true life planet

I’ve been wanting to describe for my readers what it’s like to walk down the street–say, a fifteen minute walk down my street to the bakery I go to everyday–so that they can get a sense of what this place is like on a real, intimate level.  What follows is my attempt…

Imagine it’s lightly raining.

It’s not raining hard–it’s not even sprinkling–but its a misty, light rain. It’s almost as if someone is occassionally shaking their hands off at you and the water droplets are landing on you.

You’ve left your hotel, you are walking down the street.

You have to pay attention to where you are going–there are many things you must avoid stepping in, such as fresh spittle mixed with red betel-juice; feces; fetid food;trash;broken manholes; and gutters full of putrifying urine and a cloudy film which you imagine to be typhoid or cholera.

You start our walking down the narrow sidewalk as it seems safer than the street and it’s crazy traffic–but the sidewalk proves impossible, as it’s crowded with people actually camping out on it and people trying to do business.

You’re trying to get out to the street but you are distracted by the sights on this narrow strip of sidewalk. On just this one tiny piece of concrete real estate, you see:

A man, wearing only a checkered gray and blue cloth around his middle, like a diaper, sitting on a front step and chipping off the step he is sitting on using only a blunt hammer;

A woman, beautifully dressed, with gold jewelry, lying on a cardboard pallet, holding a new born infant, her other child calling out “Auntie, auntie” at you and motioning that they are hungry;

Two beautifully dressed women walk by, one is wearing a sari of radiant yellow silk, her hair perfectly oiled, her makeup carefully applied. Both are by your standards enormously fat, but here in India, in Calcutta, they are considered desirable and healthy;

A Muslim man, wearing an immaculate white skullcap and a blue long tunic that seems to change color to lavender in the light, beatinga stack of neatly arranged old Time magazines with a bunch of sticks–possibly to get the street dust off ?;

A man busily working at an impromtu “counter” which looks to have been hastily made from found bits of this and that, fixing–or is he taking apart?– cell phones and putting them back together again, while a line of young men wait;

A man, crawling on the sidewalk, legs bent in a strange contortion, banging a metal bowl for change. He grabs your leg, he has a strong grip, he won’t let go..he’s wailing now.

You’re cursing yourself, you’ve promised not to give money on the street, yet..he is suffering, he has no place to go…you somehow get the strength to not give him anything, you pry his fingers loose, you keep walking.

You know that if yu give him something, you will give to others..you know that it will not help allieviate anything but your guilt, so you keep walking.

You switch over to walking in the street for awhile.

The street is awful to walk in–it is, in fact, quite dangerous. People are hit by cars all the time, as brakes do not seem to be used here.

What are used here are horns. Everyone is blaring their horn at you, at everyone else, at rickshaws, at dogs, and the noise is deafening.

You’re walking as close as you can to the side of the road, to the parked cabs that line the left hand side of the street, but still, sometimes you must stand sideways and pull your feet in so they are not run over, the traffic comes by so close to you.

People are walking in the street along with you. Men don’t step out of the way for you, they don’t move aside–it is you who must move aside for them, as you are a woman.

Men also hold hands if they are walking together–no, they aren’t gay!–they just do that here. You see, men don’t pick their wives, they are chosen for them. They do not always feel close to them. They do choose their male friends, though, and so this peculiar custom of hand holding is just a way of demonstating their friendship.

You’re sharing the road with rickshaw wallahs and bicycles, too.

The rickshaw wallahs, if they see you, ring a tiny bell in their fingers–that’s their way of getting your attention, telling you you can get a ride. When you first came here, you’d look their way, start a conversation, you were distracted by their thin bodies, their shoeless feet, their sunken cheeks.

Now you give them the “namaste” sign (palms folded together, accompanied by a little bow) and nod your head “no”. You don’t need a ride–and they already know that you are the tourist who pays Palik, the rickshaw driver down the road, when you want a ride from a rickshaw.

The rickshaw drivers that are full of passengers are generally carrying fat–or plump–Indian women, well dressed and carrying packages; schoolchildren; or packages.

You’re looking at those tiny men carry those enormous women around when you almost get run over by a bike carrying over one hundred chickens, all white, hanging upsidedown, from the handlebars and bike frame. The chickens are alive but not moving, they are numb, on the way to the chicken market.

It’s back to the side walk, now. The street has become to busy to walk in.

