs. The bathroom also has its fair share of dirt and cobwebs, although I do have a shower, and the kitchen again is not of the most modern variety.

But, having said all this, I do have a fridge which is a life saver – being able to store food and cold drinks is absolutely necessary in this heat. I also have a clean cupboard to put my clothes which can be locked to prevent ants and other creepy crawlies from entering, and a new gas stove and cutlery. So, in conclusion I have to be thankful for what I have got.

The bathroom unfortunately has dark and cobwebby corners, with who knows what is lurking there. The next morning as I was taking a shower the largest spider I have ever seen (the size of a dinner plate, no exaggeration) scuttled from somewhere. I screamed, grabbed my towel and ran, but then gathered all my courage together to get rid of it. And the day after, as a preliminary to a proper cleaning, I heaved some water at the corners. This was a mistake. It unearthed a large family of cockroaches, complete from small children to monstrous grandparents, which all came scuttling out. I spent the evening running after them with poison, turning my hallway into death alley. I didn’t use the bathroom at all that night, and only gathered my courage to sweep away the corpses the next morning. Now, when using the bathroom, I cautiously open the door and peer into all the corners with my torch, and have the bottle of poison ready. At the weekend I think I am going to have to take my courage into my hands and give it a proper clean, but who knows what I am going to unearth…. The same will have to be done for the kitchen, I haven’t even tried cooking yet due to the dirt, being ill and being exhausted. So I am currently surviving off coca cola, which is an ideal diet given that it is cool, not going to make me sick, rehydrates me, and has enough sugar and caffeine in to keep me going through the day.