The Taj Bengal

I leave Hastings gratefully only to be assaulted by the literally opposite yet equally disturbing world of affluence at the Taj Bengal, the most fancy and expensive hotel in Kolkata. It is certainly not a relieving change of scenery, but one that serve to exaggerate the mindblowingly tragic juxtaposition of wealth and poverty that exists in this city. Sitting below crystal chandeliers, surrounded by balconies with gorgeous flower gardens, dining on the most exquisite and plentiful variety of Indian food, glorying in the luxury of flush toilets with toilet paper, sinks, mirrors, lotion, and body mist, not to mention paper towels, and walking on marble floors that are distinctly clean to an extent I had thought impossible here, I feel a deep guilt for both the existence of this level of excess and personally guilty for my opportunity to take part in it if only for a few hours. As the most well-renowned medical experts of Kolkata give lectures on the cutting-edge advancements in clinical treatment of various thyroid diseases like Grave's, hypothyroidism, and thyroiditis, to a full audience of fancily-dress physicians, I wonder how it is possible to have so many doctors and such advanced health care, but care which is entirely inaccessible to the vast majority of citizens who are too poor to afford it or too alien to the health care system altogether. Whether it is a hormone imbalance requiring RAI or ATD, or a nodule needing an FNAC or USG, toxicosis vs. thyroiditis, subclinical hyperthyroidism or Grave's orbitopathy, I can't help but feel that this information is nearly irrelevant to our street patients when the most pressing issue is likely as simple (or complex) as iodine deficiency and the treatment option merely nutritional supplementation. Nevertheless, as I try to absorb the medical jargon, decode the 3-letter acronyms, and understand the lines of thought of clinical diagnosis, I am reminded of the fascinating breadth of knowledge and intellectual stimulation that is medicine, a field I am totally excited to have the opportunity to learn in a few months when I enter medical school. Then, dining on decadent fish, fried snacks, chutneys, and curries, I wonder why this food will be digested by my body and not by those of the malnourished children who just swarmed me to take their photos, and realize with helpless disgust that the mountains of extra food will probably be discarded as waste rather than rightfully distributed to those who really need it. The contrast of the absolutes of my day are an eye-opening taste of the true injustice that sits innocently unresolved like the bowl of sickeningly sweet syrup that drenches those white spiced balls of sugar that we all devour so enjoyably. The soaked starch is so tempting and fulfilling that it succeeds in distracting us from the bitter and utterly disgusting reality of poverty, of places like Hastings where I have been only hours before. It breeds a feeling of happy indifference, a blissful complacency that becomes a nauseating intoxication, erasing the troubles of the poor with comforting excess and hedonous gluttony, rendering them entirely unimportant and horrifyingly invisible.

Hastings

A place where malnutrition turns a child's hair pale, brittle, and thin.

A place where the overpass is the roof for hundreds of dwellers who hold steadfast to their territory against police raids out of both stubbornness and the pure lack of alternative.

A place where children cut open your bags to steal your cameras and wallet while their sisters distract you by doing the 2-finger twisty handshake.

A place where drunkards complain of cracked skin demanding to be seen by the doctor as if it is an emergency meanwhile breathing stinky alcohol fumes in annoyingly pestering closeness into your face.

A place where no child has had a vaccine, and worms extend babies' bellies to a point that is no longer cute.

A place where school is a luxury, perhaps even such a foreign apparatus as not to be used at all.

A place where new babies are born every day due to lack of family planning, entering a world of injustice, destitution, starvation, and utter chaos.

Bess Crawford Orphanage

A small pot of curry potatoes, some chapati
Was breakfast and lunch for 69 + orphans
Brother Christopher says
Every day he goes door to door
Begging for vegetables and money
To feed the orphan children
The teachers and he eat the food first
While the children have Vitamin A deficiency
Give them papaya
One time he did
How much food do you give them?
Only as much as I can get, all I get, I give to them
I have no money
7 teachers
double as cooks
1 gatekeeper
A doctor volunteering
Shameful record of immunizations
Obvious evidence of malnutrition
Children sleep in a warehouse on the floor
A disaster
A black hole of need
So small amount of food you give?
At least we give them
He says