Is it raining still? What just splashed on your face? No, that’s not rain, it’s water..someones dumping water from one of the rotting apartment complexs above you. Well, let’s hope it’s water. Don’t think about it.

Here’s a man pooping on the street, right in the gutter. Don’t look.

Here’s a dog, walking along as if it knows exactly where it’s going..a orange-y brown dog, all muscle, navigating its way through the traffic.

A man walks by, a platter of candy on his head, offering you to buy some. It’s white colored and sticky and seems to be incredibly white in the middle of all this dust and grime. It’s pristine.

A tiny woman–or is it a child–scurries by, absolutley filthy, carrying a baby whose legs seem to have been broken. She’s asking you for money, you give her nothing.

The shops have spotted you now, and the owners have all run out to pester you…

“Have a look, have a look”, one says.

“Buy something, Buy something”, another says.

“No looky charge, Madam. Silk, Silk.” says the man selling overpriced saris.

Keep walking. The last bit is the hardest, that last bit where you have to walk through a bit of street that seems to have been designated as a neighborhood toilet.

Ah, the smell is fouler than it was yesterday. You had thought the rain would have cleaned it up a bit. It didn’t.

Cover your mouth with your scarf, keep walking. God, it’s so bad you could pass out. Be careful where you step now, there’s urine everywhere, there’s feces everywhere.

A woman is doing her washing near it.

 Another woman is preparing a meal. She is preparing some sort of reddish curry looking thing and chopping up some sort of whitish meat–is it a cow’s stomach?–right in the gutter, carefully putting the scraps into the cooking pot.

 Two dead rats are being eaten by crows.

Another rat scurries by a man who seems to be a holy man, entirely naked, sitting under a tiny shrine of sorts near all the refuse and urine filled gutter.He is surrounded by marigold and jasmine flowers that have all been strung together.

Jasmine and urine blend together. The smell is overwhelming. Keep walking, you are almost there, almost to the bakery.

Made it. You’re by the bookstores now. You glance up–strange how one never looks up in this city, one is so busy looking down to make sure one isn’t stepping in anything gross..

Looking up, you notice how all the buildings are falling apart. What did this place look like when the British were here? It looks as though now one has maintained anything since they left. It’s all rotting, covered in mildew and mold and falling in on itself–yet people live in those buildings.

The bookstores’ owners have seen you, they are trying to pull you in. But you’re not interested–a few days ago you discovered the famous Oxford bookstore, only blocks away, that is clean, cheap, and has any book you want without dealing with bargaining. You keep walking.

Did I mention everyone is staring at you? Yes, everyone. Some people laugh, some people point, others attempt tiny conversations. You haven’t had a scrap of privacy since you closed the door of your hotel room and walked out onto the street. You’re an object of curiousity.

Just as the car exhaust is realis really beginning to hurt your chest, and that annoying little pollution cough is starting up again, you’re at the front door of Kathleen’s, the bakery you love.

A armed guard opens the door for you and you are greeted with a blast of air conditioning.

 The place is full of plump Indians, all standing around eating meat turnovers and iced little cakes. There are no chairs-one stands and eats one cake after another.

You get a few hot pastries, filled with vegetables, heated up and put in a box. Then you choose an iced cake–it all tastes like wedding cake, but who cares? It’s comforting, it’s sweet, and it’s freshly made everyday, so you won’t get sick (you hope). You choose strawberry cake today.

“Yes, yes, memsahib. We see you lucky tomarrow?”, says one of the owners, a man wearing a spotless white punjabi.

“Tomarrow, yes.”, you say, and turn around again, walking back through the streets to your hotel, where once you are in your room you will wash your face, hands, feet with disinfectant and drink some cold water to overcome your nausea so you can eat your pastries and cake.

You sit down at the little table in your room just as the Mosque’s call to prayer begins. The loudspeakers seem louder today. It’s so loud yo can think of nothing else, so you just listen and stare out the window, watching the rain come down on plastic tarps and rickshaws and people.

Life looks misty and fuzzy and you can’t concentrate.

Finally, the call to prayer ends, the rain dies down for a moment, and you begin to eat your melting strawberry cake, while pondering if you will actually be able to remember everything you are seeing here in India.

You won’t. It’s still fuzzy and muddled and mixed up, one scene blending into another.

And that’s only fifteen minutes in Calcutta.

gigi

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