Eyes still Opening

I hardly sleep. I have packed my sleeping bag and the Indian Winter which claims each night is cold; even in my bed, my own room, its still cold. Someone is playing a guitar badly on the roof top of the hotel opposite. The happiness of the singing is annoying me. I am sad. Every time I feel the sting of the salt in my eyes I chastise myself. Grow up! I tell myself. You will be back. You are going because you booked the ticket so accept responsibility for your decisions! But my advice does little to soothe my self. The voice of my father echoes in my ears. 'So why are you going if you are happy there?' So simple. So true.

In the morning the communal alarm clock wakes me from a crazy dream. Faces of India appeared to say good bye to me. The most bizarre of all was Vijay who poked his head around the door wearing his yoga shorts and sports cap, looked uncomfortable and confused and then turned around unable to wish me farewell. The echo of the muezzin call fades into vibrations mixing with the disappearing creations of my subconscious. My eyes open and I contemplate a hundred thoughts at once: The height of the ceiling, what I still need to pack, that today has arrived and today I will leave India. I debate a final cold water bucket shower, and despite the luxury of 24 hour running water I am not in the mood for its icy fingers to kiss my skin and numb my bones.

Instead I fight my dive gear back into my rucksack, pay the Old Man his tip of fifteen rupees and wake The Man Outside.

Fortunately, The Man Outside is laying in his usual sleeping spot but I was still reluctant to take him from what I know to be a sleep scattered with car headlights and the ache of rock hard concrete. But on my last morning I wanted to give The Man Outside a gift of my Clouds in the Sky Yoga Mat. I knelt down besides his mummified body – a donated sleeping bag engulfing him with the added security of his blue blanket sealing his head from The World. He peeked through the edge of his covers. Like an undercover agent I passed through the rolled up mat. Long fingers extended and lifted the corner of the mat to inspect the Rainbows and the Clouds it contained and then slowly continued to pull it into the safety of his bundle of sleeping possessions. I handed in another bag of unwanted trivialities: An apple (to keep the doctor away), batteries (so I didn't have to throw them away), socks (to fit snuggly under sandals), candles (in case the street light pops) and an assortment of papers and magazines (to provide a mornings entertainment, stimulation and recollection.) I said a 'Good Bye' but I did so quietly, aware of how intrusive I have already been walking into someone's bedroom uninvited, and at the same time surrendering to my innate aversion to farewells.

A new friend appeared. Her smiling eyes absorbing a little of the sinking feeling flooding my body. She took a bag from my collection and together we woke up a taxi driver who was sleeping in the back of his shiny yellow Ambassador. For the privilege (or rather luck) of being the first customer of the new day, only seconds of bargaining were required to ensure the use of the meter, and my dive gear and yoga books were deposited. And then finally - for the final chai – a staple of my time in India, a tribute to the friends I had shared a chai with, friendships which had even been secured over a chai; to all the early mornings at the Mother House where I would pour a triple serving of chai and try to tempt my eyes wide open; to the incredible morning chais at Sishu Bhavan where I would leave Gita for twenty minutes and actually meet those who I was working alongside – the doctors, the students, the mothers, the social workers, the poverty tourists; the utopic, the committed, the shocked, the brave and the naive. In memory of the night buses which would screech to a halt in the middle of nowhere-chai heaven; and to all the chai wallahs and their boy servants across the country, who I have watched as they expertly boiled tea leaves, added just the right amount of sugar and then a whole heap more, and then who pour a hot sweet comforting cup of chai with a taste which was always totally and utterly unique. As I sipped my last chai on Sudder Street, and rolled the clay pot between my palms, feeling the chalky residue and then tasting it between my lips, I heard the depth of my breath as my senses pulled within; a self protection to the tears which would undoubtedly fall if the mind kept thinking as much as the eyes kept seeing and the ears listened. I spoke distractedly with my new friend of her planned work with children in Kathmandu, and I felt the echo of my own indecisions reverberate through my thoughts. A ting ting ting snapped me back to the present as I stared into the face of a sadhu. I smiled in response and he reached up to paint my forehead with a red dash adorned with a white dot. A dash to symbolise the so-called 'third eye'; the eye to see deeper then everything which is superficial. A dash invisible to me but which will accompany me across the ocean – a textured physical mark of this morning, this chai, this country; this potential memory and so much more.

