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Trumping the Gray of Kolkata
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My initial reaction to Kolkata's sights and sounds was a wave of sadness at the inescapable weight of its decay. Think gray. Think black. Think mold. Think an oily film. Think grime, real grime. Think mud. Think litter, more than you have ever seen: great piles of it; and where there are no piles, thousands of random pieces of paper strewn beside the curb, laying and cemented at odd angles into dry ground and patches of mud; broken plastic, plastic bags, plastic bottles, floating in sickeningly dark and thick fetid water.
And think dust, thick layers of dust, dust, and then add more dust. A gray-turning-to-black veil of dust and mold hangs like a slowly thickening, rapacious vine creeping stealthily over every building, old or new. This veil isn't content with claiming buildings. It lays itself over every tattered and torn, long-past-worn, blue or black plastic sheet covering the makeshift bamboo vendor stalls that line both sides of the streets.
A thick layer of oily dust covers the leaves of sparsely flowering bushes once bravely planted in the median, choking off their life, promise of beauty, their capacity to bloom. Once grand Victorian buildings with their elaborate balconies, rusting, iron grated windows and detailed facades crumble.
Wherever there is no dust, there is mud.
There is lots of water in Kolkata. Surely it must have been a swamp not very long ago. There are puddles, canals, ponds, small lakes, larger lakes -- mostly thick, mostly dark, scary dark green brown, with plastic and paper floating on their forbidding surfaces.
Countless old buses, all of them forcefully spitting 6 foot, black plumes of choking smoke, are crammed with human beings in Kolkata's relentless heat and humidity. 75-80 year old trolleys, taxis, auto-rickshaws, buses and trucks push on with faded and scraped, disappearing paint,a thousand hammer-beaten battle scars, random holes, sharp, rusting ridges and gnarled bumpers if they still have any at all.
Men so routinely urinate beside the road (at least they face away from the roadway), that I wonder what the women do. But there are precious few public toilets in Kolkata, so you cannot really blame them. 13 million people on the move and no public toilets. You just look away.
The only thing that is dependably clean, shiny and spanking new are the countless private cars, all washed every day with cheap and easily available labor. (You can have your car hand washed every day at your home for Rs 200/month (about $5 USD). Your personal driver: Rs 3000/month ($75 USD). And you are wise to get one, only someone on a suicide mission would attempt this traffic.
People walk alongside every roadway amid the chaotic Kolkata traffic. They walk, they stand beneath billboards in great numbers at corners, they wait in their clean and pressed, colorful and elegant saris, Punjabi outfits, in jeans and logo t-shirts, in black, gray, brown business impeccably pressed slacks and cotton shirts. They wait for buses. They hail cabs. They ride motorcycles and bicycles, jump on and off buses, they dauntlessly cross every roadway with their children in tow, however fast the traffic is moving. They talk on cell phones, squat beside or on the road fixing near-dead rickshaws, bicycles, taxis, buses.
Mixed in with all of the well dressed and beautifully groomed are the laborers who wear Kolkata's dense dust in their dingy and worn, wrapped clothing and turbans as they push heavily laden carts, or ride over-burdened bicycles and compete for road space. Ubiquitous vendors cook, hawk, serve their goods and services to passersby from their decrepit bamboo huts, then wash their utensils beside the road. Street dwellers (old and young men are clothed from the waist down; women fully clothed in their saris) work up a rich lather over body and cloth, bathing at street water pumps. Mothers bathe their naked, squealing babies and squat together while washing endless dishes, pots and pans, often laughing with one another.
They all go so bravely on, intently working, living, often laughing and sharing with one another, most of them with their dignity intact. Pressing forward amid the constant cacophony of horns that bleat like a thousand goats, amid loudly grating brakes of ancient buses and truck, amid the intense sputtering of accelerating motorcycles, they somehow trump the gray of Kolkata.
After 2 weeks here, I began to grasp why the illusion of desire, the inevitable, fading transience of all physical form, is so central, so core to Eastern thought and religion. It's so painfully obvious and inescapable here. Anything bright and new and shiny is quickly overtaken here by the forces of disintegration. It smacks you in the face at every turn.
What is enduring is the human being, the spirit that rises to meet, endure and even to prevail in the midst of, in spite of the bleak physicality of it all. I am starting to move past the emotional weight of my first reaction. I am beginning to see and feel what is deeper, what is equally characteristic of Kolkata. It is the life force, the mettle of the human spirit that is stronger and ultimately more triumphant here,
though all appearances might at times be shouting to convince you that the decay is winning.
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