Kolkata is a land of 'Sen'se and 'Sen'sibility as somebody remarked the other day. The first type of 'Sens,' who by far have bewitched the world with their smiles and suave sensuality, are not much difficult to talk about. The Hindi film industry has been dominated by a stream of talented Bengali heroines and when compared to any other heroines, have in general bagged the choicest of roles, well backed by the author in an otherwise male-dominated bastion.
But then one should not forget that this land is the land that has the sensible 'Sens' too and as it stands except for one, all the other Nobel laureates are from this land or have been in some way linked to this land. One of them today stands as the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. And then there is the stream of great freedom fighters that this land has bred. This land also boasts of the creative geniuses of Rabindranath, Bankimchandra, Sharatchandra, Tarashankar and Satyajit Ray - names like wine, on which whole generations have got drunk
But the first sight of Kolkata always strikes one with its poverty. As my mother says, perhaps Mumbai was so in its olden days when the areas of Thakurdwar-Girgaon had chawls lined up against each other with barely space in between to pass. Mumbai surged ahead given its undisputed status of the commercial capital of India, Kolkata remained where the English left it when they shifted the capital of the Raj from here.
In Kolkata, poverty with a big 'P' stares at you from every conceivable angle. That the people are poor is an understatement. The classes live in such dire straits that it is not difficult to imagine that the footpath is the house of thousands (or millions) of them. Eighth in the list of most populated cities in the world, it has the highest density of people. Imagine in the '60s, when New York, the much-hyped over-populous city, had an average of around 27,000 people per square mile, Calcutta had a staggering 129,000.
Poverty has led to strange bedfellows. A story in Zambia goes thus - a woman with her husband walking down the street sees a stranger smiling at her. She asks her husband to go back home as she goes with the stranger and reaches home the next morning with some food for the family.
Kolkata has a lot of bastees providing the right ambience for such activities and it is known that incest and extramarital relationships are quite often fuelled by hunger pangs. Prostitution is something that looms large in Kolkata and at nights every dark alley has the gaudily clad women standing in search of money to bear a family back home. Park Street, the commercial hub of the city is not exempt from this except that this part hosts pimps in predominance.
Completely unaware of this was I, when I went with Sridhar to enjoy a dinner in Kolkata's prestigious Park Street. As we were what we were - nocturnal animals, we had lot of time with us and I was carelessly rambling through the bookstalls lining the pavements of Park Street. These pavements are similar to Mumbai's Flora Fountain area, where books hold you back on the pavements - however urgent the work. While passing a stall which had the entire collection of Naipaul's books, I was skimming idly through the pages of A House for Mr. Biswas debating on whether to buy it or wait for the Kolkata Book Fair. The price was the same as elsewhere, but the tap on the shoulder was not Sridhar's.
As I turned, I was face to face with a lungi-clad person, wearing a transparent shirt with two buttons off - displaying a big-holed red-coloured vest and some talismans on his hairy chest. His mouth was overflowing with pan as he asked me something in Bengali.
I replied "Hindi main baat karo" and he immediately switched to Hindi asking "Saab, College ki ladki chahiye kya?"
I was flabbergasted. For a full minute, I did not know how to react - that is if I was supposed to.
I had heard of prostitution in Kolkata but that it would be so blatant was something scary for my quite-too-sheltered heart. In Mumbai a quiet prostitute haggles only with people going near her, no pimps generally approach the people unless the person approaches the pimps and out here the person was tapping my shoulder!
For a full minute as I gave him a blank look.
In my mind, I realised how easy it was to think, sitting in the comforts of the bedrooms, that one day I would visit a brothel and inquire about the plight of the women. And then one of them would sing Allah tero naam, ishwar tero naam on my request. It was so romantic. This was not. All the dreams vanished, as I beat a hasty retreat.
Kolkata is called the Paris of the East and some Paris I saw. Now, each time I step on the Park Street in the night, this nocturnal adventure makes me jittery.
This entire area then appeared in light, as having something nefarious to it, something wicked and unhealthy. As the Street appears in the day, it gets transformed into a completely different world at night. Apprehensions now rule the heart and mind.
Poverty is there. It is there just as Mount Everest is there. It is so; it cannot be otherwise. And the economic diversity can be seen at each step you take. Behind the glitter of a good restaurant, you see the street urchins picking up the remnant piece of meat from a bone thrown from the platter of a filthy rich guy who has not bothered to eat it as his stomach is full. The footpaths are home to plenty and all their ablutions take place there beside a tube well or a broken standpipe as its water gushes into the gutter.
From the junction of Theatre Road and Camac Street as you turn towards Park street you find a row of stalls. There are two cigarette vendors between whom stand sandwiched two roll centres ('No Beef Roll' standing as a pointer to its 'Hinduism'), a samosa shop, an STD booth, a scrap seller and a cyber cafe. On the edge of the footpath, a makeshift hutment hosts a roadside restaurant dishing out Chinese dishes. Just before this restaurant is a jhaalmuri seller who sleeps, eats and sells on the road and can be seen day in and day out lying in the shade of an electric board meter. Just ahead of the roadside restaurant is a tube well, where people wash themselves, their clothes and the hotel utensils leading to a puddle of smelling liquid that separates the footpath from the road and flows right till the glittering Pantaloons and Westside shopping malls a couple of blocks away.
And if the smell bothers you, just across the street is a Parfume Shoppe selling exotic perfumes from the real Paris.
Rich and poor- distinctions fall off here. Visages are torn and underneath each skin, the same blood exposed.
While on poverty it is difficult not to mention the plight of the 'human' rickshaws. It is a common site to see these frail men pulling the load of two people till their chests bulge out of their ribs. It is not uncommon for the rich women to be oblivious of their loads; neither is it necessary for a twenty-something youth to bother if a person old enough to be his grandfather is pulling him while he enjoys a jhaalmuri. Such things don't exist for the rich as they sit tight in their Tollygunge bungalows or enjoy themselves at the Turf club or the Calcutta club a few meters from this place. The poor man on four pints of rice and two cups of tea throughout the day, runs around the city of Kolkata being troubled by policemen and restricted on roads where he is not supposed to enter.
His legs are strained, arms bulged and feet sore, by the heated tar roads of Kolkata as he pulls the rickshaw for the paltry three or four rupees he gets for his whole effort.
At the end of the day, part of the money goes to the middleman (as it is his rickshaw) and like all other places in India, the middleman flourishes
It is easy for me to write this, very easy for you to read it, but it might not be so easy on the other side of it. We sit in our comfortable couches, the air-conditioner saving us from the sweltering heat outside as we pass the regular "Tchk. Tchk. What a pity!" comments and then watch Balraj Sahani's sterling performance as he runs to his customer's probing "Aur zor se, aur zor se."
But the hypocrites that we are, it is easier to look at these human donkeys and comment, "If we do not take up their services, they would be unemployed and starve."
Pity we cannot do anything else.