I hugged my friend as she left to work at Nirmal Hriday- the House for the Dying and Destitute which had shaped my first days in Kolkata, intensified my reactions and held a cracked mirror up to my own fears and inadequacies.

I pulled the taxi door shut. Bang, Click. My mind whirled through the past, present and future. I chatted – relaxed, reluctant, anxious - with the taxi driver as I remembered my first – nervous, excited, wide eyed - journey into the city. As we drove through the slums I spied Prem Dam and thought of the severely disabled children who I had watched perform a Christmas musical. I remembered how they had smiled and swayed and singed and drummed with a diligence which had proved their potentials. I realised how familiar these once alien streets were, and how much I have learned and understood and how much I have still to learn and to understand, to see within this myriad of a country – this maze of cultures, contradictions, poverty and riches.

The taxi left the illicit rickshaws and decrepit buses of the road and pulled into the cultivated concrete car park of the airport. I watched as waiting relatives played cricket to an audience of taxi drivers, while Muslim men held their heads high, intricately crotched white kepiah shining out their recent pilgrimage to Mecca. Another click bang click. My spontaneous smile betraying my emotions as the taxi driver insisted on finding a wobbly trolley to transport my luggage. I would see him soon I told him and then I followed the wobbly trolley as we both wandered aimlessly into the airport. Mixed emotions, confusion, weighing down my heavy footsteps. Willing my ticket to be cancelled again, wondering if fate were strong enough to pull me back to the middle of the chaos I did not want to leave. I spoke a of 'Namaste's' as I filed through passport control and back again. And then finally the wet ink stamped down on my precious Indian visa and I walked into the departure lounge. Filled with business men, rich families and a scattering of typically dread-locked tourists I zoned out of the no-man's land around me and stared through the soundproofed thick glass windows. I submitted to my senses and as I did, I almost felt my iris's dilate as they tried to absorb a final image of India.

Leaving

I cannot get my head around leaving India. In fact its not just my head that I cannot bring around to the reality, but the reality itself. Returning to Kolkata has been strange. The faces of the travellers and long term volunteers who I worked with six months ago have changed. Some have returned to the places they call 'home', while others are on 'holiday', making the most of the influx of the Catholic volunteers over Christmas time in order to take a break. I have not even had time to think about these experiences, but rather they are floating through my mind, randomly recreating images so incredible they could be dreams. Since returning to Kolkata I have been so busy finding old friends and laughing with Gita, that my head has been fully occupied with the present. No room for future thoughts...

I have had a crazy busy two weeks: Every morning with Gita, lunchtimes at Sealdah train station and then afternoons visiting Wonder Woman and little Pineapple Girl among a hundred others at New Light and the Soma Home. The Life that his City contains is incredible. Just a five minute walk along a familiar street flashes a hundred images and prompts a thousand thoughts. Interactions, observations, conversations. I feel as if I have lived in Kolkata; as if this has been one of my many 'homes'. The feeling of belonging is comforting and a necessary facilitator for my travlling these past three years around a strange and hybrid World. Finding 'homes' in alien places is a necessity for someone like me who dislikes the feeling of being a 'visitor' rather than part of a social community, even if for only a short period.

In the past few weeks I have paced around Kolkata, surprised at my own familiarity with the mirage of streets and feeling disconcertenly at ease. The diversity of this city seems more apparent now that I have travelled away and then returned. The photo exhibitions, the colonial architecture, the activist book shops, the smart city shops a stones throw away from the wooden shacks of the traditional craftsmen and the plastic roofs of the slum dwellers. Diversity is reflected though the triad community of Muslim, Hindus and Sikhs and is intermingled with a formidable amount of Christian tourists; the continuation of tradition, culture, history and religion played out through the daily routine of occupational castes and family fortune. Rickshaw wallahs run bare foot alongside yellow Ambassador taxi's which race chauffeur driven imported jeeps. The daily newspapers, which are published in Urdu and Bengali, plaster the billboards while the old men share spectacles inorder to read them. Around the corner young business women drink Italian cappuccinos, subconsciously slipping into English and using phrases remeniscent of Victorian England as they excitedly discuss the forthcoming weekend's party.

It is because of this diversity that Kolkata is an easy place for a foreigner to live. That is until you open your eyes; and here it is much easier for an 'insider' to stay blinded than an outsider. The destitution framing daily life is shocking and with a city that has a population larger than most European countries the combination of poverty and numerology reduces a slum dwelling, street living individual to a body – anybody, somebody, no-body. Here Poor People die unnoticed as just as their life has been invisible, they leave behind a shadow of a child, woman or man ready to fill their space squatting at the side of the road, 'living' in the limbo of the Hungry and Homeless.

