Escaping the City

Roni Chapman

Thursday saw the boys split into 5 groups to head off around Kolkata, guided by the Jungle Crow boys. While the other boys kept in the city, I felt very privileged to leave the city to travel out to a rural farming area, Dhapa, which was a 40 minute trip away via a range of different transport vehicles. This area also consists of landfill sites where the solid wastes of the city of Kolkata are dumped, and when we first arrived I felt pretty disappointed to see the way plastics and waste material have tainted the picturesque rural aesthetic of refreshing greenery in trees and fields. I was disappointed in realising this was a likely combination of rubbish from the city being moved out here and also local villagers tossing their own rubbish away. It seems as though the village is victim to the city life; they receive all their waste, and they start to follow the lifestyles of city dwellers, where littering of inorganic material is habit. This line of thought was personally uncomfortable for me to decipher as the lifestyle of the city I have seen in Kolkata looks to overshadow and take over the peaceful lifestyle beyond the city. I think change needs to happen here before it is too late.

However I must remind myself that I am not from here and so perhaps I shouldn't be one to judge how change comes about in this society. I have only just been introduced to India and I'm only just starting to get to know the people and their values. I want to see the beauty of this area preserved yet there is a complex series of events that this village, and myself, perhaps don't understand and then perhaps have to give into.