Durga the Survivor

There is an very old woman who comes to Sealdah dispensary and she has been coming for a very long time. She has a large hole in her leg, but it is improving, sort of. She is known by the long term station volunteers as 'Durga'. I know this is not her real name, as I have asked her many times. The problem is that her real name is so complicated that no matter how many times I ask her, I forget, so even I have reluctantly ended up calling her 'Durga'. It is bizarre that by giving a name I feel as if our relationship is a little more personal – even if it is a fake name. In return 'Durga' calls me 'my friend', and her reciprocal naming is loaded with much more affection than the name of a Hindu Goddess famous for dispelling fear and destruction as well as creation.

What is unusual about 'Durga' is that her English is perfect. Most of the patients who come to the dispensary come because they have no alternative. In monetary and health terms they are incredibly poor. They usually have little education, and as a result their grasp of English is very rudimentary. But Durga speaks what I would call 'the queen's English'. She uses ancient and antiquated words which make me sound comparatively ignorant and rude when talking with her. She has refined manners and scolds the mentally challenged men, who clean the dispensary, for splashing her belongings of a large plastic bag. She asks me many questions about my life and my dreams. Her sari is filthy and she never washes. It is still too cold for her to take a street bath she tells me, but I also know that she is very modest and with no change of clothes or underwear washing herself and her sari is something of a logistical problem. I have hidden bars of soap and washing powder in her bag; just in case, and I argued her case to the Sisters when they were distributing second hand sari's at Christmas. The new sari came and within a week it seemed as dirty as the old one and the old one was no where in sight.

The first time I met Durga she was sitting outside of the dispensary. She was not 'allowed' to come in because her infection was so severe that it had to be washed and dressed on the step outside as bandages were passed through the window. On this first occasion the large ulcerated hole in her leg was full of worms and had to be soaked in a liquid – the name of which I never know but which I know smells very strong and takes at least twenty minutes to kill the worms. This first time Durga was particularly upset that she had 'animals' in her leg. She was in excruciating pain, which described as making her 'senseless.' Although she must have been dealing with for weeks before, she could not help but try to move away from whenever the dead worms were carefully picked out with a pair of surgical tweezers. We changed tactics and worked in pairs, with Bruno cleaning and me holding both of her hands and desperately trying to distract her with irrelevant chitter chatter. It was during these conversations that I learned a little about Durga and how she came to be living at Sealdah train station.

Durga was from a high caste and rich family. Her father worked in the British administration and Druga herself had a love for the English language which she went on to study at university. She had an arranged marriage immediately after her studies finished and was wedded to “a wealthy gentlemen.” The couple had three children; two daughters and one son. Then her husband died. Now to be a widow in India is considered by many to be worse than dying itself; it is seen as a curse and in the past widows were encouraged or even forced to commit ‘sati’, jumping onto of their dead husband's funeral pyres and burning to ashes. The widows were (and in many areas still are) seen as a burden by the rest of the family. Traditionally it was unacceptable for the women to remarry and high caste women were forced to have their heads shaved and wear a white sari.

In Durga's case, she went to live with a relative of her husband but her life became very hard. The lady of her new household resented Durga's presence and began to look for reasons to put Durga on the street. What happened next is covered in shadows. Durga clearly does not like to talk about it, and she is likewise very vague when I ask her about the whereabout of her three children. However, Durga says she must have been living on the streets for over ten years and as far as I can tell it is on the streets that her long life of contrasts will most likely end. Durga is proud of the fact that never begs or eats out of the garbage, but instead she will patiently wait for food to come her way. She works hard at collecting plastics and rag materials which she will take to be recycled and receive a few rupees in return. In fact the huge plastic bag which she protectively guards is full of nothing other than carefully selected rubbish weighing around twelve or fourteen kilograms.

I do not know how her pseudo-name was chosen for her but I do know a little about the Goddess Durga as she is the Hindu equivalent of the patron saint of Kolkata. Durga – or Kali as she is also known - is accredited with being the Mother Goddess or the creator, preserver and destroyer of all of the universe. In Sanskrit Durga means "she who is incomprehensible or difficult to reach" and for her namesake this explains her continuous lapses in treatment where she will disappear for days at a time and come back with her white bandage black and green gangrenous pus oozing out of her wound. We will all lecture her, frustrated at her lack of commitment to healing her leg and our parallel inability to help to relieve her pain.

There is another translation to Durga which adds an even more curious twist to the description so far. It means "the one who eliminates sufferings." So it is Durga who protects her devotees from the evils of the world and at the same time removes their miseries. The Goddess has eight or ten arms and three eyes. She holds a bow and arrow, a thunderbolt, a sword and a trident. She stands on the top of a lion to symbolise the conquering of fear. The Goddess Durga is said to be gorgeously dressed in royal red cloth, jewels and ornaments. Her hair is dressed up in a crown (karandamukuta) which then flows out in long luxuriant tresses that are darkly luminous and soothing to the eye. Hindu myth believes that Goddess Durga exists eternally.

But now there is another image which stays with me whenever I think of Durga. I think of how I lift up her plastic bag for her to stick her skinny bony arm through and then she will lean to me as I bend down to be level with her, and she will say in her most eloquent and precise English accent, “I am happy I have such lovely friends who are helping me to get better.” She will then proudly but slowly walk through the little gate which I hold open for her and then once I have turned around she will bow her hands to her head and then to her heart in a symbol of gratitude, before disappearing into the crowd of chaotic lives around her. For me Durga is and will remain an incredibly powerful ancient and wise woman, who symbolises the juxtaposition of old and modern Inida; of the filthy rich and the barely surviving poor.