The power of globalisation lifts the educated and privileged into a parallel world while simultaneously transporting the poverty tourists into a vacuum of sickness, disease and deformity which they visit each day and which exists each night but which they leave after a few months, or perhaps days. A vacation of altruism; a lesson of life; a Mission completed?

These past eight months have had a profound effect on me. Indeed my eyes have been opened. I have met a little Buddha; an incredible child who I have learned so much from, who I now feel a responsibility for and yet Helpless to Help. I have worked along side Indians and foreigners whose compassion for humanity has held a mirror up to my own inadequacies. I have dealt with the guilt of the privileged, and the depth of my powerlessness. I have spoken in anger, written in sadness and tried to pacify a mind which is continuously provoked to thoughts of frustration. I have heard My Self.

And so yes, it is hard to imagine that I need to leave this place that continues to teach me so much. That is so full of Life and all of its imperfections. Every morning I laugh with Gita I cannot even think about saying Good bye, telling myself that perhaps its for the best as she cannot understand my words, and anyway my guiding hands with be replaced by another's.

My justifications for leaving are that I need to work. I will go and teach yoga to rich people on a paradise Island in Thailand. I will live in the nature again, and smell the salt of the sea. I will live in a bubble of tranquility. Of course I plan to return at the end of the season with enough money to work with Gita again, but my connection to Now nullifies plans for Then, inspite of the most rational of thoughts.

I was meant to leave on Sunday, but the airline cancelled my ticket. I was meant to leave on Tuesday but I contracted dysentery, I was meant to leave on Thursday but again the airline intervened and shut down its website. I was meant to leave on Saturday but my knee objected and I had to have an MRI scan. If I was supersitutious perhaps I would think the Universe was trying I tell me something. Unfortuantely, 'we' humans keep thinking that we have the power of the gods we personify. So I am leaving tomorrow.

Until the Next Time

I spent the morning with The Bravely Blind Climber Child in the small park within the Sishu Bhavan complex. I am leaving her soon. And if feels just like that – leaving, abandoning, out of sight out of mind.

The progress which she has made since the time we first met eight months ago is Amazing. She is amazing. When we starting playing together, she was only swaying from side to side – unable to - or reluctant to walk independently. She had a curiosity which seemed muted – silent. Once her attention was attained she would quietly explore the new object within her hands or close to her ears, but if she was led away she would 'just follow'. Now I watch as she screams for the musical guitar or the tambourine if another child snatches it from her, and I feel reassured that she is beginning to learn how to fight in this world. Now she walks more confidently, not only that but she is even climbing – using her body rather than allowing others (her 'carers') – to move it for her. She will pull herself in and out of her chair, climb the stairs pulling herself up each step with both hands on the cold stone banister. And as she walks with me to the playground, she will pull me towards sounds, which without her would remain invisible to me, such as the warbling of the water inside the water pipes, or the clicking clinking of a cooling car engine or the mysterious rattling vibrations inside the climbing frame.

The Sister in charge of Sishu Bhavan is away at the moment. Three months in the USA. This explains the increased bullying of the children by the staff who do not have the luxury to work for pleasure like the volunteers do. This also means that I have been unable to ask her about Gita's possible education: Does the Sister still believe she is 'mentally retarded'? Is she still refusing to send her to a school for the blind?

In her absence I decided to check out for myself how the orphanage school for the 'visually impaired' was working out for Gita. I sat in the back of the room while watching three special needs teachers work with four children. The task of the afternoon was for the blind children to put their paint covered fingerprints inside a drawing of a hand. However, Gita found her art lesson a little too traumatic. She particularly disliked having her fingers pushed down onto the paper when she seemed to want to rub the paint between her hands. It is this sort of attitude towards the children which infuriates me. Everything seems so superficial – well fed (force fed); clean clothes (but not allowed to become 'dirty); new toys (hidden away in the class room otherwise they will be broken); a million volunteers (too many 'carers' and not enough 'facilitators'); a special needs school (to produce pretty paintings for the wall). Yet despite all of these frustrations of the best of the worst situation, working with Gita continues to fuel my energy and determination.

