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.

Pavement Restaurant

Another lunch time at the train station. Just the phrase sounds so stupid! As if I am going for lunch at the train station, rather than handing out lunch to fifteen of hundreds of hungry people. Anyway, today it began a little differently. Me, Muhammad and Deepta, standing in the middle of the multiple no lane road, waiting for a lull in the zooooming buses and the army of taxis to run across to the other side when we saw Fadi. I know its only an expression, but really, my heart nearly stopped. With his sandals on his hands Fadi was crossing the road. Pulling himself across the tarmac, trailing the stump of his leg behind him, with his bundle of possessions tied around his waist. Buses stormed passed him, taxi's careered around him. He appeared like a stray dog, caught in the middle of the rush hour traffic, while we were stranded watching, wishing, hoping with a collective determination that the bus drivers will see him, that the sprinting taxis will not accelerate until they have passed him. Miraculously he makes it. I feel the collective relief from our small group. Without even saying one word to the other we turn and dodge our way over to his side of the road. Fadi looks up. Smiles. Hands in Nameste and then begins to untie his bundle to reach for his half a cup of a hollowed coconut shell. Muhammad fills it up and then pours water over his hands, while Fadi rubs the bar of soap between his palms. Deepta and I empty the small plastic bags of daal and fish out into the cardboard box. Two chapati's are placed on top and then we turn to go, leaving Fadi sitting at the side of the road. Half a meter away from one of the busiest intersections in the city. Eating his lunch – just how he lives his life - at exhaust level, surrounded by traffic, fumes and horns.

Next stop. The old couple in the car park of the train station. The (Angry) wife isn't there, but other residents of the car park point to her mute husband. We follow the pointing arms and find Harry sitting cross legged outside the northern entrance of the train station. Surrounded by moving people. He is sitting directly in the sun. The temperature today is 42 degrees. It is mid day. Deepta picks up the bottom of her sari and runs. I watch as she reaches him, bends down and lifts him to a stoop with an arm linked under his. Always smiling he greets her as she half drags half carries him across the road. His small bundle of belongs and walking stick begin to fall away from his body and are left strewn across the road. I leave Muhammad with the bags of food and like Gita, lift up my long trousers in order to be free to run over to collect them. One old wooden stick. One dirty cloth. One empty water plastic water bottle. We return Smiling Harry to his usual shady spot. He is still clutching a soggy banana. Deepta takes it from him and places in the lunch box we have just prepared for him. We leave Harry with his smiling eyes sitting in the dirt but away from the cars, the blind feet and the sweating sun.

Next stop. The three meticulously clean men always in the same place. One without legs. One with brushed hair. One with no shirt and long hair, but still so clean. How I have no idea, when even after half a day my feet are black and my kuta soaked in stale sweat. We never offer to wash their hands. They clearly don't need our soap. Instead they great us, take the boxes of unopened food and then sit down as if the pavement is their dining table. They expertly remove the elastic bands sealing the individually packed daals and prepare their own lunch. We walk away and I turn around to see a small green lime produced from a shirt pocket, followed by a razor blade and then shared between the contents of the three cardboard boxes.

Deepta walks ahead to refill our water bottles and then we face the stream of disembarking passengers. Balancing on the side of the platform, walking towards the end. We look for Ramu. Again always clean and well dressed, but today he is not where he always is. The local cucumber seller will keep his lunch for him. We walk on, step down onto the railway track and pick our way across to the other side. Water continues to seep out of my pores, covering my skin. I lift my right foot up to step back up onto the platform. Back into the shade, and sitting at the very end of the platform, as always, are Raju and Niraj. After Deepta's hair attack of last week they don't look so much like brothers, but I have thought too soon as Deepta whips out the scissors. Niraj lets us wash his hands and then begins to eat his lunch, while Raju just watches the concrete as his long locks haphazardly fall down. He plays with a twig which eventually he uses to build a mountain from discarded hair. The crowds begin to come. They seem to emerge from underground as no train has arrived. The people stand and stare, and they don't care to keep their distance, but encroach upon Raju and Niraj's space. The two men retain their same expression of nonchalance and it gives the impression that they share a unique language that only themselves can understand. Niraj is left with a head full of snips – patches of hair next to patches of scalp. Deepta is pleased. She looks up and then welds her scissors at her audience. She shouts something in Bengali. I imagine it to be something like “So whose next?”. Either way, as always there is no reaction. We leave Niraj his lunch and as we walk away he walks to the edge of the platform to brush off the strands of hair that never made it to his soft mountain. As he faces the railway track Muhammad turns and rushes back. His limp making his run look cumbersome and painful. I motion to Deepta to stop. Someone is trying to steal Niraj's food. Muhammad intercepts the food and it is returned to its rightful 'owner' and we continue.

The two old women, Laura and Sarah, on separate benches. No smiles. No words. Just a silent exchange. And then Ramu. Sitting on his own. Back against a steel pillar. Covered in cuts and bruises. Deepta shouts at him. But she is not really 'shouting' only trying to ask him what has happened. No response. No reaction. Muhammed takes his hands and washes them. We leave another box of food. I wonder what will happen to the one waiting with the cucumber man? It is a pointless question. There are enough hungry stomachs. Everyday one or two people are feed who weren't the day before. I wonder whose lunch we have just given away. It isn't arbitrary but it is practical. If we have a 'extra' packet within seconds we can find a receiver. We come at the same time every day and if the participants aren't there, there is little else we can do. And today it is Pugli who is left without our lunch. She was not on the station stairs, she was not lying on the ledge outside. She was not crouched next to the rubbish.

We finish our circuit by walking back to Smiling Harry. His (angry) wife is back. She is eating his food. He is sitting in the same place where we left him. He looks up at us and points to The Angry Wife. His gestures are once again supported by the bystanders who seem just to be hanging out like is passive guardian angels. We bring out the last packet, empty the contents for him and place the chapatis on top. Deja-vu.

A gust of warm wind sends a stinging layer of dust around my ankles and a brown tattered plastic bag rolls over my feet. I kick it away. Another gust and I look down to see dirt swirling over the chapatis as Smiling Harry hurriedly tries to close the lid to his cardboard packet of food.