There are no words to describe Calcutta. One hears stories of breaking down in tears as one comes into the city from the airport, and taking the next flight out. I knew a man who had spent twenty years working with handicapped people in the Veterans Administration—obviously a person with a generous heart. He went on a tour of India and, he said, "We went to Calcutta last, because they said if we went there earlier, it would spoil the rest of the trip." He spent about six days in Calcutta, and he said, "When I got back, I had to see a psychiatrist three times." What is it about the City of Joy that gives it its unenviable reputation? No words will tell you. You have to go there and experience it yourself.
FIRST NIGHT IN CALCUTTA
Kipling's "City of Dreadful Night"
takes you by surprise and
overwhelms you.Our first night in Calcutta found my wife
and baby and I coming back from
Mother Teresa's on
Lower Circular Road,
to our hotel on Sudder Street.Through the narrow, dark and winding
streets, charcoal fires and
thin silhouettes were filling the
night in this eighth largest city
in the world.Our rickshaw puller's muted bell
announced our passing and to
please move aside.As we passed through the smoke of
burning coal and incense,
we stepped back into time and
into another world.
In the lights of passing shops,
we could see tattered clothing on a
frail humanity,
pumping water into an old bucket,
carrying a gunny sack of
dirty papers and rags,
and hammering on a
greasy bicycle frame.My wife was crying tears and sobbing sobs,
"Take me back home!"
"I want to go back home!"
My heart was thinking,
"Is this a ride through hell?"
"Is this a night in Paradise Lost?"
"Is this what happens
when no one cares?"
"Is this the ultimate end of
a lost humanity?"
"And where are the shepherds
to look for the lost sheep?"
CITY OF TEARS
In Calcutta, you walk through human
stench and bone-grinding
degradation and watch a heroic
struggle against all the odds to
survive in a squalor that leaves the mind
gasping for air.You walk through a no-man's land of
lepers begging
with no noses and
with stumps for fingers
(the flesh long since eaten away).
You see humanity with no limbs, partial
limbs, and horribly twisted limbs
vying for alms with mothers
clutching new-born babies to their
shriveled breasts.
You see children scavenging garbage bins
for bits of broken glass or metal
for 14 cents a day.Then, before you can get accustomed to
the depths of someone else's misery,
the survival dance takes a different turn.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see an
enchantingly beautiful nine- or ten-year
old girl picking through a pile of
ashes to find some bits of
charcoal to sell.Her beauty could appear on the cover of
any number of American fashion
magazines were it not for her filth, and
you ask yourself,"What future does she have?"
"How long before she begins to sell herself for
some man’s quick joyride
at 30 or 40 cents a shot?"
And deeper questions jettison into your
conscience,"What is my responsibility here?"
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
"Who is my neighbor?"
KALIGHAT
Working in Kalighat,
Mother Teresa's first home for the
Destitute and Dying,"Do small things with great love,"
a sign on the wall says.Men of skin and bone,
with no strength to move,Men coughing and spitting tuberculosis
sputum into clay bowls
that we would collect
along with bandages and scabs,
refuse of men and women dying,
and take outside to a nearby
dump.At the dump, children and women would go
through this
nightmarish mixture,
scavenging for the cloth bandages,
the clay sputum pots, and
anything else of value.
—David G. Marmon