A returning volunteer told me that she first met Gita two years ago when she was still a baby. She told me that Gita had actually been born in a slum, where she was left to sit, ignored and starved of both physical and mental nourishment. When she was brought to the orphanage she would cry whenever she was made to stand so would just be left to sit. The returning volunteer was amazed at Gita's 'progress' and it is this 'progress' which fuels my determination to fight for Gita's right to education; that despite being blind, orphaned, female and alone in this world that she has a right to a future.

And this morning in the park was no exception. Leaving. the blaring music, running toddlers and staring eyes we walked out of the nursery – hand in hand – and found the air, the quiet and the freedom of the little park. Following my instructions to lift her feet at the steps I felt her reactions sink into me, producing waves of pride and admiration. I watched as she moved her hands searching and then finding the familiar iron ropes of the swing, turning herself around to sit on the small wooden plank. I watched as she sat suspended in the air and totally trusting in me, and I stood by her side feeling so strong and full of energy.

Gita inspires me and reminds me of the endurance of the human spirit. Meeting her – a stranger who I have never been able to 'talk' to, who does not even know my name, or what I look like and yet who utterly trusts me and laughs with me and holds me close to her – has changed something deep inside of me. As I pushed her on the swing and waited for her to lift her hands to her ears and stop the swing as she falls off, I felt such an admiration paired with a resolve that anything is possible. Watching as she explored the sea-saw, pushing the seat up and down and then climbing on it and waiting to be lifted to the sky until she would be grinning with such a wide smile that I could not help but join her at the opposite end, as we sat sea-sawing away, and this time it was me trusting that she would not let go and slide to the fall. Watching as touched the metal rungs of the ladder and then began to pull herself up the giant steps. Climbing, one (un)sure step at a time, slowly exploring, yet unaware of the dangers of slipping off. And feeling my own amazement when she reached the top of the slide and pushed herself back down to the ground.

I am amazed at her potential and her ability to fulfil it once given the space just to be. Her ability to learn, her quest for new sounds, her love for dancing and her ability to endure is such a tribute to her energy – her spirit. And it is this which makes it easier to leave her; knowing that she will continue to learn with or without me, even though I will desperately miss sharing Our World. And I know its not just me – I know that it is a power which comes from within her; and which if you can keep your eyes open you can see. I know because I have seen the reactions of strangers; of the unattached who meet her for the first time and who quickly become captivated. I watched as headphones were shared and Gita swayed to Bob Marley for the first time, and I kept watching and smiling as she grabbed the headphones back as soon as the opening beats of 'Get Up, Stand Up, Don't give up the Fight' whispered into her ears.

I said goodbye silently. We rowed across the nursery floor for one last time, I tipped her over my legs and hung her upside down for one last time, and I hugged her tightly while spinning her around for one last time... until the next time.

Bravely Blind Climber Child

Hands holding Hands

Hands guiding Eyes

Imagining, Pretending

Living, Ignorance

I place her palms on the cold metal ladder

Her fingers flick at the flaking faded colourless paint

I tap the bottom rung. I say her name

Like a robot she lifts a leg

Drops a foot and begins to climb

Bravely Blind Climber Child stepping into darkness

Trusting tones, trusting touch, trusting too much

Face lifted towards the sun she cannot see

Hands gripped firmly and then blindly distracted

Little feet balancing precariously

Hands holding Hands

Hands guiding Eyes

Sounds of a thought. Perhaps.

Probabilities. Possibilities. Potentialities.

Joy soars through my body escaping into a vibration of laughter

Pride born from admiration, soaring to the sky and beyond

Protective hands; protecting from the fall she cannot see

Instinct trying not to carry, prepared to catch

Instinct trying to explore, learn, play, to become

Hands holding Hands

Hands guiding Eyes

Admiring. Seeing. Learning. Loving.

Silent Responsibility. Excuses.

Together fighting the boundaries of control

Together for a few hours for a few weeks

Bonded in a dance of rhythms

Bonded in a tangible energy

An ocean apart in perception. In reality

Hands holding Hands

Hands guiding Eyes

Eyes learning mystery

A future in shadows

Encouraging words; words void of meaning

Every step another victory

A screech of Happiness sliding with gravity

A battle against prejudice; a trophy for truth

I want the whole world to See what you are

You are Incredible

You are too Brave

You are full of Power

You are only Blind.

I have no idea how to convey the intensity of the past weeks with the most incredible four year old I have ever known.

