I would like to dedicate this post to the dark side... I mean, to all the bad things we have been seing lately, because as you know India is not only a country made of beauties and wonders (unfortunately not).
Already in Mumbai we experienced a lot of poverty, but nothing was to compare with Kolkata. Well, we actually didn't go to the slums (for obvious reasons, even thought some tourists love doing it and the city even has established a kind of a "slum tour", believe it or not). But in Kolkata we didn't need to go to a slum in order to experience some horrible things...
First of all there was this walk between Sudder Street (Kolkata's main backpacker address) and the tramway... this was on Tuesday, our last day in that city we started getting used with, and since people said it was not far we decided to do the walk instead of taking a cap that always try to make profit on us... we had our backpacks and stuff and wandet to go to Sealdah station in order to bring our stuff to the so-called "cloackroom"... it rained a lot for a half an hour, but at this moment (around 11 am) the rain had ceased...
Well, how can I say this? The apperently short walk was the hardest half an hour of my life. I've seen things I imagined only in my nightmares... all different kinds of misery, attempts agains human dignity, all different diseases, hunger, the smell of death... some of the diseases I hearded from, or even saw pictures (since my PhD on Monsters leads me to read some medicine treatises from time to time), but never thought I would see in real... people surviving don't know how, worse than animals, naked squalid children standing in the middle of a huge mountain of garbage, dead rats as big as cats, people taking a pile of fish's heads from the floor (the rests no one would actually pay any money for), despair, fear, death...
Kolkata is a city with a lot of contrasts. On the one hand you have such wonderful buildings just as the Victoria Memorial (only comparable with the most beautiful constructions of Europe's 18th and 19th century), or all those art nouveau cafes in Park Street that make you feel you are in Paris or Vienna... On the other, you have people literally dying on the streets, forgotten by all the possibly different Gods in this no one's land...
And then it's so difficult to find out a way to help those people. The beggars are so insistent here that one woman (mentally ill) followed us in the Kali Temple (another horrible experience) for near half an hour, screaming things we could not understand, some times even running after us... sometimes there are the little children who recognize you as a tourist by distance and come running, arms wide open, then they hug you, kiss you, climb on you and then point at their empty wallets... how to deal with all this?
But then Kolkata is also the city of solidarity. We found so many nice people that helped us with no interest but to help. And our stay in Kolkata only was so special because we made friends: Susheel, the musician/filmmaker I already talked about; Pam, a chinese girl volunteering at Mother Theresa's house; and Sandeep, the Bengali employee of a poor hotel around Sudder Street that walked with us around those dark streets, guided us in this unknown world, stayed with us until the end (even coming with us to the station in order to say goodbye, in a very, extremely emotive, farewell moment). As well as so many truly nice people we met on the streets, who helped us, talked to us, showed us the way, without asking for anything but friendship.
Who knows when we are going to see those people again? But we already miss them...
Maybe I will tell you just another experience before I can change the topic: when we were going to Mother Theresa's house, we got a bit lost and a sweet 8 year old girl, well-dressed and speaking fluently English, came to help us... she guided us to Mother Theresa's, and when we wanted to open our bag to give her some candies (we bought candies for the kids), she refused vehemently... after a couple of hours of quiet and reflexion in this very holly place, we went out to meet the same little girl again, together with her mother, asking us to buy milk for her little (imaginary?) brother. The situation was really stranged and we felt really sad, and after they followed us and insisted so much, I decided to buy the milk in order to be able to escape from them yelling after us... but the girl wanted milk powder, and not from any market, but from an specific one. Of course I didn't buy it - it would have cost me more than 300 rupees -, but I got her a cup of cow milk for 8 rupees in another shop. Of course she got really pissed. Later some people told me that they make arrangements with some shop owners, make tourists buy them specially expensive products, them they give them back afterwards and share the money... this feeling you can't trust anyone is really tiring and really makes one sick... :(
Already in Mumbai we experienced a lot of poverty, but nothing was to compare with Kolkata. Well, we actually didn't go to the slums (for obvious reasons, even thought some tourists love doing it and the city even has established a kind of a "slum tour", believe it or not). But in Kolkata we didn't need to go to a slum in order to experience some horrible things...
