Today was a proper adventure day, Calcutta bus-hopping for miles around this honking, crazy, populous, glinting city. We saw a huge hospital, teeming with folk and smells, went to a cancer research institute and met a woman running a breast cancer support group, Hitaishini. There were about 12 women in one tiny office, making some massive commotion as they spoke to patients and explained to us what they were doing (counselling, physical care, helping provide medical treatment and food to patients as most are poor and from rural areas).
In the morning our first visit was to Salt Lake City where my mum’s friend Sunipa is running a little school for mentally disabled children where they had 15 minutes of prayers before school began, listening to Bengali Hindu prayer songs, then continued making sparkly banners for their 20th anniversary party on Saturday, with the help of various teachers.
In between all this we jumped on and off various rattling, battered blue and yellow and maroon buses, a few times on the wrong ones, with conductors banging on the sides and hollering out their patter of destinations. There is a goddamn lot of noise.
We swung all over the place in crushed hot wooden seats, and I started recognising roads. It’s a good city. People just get on with stuff here. And we have seen lots of people now, doing amazing good work, with genuine enthusiasm and joy, and not being paid. There’s a thriving comfortable middle-class ranging from globally-conscious, open-minded students who’ve grown up with Indian world views, to well-off doctors like the people we’re staying with, to the retired, who are all passing on resources they have. The principle of sharing the wealth and giving to those who need seems to be well in practice, even if the poverty and education problems are huge. Although Dr Sequoria (who runs the little school, MoniMala, that my grandmother was teaching at in Serampore) and her husband point out there are also a lot of givers who do it for the glory and recognition as well as the ones who do it very quietly and inconspicuously.
We went to the women of Hitaishini (the breast cancer support group) to see if we could get involved but obviously you need Bengali to do counselling here. It would be a thing to do if you were staying here for a while… that feeling of foolishness you get when you don’t know the bhasha (language) is coming over me here, I need to learn Bengali I reckon! I can speak Hindi some, but with a terrible accent and have to keep filling in with English words. Dohhhhhh.
Anyway, many of these groups and organisations are running on whatever donations they get – always looking for more funding.
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