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The Calcutta Diary: A Volunteer’s Experience

Journal entry from yesterday, when I went to see “George” at Prem Dan…

Today I went to see “George”, the man who I found on the street and took to the hospital several weeks ago.

I went with M., the Irish nurse I became friends with here and who took care of George when I was sick recently. In fact, it’s entirely due to her and her efforts that he got a bed at Prem Dan, Mother Theresa’s home for the chronically ill and very ill of this city.

We hopped in an auto-taxi to get there.

Auto-taxis here are somewhat like tiny golf carts, which they manage to shove 3 people in the back seat and 3 (including the driver) into the front seat. It’s a tight, cramped ride and it’s deliciously dangerous….

The auto-taxi driver needs to be a man with great hand/eye coordination and possibly eyes in the back of his head, too. This is because auto-taxis are small and insignificant compared to the very large trucks and buses that it shares the road. The auto-taxi driver must know when to brake suddenly and when to go for it, zigzagging through traffic at astonishing speeds or puttering along half on the gutter and half on the road.

I try not to look out the sides of the auto-taxi today, as we scurry through the traffic. The one time I look up, it’s to see the headlights of a huge bus suddenly braking for us at the last minute.

I gulp with relief when we get out and are able to walk instead.

The relief is short-lived, however, as now we must cross the street..a large road by a busy bridge.

Crossing the  busy roads here is scary as well.

When I’m alone, I simply wait for a crowd of Indians to cross and then run across with them. For some reason I seem to feel that if I am in a crowd I will not get run over.

Cars here speed along and do not stop. Brakes are used in the last possible moment, sometimes resulting in cars stopping a hair’s length from whatever the car is trying to avoid.

Picture this with bike-carts laden with chickens and plastic tubs; rickshaws being carried by worn out men in raggedy clothes, barefoot; dogs;  three wheeled tiny “trucks” carrying people and packages….

M. and I hold hands to cross the street.

I like this hand-holding thing–it’s something people here do regularly to walk through the streets, cross a road, or just show affection–although this behavior is only between people of the same sex.

I remember when I first came here, how weird it was for me to see men everywhere holding hands, putting hands in each other’s back pockets….to see women, arm in arm, walking down the sidewalk or being carried around in a rickshaw, arms around each other.

Now I quite like it and am used to it, and even find it useful sometimes–such as when crossing busy roads!

M. and I make it across the road. Now we’ve got to cross the bridge on a narrow piece of sidewalk along the side.

Unfortunately(or is it fortunately? Why, yes, I think it’s fortunate after all..) the sidewalk is shared by lots of other people, mostly children, who are using the pavement divider as a toilet.

As we walk by children pooping and peeing, squatting with their brown little behinds to the road and to us, we glance to the left at the enormous slum that fills all of the space one can see.

These children who are using the bridge and pavement as a toilet live in the shacks that border the slum.

The slum is large and seemingly well organized, with roads going through it’s center and well-swept pathways. The sewage filled gutters are out of sight from where we are.

The shacks are made of ramshackle lean-to frames, with tied bits of this or that–mostly old bits of fabric and an occassional piece of  rotten plastic tarp–making up the walls.

Piles of trash are being stirred up by chickens. Women smile at us as they wash clothes, prepare food, or sit with other women talking.

A man wearing a dirty white shirt and a blue and gray checked lungi–a kind of wrap around skirt that gets tied between the legs–squats and smokes a bedi cigarette and stares off into space in an alleyway. He looks eighty years old, but he’s probably not more than forty.

I don’t feel like I can really look at the slum anymore, or it’s inhabitants. It seems like they are trying to live their lives with some degree of grace and privacy, and me peering into their world seems wrong somehow.

So instead I try to look at the cars, listen to the noise, smell the smells, breathe….

The traffic is loud, it’s a roar. How can these people live so close to it and sleep?

The smell is overwhelmingly of feces and urine. It has amazed me, since coming here to this city, how much of the city smells like this. You never get used to it.

It smells of smoke and exhaust and cooking fires, too. I can see big plumes of smoke coming from the slum…probably some kind of home industry is creating all that smoke.

The air is thick and brownish-grey, the blue sky above seems very far away.

We get to the steps that will lead us down to Prem Dan. 

M. knocks on a big blue metal door, and a man opens it and lets us in.

Prem Dan. What a different place this is from what is directly outside.

Outside the slum surrounds the entire area, all the way up to where Prem Dan’s cement walls soar. It’s little shacks and trash and tiny children and swept dirt floors as far as one can see.