Streetless

Yesterday I found The Man Outside wandering along his street. He appeared from the shadows stooping into the soft glow of the sporadic street lamps before disappearing back into the darkness. Within seconds he was hidden by parked Ambassador taxi's or perhaps just by the invisibility which seems to shroud the Homeless. I turned back to the little hut of a street shop which shone out from the imaginary pavement. A couple of squared meters filled with colours and snacks, smokes and hanging shots of shampoos. I leaned up to the wooden counter and pointed for another packet of glucose biscuits. The chattering man leaned far over to reach the edge of his shop before swinging back up to exchange his food for my money. I left him streaming his words to his friend, as they sat squashed onto the same wooden stool, in the middle of his mountain of imperishable perishables.

Despite the mystical skill of disappearing under the cover of a blinking eye The Man Outside was back in sight. He stepped in slow strides with a surety which seemed to hold him tightly within the porous borders of his Own World. With each stride he gently kicked life into discarded plastic bags; providing them with a free flight with the Evening Breeze. He watched as the bags were - one by one - momentarily lifted from the dirt and filth. The plastic blew and bellowed into disfigured ballons around his ankles before rapidly deflating back into the gravity locked chaos of street rubbish.

I called his name. The Man Outside paused in his restlessness and tipped his head back from his hooded hugging blanket. His eyes remained camouflaged from the outside but revealed from within. He began to walk towards me. As he knelt down to touch my feet I tried to hand him the biscuits but he mumbled a stream of what appeared to be negatives before handing them back and then walking rapidly down the street towards His Corner. I obediently followed while still echoing my insistence that he take the snacks. Usually, I cringe when I see friends subconsciously dominate the small areas of freedom a Man free from social responsibilities still retains. I try to tune my ears out when I hear the tone of 'telling' rather than 'asking', especially regarding issues such as washing, dressing or even the cutting up of food. But lately I have noticed myself tottering around the same despicable paternal habit of presuming that I know what is best for someone living on the edges of society. Defeated and a little dejected I put the extra biscuits into my bag.

The Man Outside stops walking. I look at him. He mutters and mummers, mimes and mimics. His hands always working, his lips always moving, and yet dialogue is lost to probabilities. This evening it was a little easier to translate the message hidden within his garbled articulations. The reason for his discontent? Streetlessness.

A drunken man of an undisclosed nationality had curled up on top of The Man Outside's pavement bed. Why on earth he had decided to choose the one patch of road on the whole street which was (and has been for many years) occupied by the streets only regular homeless man seemed a cruel attempt by the rich and wealthy to possess everything of any value. After realising the reason for The Man Outsides agitated wanderings I tried to raise the cuckoo who had stolen his patch of road. I shouted at him to 'Wake Up' and give my friend back his bed, but liquor had clearly muted his senses. I even found myself trying to raise him with a few swift kicks to his legs and his despicably shiny leather clad feet. The intoxicated stranger remained in his different level of consciousness. I turned to The Man Outside and motioned my helplessness. He kicked at his own feet, and mumbled half words to himself, or perhaps to me. I expressed more anger at the stealing of a home than The Man Outside would ever be capable of. I mumbled a 'sorry'. A 'sorry' I can't help you sleep on the street. And then I awkwardly turned around, head lowered, eyes down, shame surrounding, as I walked off into the comparative luxury of the adjacent guest house.

I tapped on the front gate to rouse the night-watchman, and as the iron gates clunked shut behind, I left The Man Outside slowly pacing, gently kicking, quietly murmuring and patiently waiting for his corner of the street to be vacated.

Slum Yoga

My first yoga class for children! Impromptu and disorganised chaos! It was the Wednesday clinic at Dhapa slums; the village built on a garbage dump (see Village of Rubbish) The clinic is held outside of the two room village school, and consists of a plastic table, two chairs, the incredible assistant and the current (maybe qualified) volunteers. The team emerge from the ambassador taxi to be greeted by a rush of Charging Cheering Children. We are pulled and pushed, jumped upon and swung around as tiny hands attach themselves to our arms and twist and turn. It was play time and the children wanted to play.

