The Stories of Kolkata

Michael

Sometimes the movies get it right. The grotesque, hyperbolic caricature that is the confounding chaos of India is exactly like the most comically exaggerated and outlandish stereotype you can imagine. Bundling into a rickety colonial relic of a taxi cab with a driver who speaks no English and a boot looking like it will burst open at any second, leaving our bags flying down the street; hurtling through intersections governed by no laws except the arbitrary volition of frenzied drivers; being surrounded by a coruscating kaleidoscope of colour and flashing billboards is all just as overwhelming and overbearing as it sounds.

No one has ever heard of an indicator light, the painted lines on the road are just as meaningless as a seatbelt and a cacophony of car horns fills the air. Tangled masses of power-lines and a jumbled crush of cars at an intersection epitomise the frenzied, unstructured chaos of this city.

However, there is plenty that the movies and imagination can't tell you. Once you observe more closely and see first-hand the unique individual events that make up the chaotic, indecipherable whole, the city is transformed completely. During the taxi ride we passed through an innumerable number of distinct environments and ecosystems populated by millions of people with millions of unique stories. A man squatting by an open fire cooking dinner, a mother cradling her baby on a balcony, a crazy rickshaw driver darting through an alley, a man washing his hands in sewer water – all have a story to tell, and some of the most fulfilling moments come when you ask them to share. Visiting the Jungle Crows is the perfect example, chatting to teenage boys and learning about their aspirations and their journeys gives you a new appreciation for the billions of others with whom you share the world, yet of whom, until now, you have thought of so little.

It is both confronting and awe-inspiring to observe a city that has developed on such a completely different trajectory from the western world, a city so completely different from anything I have ever seen.