Inside, it’s cool and comfortable.

We walk under an overhang and find ourselves in a vast courtyard, filled with plants and benches. On the benches and on the ground are men–sick men, healing men, men with broken legs, men who are mentally ill. They fill the place.

The men all sit in the sun, some talking, some moving slightly, but most seem pretty tranquil and are just doing their own thing.

In the center of the compound are enormous avaries, filled with parakeets and cockatiels, who are singing and squawking.

The courtyard is surrounded by two story cement buildings, some of which are a dormitories, some are kitchens, some are disensaries, some are the quartes for the nuns…the place is huge.

It’s all covered in a fine film of Calcutta dust, even the plants and the birds, and the trees. This dust is everywhere, even in the most beautiful of places.

M. is trying to find a head nun to see if we can  go see George.  We can’t find her, but she gets permission from someone else and we go into the big dormitory George  is in.

(I’ve decided, for the sake of clarity to keep calling him “George”, although his real name is Rahul).

George’s dorm is grand in scale, one huge room painted blue and gray, filled to the brim with ironbeds painted slate blue–not more than 3 feet from one another–that are covered in bright white and purple checked bedspreads. Most of the beds are empty as everyone is out enjoying the sunshine in the courtyard, but about twenty men remain who either don’t want to go out or are too weak to do so.

I scan the men lying on the beds for one that looks like George. I don’t see anyone that looks like the man I remember.

M. is walking towards a bed on one end, and I’m suddenly following her.

She stops in front of a bed holding  a tiny, tiny withered human being, all skin and bones.

Is that actually George? I’m thinking to myself…no!

Yes, it is, actually. They’ve shaved off all of his hair and his beard and it’s made him look tinier and more fragile than he ever did before. His jawbone sticks out like it’s broken, it juts out from his neck and face like it’s not really part of him, like it’s an extra piece.

He opens his eyes. It is him! I would recognize that spark anywhere.

Yet, he seems different to me. His spark looks dimmer, he looks smaller, he’s lying in a ball, curled up in the fetal position.

I watch M. with him.

It moves me to watch her with him.

She seems to have  a special relationship with her, and to me he seems to be responding to her presence, he seems to know her.

 George doesn’t remember me at all. I think he was too out of it that first week.

M. is visibly moved by seeing him and so am I, but somehow watching M. with him  makes it harder.

I can see my anguish on her face and it makes it so very difficult.

M. is trying to give him orange juice that she brought with her, which he doesn’t want.

M. tries to give him water, offering it  by the spoonful, and he doesn’t want that either.

We find out that George’s mouth and throat are full of ulcerations and these are making it difficult to swallow.

We are very worried. M. had been to see George a few days ago and at that time George was refusing all food and liquid.

They had tried to insert a feeding tube into him the other day but he refused it and got combative, so they gave up.

The nun in charge comes over and tells us that George has been eating, but he only eats a tiny amount of food and water. They have been giving him Horlick’s, a sort of drink mix that has some nutrients in it. Horlick’s is the cure all for everything here.

We want him to get a saline drip as he is so dehydrated but they are not set up for that.

I have tears on my face, I realize. I wipe them off with my scarf as the nun continues to speak.

There was talk of giving him a test to see if he had HIV, but the nun is going to put that off for now. She thinks he may just have malnutrition. It may not be worth it to give him the test, anyway, if he’s not going to make it. Resources here are precious and cannot be wasted. Waste here has an entirely different defintion than at home.

George’s brain has been adversely affected by his drinking habits. His brain has shrunk considerably and he has major dementia. He does not always know what is going on and he struggles to communicate. The nun seems to think that he can’t even speak bengali or Hindi, but M. says she has been able to communicate with him.

I think M. is correct and that perhaps the sisters just haven’t connected to him as M. has been able to.

George has an appointment back at the hellish hospital he was previously at this next week.

The nun, M., and I are all standing around talking about whether he should be moved to go that appointment or not.

The nun is very clear and matter of fact.

“If he lives….” she says, “through the week…”

My thoughts trail off and far away. If he lives? Through the week? I can’t face this.

Well, there is no choice but to face it. We’ll just have to take it at a day at a time.

M. is nodding and I can, once agin, see my anguish reflected on her face. She’s thinking the same thoughts I am.

I find myself telling the sister that I  am worried how thin George is, that I don’t remember him being that thin before.

The sister points to a man nearby, who is thinner than George. His upper legs are my wrists. There is no fat, no muscle, his body has literally eaten itself.

