I have to admit I felt completely ridiculous this morning as I sat in my room applying eyeliner and mascara and then straightening my hair, while a man outside my window was washing himself in the street below with dirty water. My room overlooks a series of slum houses and it seems that everywhere in Kolkata, life is played out on the streets. Privacy is a foreign concept. People brush their teeth on street corners, go about their day-to-day lives on their allocated section of footpath and mothers cradling babies demand that you buy milk for their child. The mothers will lead you miles down the road to a place that sells milk and once you've bought several bottles for them and leave, they sell it back to the shop owner. They don't approach the locals and beg, only those with white faces. Women in delicate saris sleep in doorways as motorbikes speed by and whole families can be seen stretching out to rest on the pavement.
Brightly coloured washing hangs everywhere. Outside my window, a sea of burnt orange roof tiles blend together to make one mass shelter as each house is tacked on to the neighbouring one.
When we arrived on Monday night and I got my first glimpse of Kolkata, the two words that came to mind which sum up this city of 15 million, is that it is a grand wasteland. The extreme poverty is heartbreaking and I've never seen such a dirty place. Neon lights are interspersed with half-finished construction projects, and signs demand that drivers adhere to the road rules while a continuous wave of tooting and squeezing past one another ensues between vehicles.
It is an organised chaos of sorts I suppose. Tooting here is more a request for someone to move than an impatient or angry Auckland driver. But I did get ripped off by an autorickshaw driver (like a tuk tuk) who charged me 700 rupees ($20) for a ride around the corner and it should have cost 6 rupees. Ah well. I know for next time. And he probably needs that $20 more than me.
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