The children can only speak the most rudimentary English, with Bengali being their mother tongue. However, unlike Gita, they have eyes so can imitate what they see. I stood in the centre of the crowd they had built around me and attempt to clear some space, with the meters of muddy grass only to be immediately refilled by jumping feet. I wobbled into Tree Pose, reaching to the sky as my one leg fought for a patch of ground to stand upon. Within seconds my movements were being copied by a mass of children. Forward bends, twists, a line of back benders followed, as even the smallest reached behind their heads to find a patch of ground and successfully contort their already highly flexible bodies. 'Aunty Aunty' they shouted as they each fought for my divided attention.

By the end of the morning I was exhausted by exhilarated. Their enthusiasm had given me a renewed motivation to develop my teaching skills in order to work specifically with young people.

However, the visit to Dhapa also highlighted the risks of this young generation of slum dwellers. The grass which we balanced upon was rubbish: Garbage which the Kolkata Municipal Corporation rubbish collectors had ploughed into the land, and garbage which had been discarded at random and in accordance with the piles of rubbish being dumped in the slums each and everyday. Walking around the village was like taking a tour of a bio-hazard site. The many multipurpose lakes were filled with ultra violet green water. This was water which had been filtered through fields of waste and drain into the multipurpose lakes. Men sat next to the pools, sewing their fishing nets as other waded waist deep, throwing buckets of bright purple potassium permanganate to 'neutralise' the water, transforming the green of the algae was into a dark purple. A family of fluffy ducks paddled with difficulty through a surface of discarded floating plastic and polystyrene. A young mother showed off her collection of snails which she had just dug from the mud and would later feed to her family. The thoughts of children growing up on food farmed in such pollution reminded me that they needed much more than yoga.

Dhapa village is relatively new (it was established around five years ago) and despite reassurance from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation of the limited health risks, just the thought of the plethora of diseases and mutations which must be developing within their young bodies shocks me into a futile search for solutions.

I wonder what can be done to transform this village into a 'safe' place? What plants can be planted to help to filter the filth? What techniques can be used to remove the sludge from the lakes which are the centre point of the village? What education techniques can be used to help the people of Dhapa protect themselves and their children from the hazardous waste which the city is sending to them?

As we rode out of the slums, piled onto the back of the bicycle cart, truck after truck filled with garbage made its way towards the village. Continuous. Never ending. A reminder of our constant consumption and thoughtless disregard of waste. Fields of crops reached through the plastic soil next to the road. Within minutes we had arrived at a busy intersection, which was marked by the new hotel complex and housing estate for Kolkata's rich. I wonder what they must think of the mountain of refuse which looms in the horizon, or if they realise that their vegetables are being grown in a field full of trash, or if they realise the environmental and the social cost of their consumption? I wonder how attitudes towards trash can be changed? I wonder how non-biodegradable waste can be reduced. I wonder how Dhapa village can be relocated from a chemical minefield? I wonder what a passive and empty word 'wonder' is.

Dinner with the Man Outside

The Man Outside opens up my newspaper and points to the photograph of buses. 'Driver' he tells me, followed by a list of Indian towns. I know from previous conversations that he used to be a driver, but I don't know where. I know he can read English, and that he has a wide understanding of the dynamics of the street, but this is all I know. As I have said before, The Man Outside is a Happy man. He smiles as he signs for food. He laughs to himself as I peer to see his face constantly hidden from the world behind his blue shroud of a blanket.

His mind is always working as he leafs through my newspaper. He takes a finger full of rice from his plate and begins to feed the head of a woman on the back page. He is always trying to share his food. Every time we dine together he refuses to eat without at least trying to give me his meal. After a few attempts and reassurances that I have my own food, he will begin to eat and do so extremely quickly. Even if I pass him while he is sitting in a street cafe, he will wave and lift up his plate of food to offer to me. I wish I could make more sense of his murmurings, and even when I pick up a word of English, I am not always sure of the context he is referring to.

I had a dream last night that The Man Outside took a magic potion which gave him special powers. He was able to communicate with different energies of the universe, and seemed to emit an energy so huge that everyone was in awe of him. The next morning I left the guest house to find him standing in the road talking to another scrap of newspaper. I cannot even begin to imagine his reality, or the journey which he took into his world.

I remember the first time I met him, when he was 'pestering' me by touching my feet. I shooed him away, annoyed of the attention, as if he was an unwelcome animal.

It is good to see him again.