Raw

My new single word to describe Kolkata is "raw." First are the obvious sensory qualities like the smells seeping uninvited into my nostrils from all directions, those of human urine and shit, food of sweet or spicy deliciousness, sugary milky chai frothing, the stink of vomit on the metro, nauseating fumes of exhaust, pollution, and smoke from charcoal fires and trash burning, and the many unidentifiable odors that are inexplicably stronger here than anywhere I have ever lived. Then there are the sounds; my ears witness babies being spanked, children chasing one another, chickens being murdered, goats being herded, bicycles fighting for space with bells while cars fight back with incessan beeping, meals sizzling, beggars' cups clanking, blind men crying "Allah," the song of the call to prayer, vendors calling "Yes Madam?", "EEEEgggggsss!" or "Pallllaaaaakkk!", and the neighbors' private conversations from the uncomfortably close windows along with the noises of their dishwashing and bathing. The auditory stimuli are overwhelming not only in quantity and intensity, but in their often private and unexpected nature. More obvious is the rawness of the images that confront me daily. Whether it is the open wounds of the beggar on my sidewalk downstairs, the butchers bleeding their livestock on the street corner, a mother oiling her baby, the beauty of the women's saris and pashminas, a child pooping on the sidewalk, the men bathing at the water pump, the shantytowns that cover any available space to create real estate from wasteland, or the folks who resort to sleeping at my doorstep on blankets, every day is a disturbing myriad of visual interest.

 

Kolkata is raw in the dangerous variety of infectious diseases that rampantly prey upon these victims who cannot afford to treat them, or who seek medical assistance but receive such a poor quality of care, the doctors' competence is so lacking, and their bodies are so weak, that they expire anyway.  It is raw in the visibility of all trades working diligently and desperately on street sides as they creatively make a living by identifying demand and serving the public. It is raw in its waste that results from the millions who take part in this literally open-air market society, a place where refuse is discarded thoughtlessly to accumulate for the street-sweepers whose duty it is to rectify the littering problem singlehandedly and for the ragpickers who recycle every scrap possible not necessarily out of conscience for the environment but rather in an acheing need to survive. It is raw in the terrifying exploitiveness of beggarmasters who create a system of paradoxically dishonest and real need that plagues the peope with a disturbed guilt that borders on insanity from the pure helplessness of resolving the problem with their spare change. It is raw in its abject poverty that threatens to desensitize the soul of all compassion for its debilitatingly urgent and ubiquitous confrontations.

 

And Kolkata's people are raw. Encapsulating the extremes of human nature, they are unjustly deceitful and crooked, unprecedentedly generous and hospitable, in a passionate fight for social justice, or desperately struggling to escape this place; thus, composing what I see as a more complete expression of humanity. These people are REAL. Whether it is the amused boys who entertainedly run along side me or shamelessly charge me like bulls, the metro-riders who stare at me and take secretive photographs, the shopkeepers who cheat me, the woman who tried to pickpocket me, the businessmen who call out or invite me into their homes to try to get me to pay them for home-cooked meals, the many friends and strangers trying to find a way to come with me to America, the kids who trick foreigners into treating them to cricket bats, amusement parks and zoos, or the milk seller who lies about the price of milk to foreigners and locals alike, they have a sheerly human quality that is unadorned and strikingly naked. The sins of human greed and malice, and the reality of human suffering are so apparent here, the evil as rampant as the consequential pain.

 

On the opposite extreme is the pure generosity, kindness, and friendship that I experience just as frequently. I can recall the chai stall men who picked me up and washed my wounds after my fall, the stranger who paid for our taxi ride, the shop owners who gave me a free shawl when I said I was cold and insisted I don't pay them for it, the vegetable man who returned my change when I overpaid him accidentally, the art teacher who showed me his studio and work gratuitously and invited me to exhibit with him, and of course my host mom who gives me everything and more. It is these people who teach me what it means to live for one another, and force me to humbly accept my reliance on community and fellowship for my own survival.

 

There is a transparency, an honesty to this place that reveals the true colors of human sin just as it offers an inexplicably inexhaustible fountain of love. It is this absolute contrast between wealth and poverty, delight and hatred, greed and generosity, frustration and reward, good and evil, that I see even in the stark, moody ink-paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, where the juxtaposition of black paint with the white paper create the exaggerated emotional effect that makes the image great, that makes life real, that makes the rawness of Kolkata both devastating and beautiful.