The difference between George and this other man is that the other man is happily sitting up is his bed, eating chapati and dal from a tin plate–while George has lost the will to eat and eats nothing, lying in the fetal position covering his head with a blanket during meal times.

The whole time we are there, I’m thinking strange thoughts, like:

Maybe I should have just left him  in the street. Maybe he wanted to die alone. Maybe this process has stolen something from him. What do I know, I’m just a Westerner from an entirely different culture, who am I to say what is right and what is not? What is dignity and what is not?

Crazy thoughts.

I start telling them to M.

M. sets me straight immediately.  M. tells me that he has experienced love and people caring for him. M. tells me he is in a clean place–not left in the street to die.

If he’s going to die, at least he can do it here with some dignity.

Yes, yes, you are right, I know, I say to M.

It’s just this crazy place turns everything up side down in my head.

We make arrangements to visit again on  Thursday.

We leave Prem Dan at dinner-time, and the courtyard is filled with men who are all sitting eating with their hands from their tin plates filled with dal and chapiti. Some smile at us, but most just concentrate on eating.

We walk out into the world again, the real Calcutta world outside the blue metal door, and are immediately surrounded by tiny beautiful children from the slum.

They are holding our hands, they are playing with tiny wooden tops on the pavement, the are covered in bright dirty clothes and headscarves and they are all smiling. One is wearing a bright pink shirt covered in little red strawberries and oranges.

We walk back up to the bridge and begin making our way past the slum, the feces, the traffic.

The air seemed cleaner somehow in Prem Dan.

We suddenly walk through a bunch of children and they are holding our hands, touching our clothes, grabbing the end of my long scarf.

They are all asking for money.

A man wearing a sparkling white shirt and beige trousers walking near us says something and they scurry away.

A young man, no more than twelve, sits on the cement divider, a few feet away from a pile of feces. He holds a tiny grey skinned baby with little limbs and it’s wearing a beautiful yellow and green dress. He gestures for money, too.

Keep walking. That will change nothing, I tell myself. Just keep walking.

M. and I are talking about George’s condition. We decide–even if he makes it–taking him to the hospital, even if only for a checkup or whatever it is for–would be such a shock to the man it would be unwise. He would no doubt be very afraid and disoriented and it would only make matters worse.

That’s if he survives, if he is able to be self aware enough that he has something to live for.

Prem Dan would no doubt keep him there for a long time and then send him to another home for those who have dementia and are mentally ill.

But perhaps he has lost his will to live. Who can blame him? He can’t support his family..he has a wife and three children somewhere in a slum outside of the city, who he hasn’t seen for a long time. He can’t work.

On the other hand, one thing I’ve learned here is that every human life has value. We say stuff like that at home but we don’t really mean it. We think we mean it, but we don’t. We still think we are better than other people, somehow or other.

So, to me, George is no different than someone at home in a bad desperate situation. A homeless drunk man who has lost touch with his family. A beggar woman who begs outside the supermartket to support her boyfriend’s drug habit. A teenager who runs away from home and lives in an abandoned building and does drugs all day.

One society’s social problems are actually no diffeent than another’s. They look different on the outisde, but on the inside they all come from the same thing: a human being who is trying to survive and gets discouraged.

The difference here is that there is so much need, and so few possible resources, that when someone gets discouraged they literally can’t survive and they starve to death.

M. and I cram ourselves into another auto -taxi and somehow make it back to our hotel.

I go to my room and lie there in the dark and think of nothing  and sleep.

I wake up and realize that in spite of the fact everything points to me not doing so, I have fallen for this place.

I’ve fallen for it. All the horribleness and all of the joyful moments, all sloshing together in my brain day in and day out have caused some kind of miracle to happen in my brain chemistry.

I’m falling for Calcutta.

I’m lying in my room and thinking that perhaps I am going insane. How can I love a place that was hell last week? That cares nothing for the man dying on the street?

Well, that’s for another entry.

In the meantime, I am so grateful to George, who no matter whether he lives or dies, he will never understand what a teacher he has been to me these past few weeks. I have learned more about myself from this experience than I could have learned in several years at home.

It’s self awareness on speed dial.

gigi



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7 responses to “The Calcutta Diary: A Volunteer’s Experience”

  1. You’re not the only one gaining awareness from your experience in Calcutta – just so you know. Rarely have I been on such a journey through someone else’s eyes. Thank you.

  2. Kathy Moore says:

    I am still on this journey with you.

  3. jim says:

    “…deliciously dangerous.”

    You are knowing India.

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