The Love of a Toilet Brush

I have just left the orphanage. I left Gita sitting on a potty in the toilet room. I left Gita sitting in the toilet room while a Mashi smacked the crying toddlers with a toilet brush. I am so angry that I slam the door shut, and then I write. This is how I take my frustrations out – not on mentally and physically disabled children, no matter how 'naughty' they are. Yes cultures are different, and yes there are many alternative 'techniques' to install discipline in young children, but bullying should not be one of them.

I have no doubt of the good intentions of most of the Sisters. I have no doubt of the Love of Mother Teresa for the millions of children which her homes have saved. I know the children in Shishu Bhavan are the 'lucky' ones. They could be living in the slums, hungry and abandoned. They could have been left to die. I know they have plenty of food to feed their bellies, and a warm bed to sleep in. I know they are clean and fed their daily dose of vitamins and unlike their destitute counterparts, I know they have cupboards full of clothes and toys. I know they have the attention of thousands of well meaning volunteers who pass through the nursery's doors every year. But I have a great deal of doubt over the depth of this 'luck'. Potentials are not being fulfilled. Love is no longer the prime motivation.

Station Life

I am eager to find my colleagues from the Food Program at Sealdah train station, so at lunch time I head over to the canteen. The fat and jolly proprietor beams me a smile of recognition from this plastic chair of a throne, before shooing me away with quick and rapid hand movements: They have just left so I turn and race across the brooming booming roads, and merge into the mass of pavement traffic. Within minutes I find Deepa organising the team. She is standing with her hand on her hip, and bag of food parcels in the other hand as she shouts at Mohammed and her new assistant. I smile as I drape my arm over her shoulders. Surprised she grins at me before handing me a bag as if I had never left. Although communication is difficult, through a mix of sign language and broken English, she tells me that her recently adopted baby is very well. Her husband however, has contracted leprosy. Deepa herself appears as 'full power' as always as she marches through the crowds finding the participants of the food program.

We arrive at the train station. Sealdah station is quieter and although the rush of travellers ebbs and swells with the arrival and departure of each groaning train, there are far fewer station dwellers than a few months ago. The police are stepping up their 'clean up' campaign. Deepa does a good impression of their technique. She swings her arm rising it above her shoulders and then swinging the imaginary baton down to crush the imaginary destitute around her legs. It appears that the old women are hit until they leave, while the younger men have moved to a place where it is easy to run away if they see the 'security' approaching. Pugli has been moved into a temporary rehabilitation home after being found by Hope Charity. Hopefully she is still there and receiving help for her drug addiction. Meanwhile, the 'two brothers', Raju and Niraj, have regrown their full head of dreaded hair in time for the cold winter weather. They were squatting at the end of the platform, filthy and silent and still giving a high Namaste as we approached. Laura and Sarah, the two old women, have been forcibly moved on. On to where? I have no idea. The station has been their home for years. Smiling Harry is still sitting cross-legged in his torn lungi at the North Entrance. He still seems happy, and perhaps happier still as his Angry Wife appears to have disappeared.

In the absence of the women, there are been a few new recruits. I handed a package to one middle aged man, who replied 'Thank you' in an accent eerily English. Deepa raised her concern over an old woman laying at the entrance to the station. She had to be pulled up in order to sit, her tattered clothes revealing her hip bones and protruding ribs. She was laying at the edge of the car park and only meters away from speeding taxis and their dirty exhausts and spinning racing wheels. 'Kalighat', Deepa shouts to me; as if raising her voice will convey the urgency of her concerns. I have only just returned and have no idea if the Mother Teresa Home for the Dying and Destitute even has space for one more lady lying in limbo between this world and no world. But Deepa's stare and the dislocated gaze of the old bony woman stay with me. Later I speak to some of the Mother Teresa volunteers who work at the station, and the brief conversation results in the intake of the woman the following morning. It is one case among too many, but one which reminds me that we are not without power to act.

With one package left we walk around the car park looking for someone 'suitable' to give it to. The candidates are too numerous and it is a strange feeling knowing that you have the power to relieve hunger even if only momentarily. I leave the responsibility for deciding who should eat to Deepa. She marches across the road and shakes an old man sleeping on a concrete island. She asks him if he wants food, and he slowly pushes himself into a sitting position. I quickly take out the remaining box. But I am too quick and the cardboard too flimsy and it falls apart in my hands. Rice spills onto the road, and the small packets of daal tumble towards the feet of the old hungry man. My embarrassment boils inside me, travelling up my body and filling my face and then settles to a well in my eyes. Unable to look directly at the old hungry man, I apologise to the ground.