Age of Kali

Kali dancing ontop of her husband Lord Shiva

 So here I am back in Kolkata after six years.  I’ve just arrived.  I’m not entirely sure why I am here.  I have an idea, but sitting by the street, with flashing Christmas lights and honking horns, and no available room in sight as the night is getting later, I think I might be slightly madder than I thought.  I first arrived in Kolkata in 2008 and I must have spent nearly a year in total working in the toughest, gritty conditions, which are no exception to life in a city where one third of its massive population are officially invisible.  The “official” population of Kolkata is just shy of 5 million, however many census have estimated it to be closer to 15 million, with one third of that living in slums or who have made their home the streets.  With a remaining million “homeless”… and yes there is a difference between those who are  destitute with  those who may well have a job, a patch of concrete they return to every night,  a spot under a bridge, or even the shelter of their rickshaw.  (Kolkata is the only city left in the world which still has man pulled rickshaws).  Either way, Kolkata is a city of extremes – of the filthy rich and the filthy poor, of majestic colonial buildings, fantastic classical dance and music concerts, steeped in cultural history and the city Mother Teresa decided to set up shop, along with a plethora of other organizations and charities, some with great intentions, others not so great.  Some with great initiatives, others finding ways to feed off the darkness.  Kolkata after all is the city of Kali – the great Goddess of death and destruction.  Rumor has it that a young boy was sacrificed to the Kali Temple every day before the arrival of the British.  Thus said, sitting on the plane from Goa (which for many foreigners is all they see of India) there were only three other white faces. Two more from the time I went to Bangladesh.  And similarly, I keep wondering what it is which pushes me to the edge of what is comfortable – to where not many single white women even want to venture. Indeed, it has been a while since I have stood out so much.  

We three found each other and shared a cab through the mayhem.  Driving in Kolkata means slamming on the horn until the traffic suffocates itself, at which point the driver automatically turns the ignition off and an eerie silence momentarily ensues.  Everything looks so familiar and yet at the same time so in complete contrast to my life in Bali.  Already beggars and hawkers reach through the window and I catch myself remembering – the familiarity of being a breathing cash machine.

I finally feel like I’ve arrived in India.  The conversation in the cab quickly went to volunteer work – they both were.  One was a pharmacist working for Calcutta Rescue.  I always felt that the word “rescue” was a rather unfortunate name.  And in many ways sums up the old school response to the dire poverty.  That of the knight in shining armor riding in to save the needy. Ha! Yet the pharmacist was smart in that she admitted she might not be able to do much, yet encouraging the doctors to check the drug side affects before administering them, and even creating a medical database was in her opinion time well spent.  Our words reminded me of why it has taken me so long for me to come back – and of course the massive journey through life that I have been on since I was last here. 

I had stopped working in Kolkata because I had felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems.  I’d never seen so many people of all ages with so little – and by so little I don’t mean “things” I mean so little of the basic human rights: safe drinking water, enough food to live, shelter and access to medical care.  At the time I had decided that if I could do just one thing that day to make someone’s life easier, then it was a victory.  But the longer I stayed, the more questions I asked, and the more I started seeing even problems in apparent solutions.  I’m back because I’m different now, I’m not so naïve.  I have no grand intentions, and no real plan, just some ideas.  

The cab dropped me sort of near where I had asked him to, which was Sudder street  - the hub for the volunteers.  Yet it is shady.  If you can you don’t stay here. Volunteers only congregate here because it’s close to the Mother House (Mother Teresa’s headquarters) and there is some kind of unspoken rule that comes after a while of working in this city – if you can save money you do, and then you give it to those projects or people you believe in.  I rock up at “Modern Lodge” which is anything but “modern” but it’s my home in this place.  

There’s no friendly faces.  Instead, security shouts to me that they are full and slams the huge metal shut in my face.  A rush of lungi clad men congregate around me shoving business cards advertising “very cheap VIP room with wifi”.  I turn down their demands and continue my search.  Half of the guest houses have been knocked down and replaced with concrete air con squares.  The other half are full.  Yet something in me is not concerned, the smell (of kerosene, exhausts, incense, cooking oil and open urinals) is completely unique to these streets.  The same women holding new born babies and asking for powdered milk are still standing at the same corners, and sure enough with different new born (borrowed) babies.  They don’t even approach me and it reassures me that I have already done my initiation here.   I know how to hold myself and how this places rolls, who to look at and who not to.  I walk up and down the street.  Stop for a chai.  Start writing this as I attempt to come up with a plan of action of where I might possibly sleep tonight, and then I remember…I walk back to “Modern Lodge” knock on the gate.  Tell them I know they have rooms, can I please have one. Its late, I’m tired, and of course…I can pay them now.  Sure enough I’m waved it.  They have three empty rooms.  I find my place.  Everything is the same, apart from there are now electric outlets inside the room rather than paying baksheesh to one of the guys to rig one up.  

So here I am, back where I started wondering why on earth I listened to that irrational pull that has magnetized me back here.    There’s no doubt about it, I have culture/poverty/ noise shock.  It seems impossible that Goa even exists in the same world, let alone Ubud.  I laugh thinking of what certain close friends would say if they could see me now.  I laugh at myself… I could have chosen to be diving, surfing, training capoeria right now, and yet I have chosen to be here.