First of all there was this walk between Sudder Street (Kolkata's main backpacker address) and the tramway... this was on Tuesday, our last day in that city we started getting used with, and since people said it was not far we decided to do the walk instead of taking a cap that always try to make profit on us... we had our backpacks and stuff and wandet to go to Sealdah station in order to bring our stuff to the so-called "cloackroom"... it rained a lot for a half an hour, but at this moment (around 11 am) the rain had ceased...
Well, how can I say this? The apperently short walk was the hardest half an hour of my life. I've seen things I imagined only in my nightmares... all different kinds of misery, attempts agains human dignity, all different diseases, hunger, the smell of death... some of the diseases I hearded from, or even saw pictures (since my PhD on Monsters leads me to read some medicine treatises from time to time), but never thought I would see in real... people surviving don't know how, worse than animals, naked squalid children standing in the middle of a huge mountain of garbage, dead rats as big as cats, people taking a pile of fish's heads from the floor (the rests no one would actually pay any money for), despair, fear, death...
Kolkata is a city with a lot of contrasts. On the one hand you have such wonderful buildings just as the Victoria Memorial (only comparable with the most beautiful constructions of Europe's 18th and 19th century), or all those art nouveau cafes in Park Street that make you feel you are in Paris or Vienna... On the other, you have people literally dying on the streets, forgotten by all the possibly different Gods in this no one's land...
And then it's so difficult to find out a way to help those people. The beggars are so insistent here that one woman (mentally ill) followed us in the Kali Temple (another horrible experience) for near half an hour, screaming things we could not understand, some times even running after us... sometimes there are the little children who recognize you as a tourist by distance and come running, arms wide open, then they hug you, kiss you, climb on you and then point at their empty wallets... how to deal with all this?
But then Kolkata is also the city of solidarity. We found so many nice people that helped us with no interest but to help. And our stay in Kolkata only was so special because we made friends: Susheel, the musician/filmmaker I already talked about; Pam, a chinese girl volunteering at Mother Theresa's house; and Sandeep, the Bengali employee of a poor hotel around Sudder Street that walked with us around those dark streets, guided us in this unknown world, stayed with us until the end (even coming with us to the station in order to say goodbye, in a very, extremely emotive, farewell moment). As well as so many truly nice people we met on the streets, who helped us, talked to us, showed us the way, without asking for anything but friendship.
Who knows when we are going to see those people again? But we already miss them...
Maybe I will tell you just another experience before I can change the topic: when we were going to Mother Theresa's house, we got a bit lost and a sweet 8 year old girl, well-dressed and speaking fluently English, came to help us... she guided us to Mother Theresa's, and when we wanted to open our bag to give her some candies (we bought candies for the kids), she refused vehemently... after a couple of hours of quiet and reflexion in this very holly place, we went out to meet the same little girl again, together with her mother, asking us to buy milk for her little (imaginary?) brother. The situation was really stranged and we felt really sad, and after they followed us and insisted so much, I decided to buy the milk in order to be able to escape from them yelling after us... but the girl wanted milk powder, and not from any market, but from an specific one. Of course I didn't buy it - it would have cost me more than 300 rupees -, but I got her a cup of cow milk for 8 rupees in another shop. Of course she got really pissed. Later some people told me that they make arrangements with some shop owners, make tourists buy them specially expensive products, them they give them back afterwards and share the money... this feeling you can't trust anyone is really tiring and really makes one sick... :(
Alors là.... Je pense que c'est la description la plus criante de vérité qui puisse être écrite au sujet des maux de l'Inde.
RépondreSupprimerC'est terrible de voir des choses pareilles... ça fait néanmoins partie du voyage culturel disons, aussi malheureux que ça soit à dire!
Soyez forts, pensez positivement à toutes les belles choses qui restent à voir et toutes les personnes formidables que vous allez sans doute rencontrer ;)
Merci, cher ami! =) bisous!!!
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