Kolkata is an amazing city, every bit the sensory overload I expected India to be. Every frame is full of colour, life, surprises.There are people everywhere, living on every pavement, beneath underpasses, beside pipelines, on roundabouts, on intersections, in parks, beside the railway line... Every space has been settled.
Some pavements look like your stereotypical refugee camps - tarpaulins strung up from the side of the building, clothes strung between the trees lining the street, mothers preparing meals in ceramic cooking pots and charcoal, scantly clad children playing with makeshift toys, children and adults sorting through rubbish looking for materials to recycle, women with infants reaching out to passers-by for change. Dogs wander to and fro.
What is perhaps less predictable and more surprising is the public displays of washing. There are standpipes along every pavement and each is surrounded by half naked men and boys washing rigorously with soap and buckets of water. Where and how women and girls wash is not so clear. I never saw any at a standpipe. When it comes to toilets, there is again a gender disparity. There are open public urinals along the pavement. Some ornate, others nothing more than a hole above an open channel. But despite this initiative, you frequently see people urinating or squatting where they can, usually over rubbish dumps and along the kerbside. It's just another indicator of the overwhelming congestion and dire lack of sanitation.
What is perhaps most fascinating and frightening is that some of these people and families are second, even third generation pavement dwellers... It's no longer a case of city slums growing due to rural-urban migration. Much of their growth is now from within. Particularly among those communities, like the Muslim slum communities, where family planning and birth control has not caught on.
Pedestrians, unable to walk along the congested pavements, compete perilously with the traffic. Motorised rickshaws buzzing along, elegant but battered old 1950s Ambassador cars puttering along, motorbikes weaving in and out, and rickshaws pulled by aging stick thin men.
The streets are lined by 100-150 year old buildings, full of character and history. Beautiful colonial architecture, verandas, arches, wooden shutters, intricate iron work, bushes and grasses growing out of nooks and crannies. Faded and crumbling, but irrespressibly elegant and fascinating.
Kolkata's largest railway station is reportedly the busiest railway station in Asia, with tens of thousands of people passing through every day. It is like a microcosm of the city itself, overflowing with the people and small traders. I met people who'd lived on its platforms for the last 18 years. The Railway Police Force now patrol the platform at night, moving people on. The result, the car park outside the station is littered with people sleeping rough.
The railway stations are a fascinating place because its where most people arrive in the city. Among them, thousands of children from outside Kolkata who have been drawn to the city or are forced to strike out alone to make a life for themselves. They have hitched a free ride, lost in the crowds that board the trains. Many find life on the streets of a city like Kolkata exciting. Its vibrancy, freedom, lack of boundaries, potential for earning enough money to feed themselves. But desperation, naivety and lack of protection make many street children easy prey for adults. The most unfortunate are lured away into the 'caves' below the station platforms, into the back of small stores, or into dark and dingy cinemas to perform sex acts.
Some pavements look like your stereotypical refugee camps - tarpaulins strung up from the side of the building, clothes strung between the trees lining the street, mothers preparing meals in ceramic cooking pots and charcoal, scantly clad children playing with makeshift toys, children and adults sorting through rubbish looking for materials to recycle, women with infants reaching out to passers-by for change. Dogs wander to and fro.
What is perhaps less predictable and more surprising is the public displays of washing. There are standpipes along every pavement and each is surrounded by half naked men and boys washing rigorously with soap and buckets of water. Where and how women and girls wash is not so clear. I never saw any at a standpipe. When it comes to toilets, there is again a gender disparity. There are open public urinals along the pavement. Some ornate, others nothing more than a hole above an open channel. But despite this initiative, you frequently see people urinating or squatting where they can, usually over rubbish dumps and along the kerbside. It's just another indicator of the overwhelming congestion and dire lack of sanitation.
What is perhaps most fascinating and frightening is that some of these people and families are second, even third generation pavement dwellers... It's no longer a case of city slums growing due to rural-urban migration. Much of their growth is now from within. Particularly among those communities, like the Muslim slum communities, where family planning and birth control has not caught on.
Pedestrians, unable to walk along the congested pavements, compete perilously with the traffic. Motorised rickshaws buzzing along, elegant but battered old 1950s Ambassador cars puttering along, motorbikes weaving in and out, and rickshaws pulled by aging stick thin men.
The streets are lined by 100-150 year old buildings, full of character and history. Beautiful colonial architecture, verandas, arches, wooden shutters, intricate iron work, bushes and grasses growing out of nooks and crannies. Faded and crumbling, but irrespressibly elegant and fascinating.
Kolkata's largest railway station is reportedly the busiest railway station in Asia, with tens of thousands of people passing through every day. It is like a microcosm of the city itself, overflowing with the people and small traders. I met people who'd lived on its platforms for the last 18 years. The Railway Police Force now patrol the platform at night, moving people on. The result, the car park outside the station is littered with people sleeping rough.
The railway stations are a fascinating place because its where most people arrive in the city. Among them, thousands of children from outside Kolkata who have been drawn to the city or are forced to strike out alone to make a life for themselves. They have hitched a free ride, lost in the crowds that board the trains. Many find life on the streets of a city like Kolkata exciting. Its vibrancy, freedom, lack of boundaries, potential for earning enough money to feed themselves. But desperation, naivety and lack of protection make many street children easy prey for adults. The most unfortunate are lured away into the 'caves' below the station platforms, into the back of small stores, or into dark and dingy cinemas to perform sex acts.
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