First Week

Verging on the annual monsoon, it was 43 degrees when we arrived in Kolkata on Monday 27th April 2009. We quickly realised that such unforgiving heat was not to be reckoned with. Suddenly gluing a 2ltr bottle of water to your hand becomes essential, all daily beauty rituals subside (when make up melts off yer face as rapid as it takes to apply -why bother!) and are replaced with a rather potent coating of DEET and sun block. At first I found Kolkata to be an outwardly dirty, ugly city. Travel guides had depicted Kolkata as a bedlam of squalor and 'fume-belching' traffic jams and at first glance this seemed rather accurate. You're confronted with a mass of honking horns reverberating across the city, the streets are continually congested with jostling traffic; organised chaos seems to be a term most fitting!! Traffic lights are optional and 'right of way' is determined by oneself - no rules apply!!. You're harangued by beggars, stall merchants, bus conductors; you're barged and knocked; gawked at; you're bombarded with a multitude of smells (some bearable, some fowl). However, as a weeks past I have grown fond of Kolkata. The people are friendly and the city exudes a certain character that I find homely. Dispersed across the city among the dilapidated, dirty buildings you'll find trees ordained with fruit - likened with the romanticised images you'll have envisaged from books and Henri Rousseau tableaus. Strolling through some of the residential side streets will lead you into the depths of the Bengali soul - a hotchpotch of sitar music, incense infused Hindi shrines shrouded in freshly picked flowers and vibrant artwork ordaining door ways and corner stalls.
Our first week as Hope volunteers was spent travelling from many of the centres scattered across Kolkata. This initiation plan is to give each of us an idea of how best we can fit in and determine where our skills would be most beneficial. It has been very informative and at times deeply distressing. Our trip to Howrah's drop in centre on Monday was, I feel, our most harrowing experience. Howrah train station is a focal point for destitute children. There daily objective is to gather the left over newspapers, water bottles from the passengers disembarking from the long haul trains. A common pastime among most of the children involves jumping onto the passing trains and as many of the youths are hooked on solvents their impaired judgements heighten the risk of fatalities. Vishnu the house father of the Crisis Centre for Boys (the rehabilitation clinic set up primarily for the kids from Howrah who have seeked help) showed us the drop in centre, a refuge point available for those children who through choice, wish to continue living in poverty reluctant to succumb to a life of routine and rules. We were ushered into a small cramped hut of no less than 20 children who sat cross legged, anticipating our arrival. At 11 am some sat already intoxicated. However the overall attitude was extremely receptive - they gave us their names, then we gave them ours, they sang, then we sang. It was our most raw encounter yet. Our previous experiences had only entailed happy, healthy children with pristine smiles and neatly made beds – the kids who were living happily ever after. In contrast, we were confronted with the uncomfortable learning that these extremely vulnerable, deprived children did not necessarily want our help -they simply yearned a temporary sanctuary (or distraction)! Once a week I will be joining Bex to work with the children at Howrah. We will be offering a range of arts/drama games that we hope we can build on. I think our most daunting hurdle is to overcome their sheer distrust in people.
I will also be facilitating art work generated by children in the ‘homes’ and coaching centres. My goal is to provide children with a range of interactive art pieces that we can create as a group. I intend to exhibit some of the artwork at the Vocational Centre restaurant in Panditya (I have subsequently been asked to revamp the currently sterile interior and jumped at the chance to use it as an exhibition space) and ultimately, wish to incorporate work as part of our expo at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in December. I’m looking forward to sourcing more art materials. Bex and I, spent the morning wading through Market Square. Our rather persistent, self appointed guide led us through the market humdrum. I practised some bartering and got myself some pigment powder, which I’ve been coveting ever since reading of the light festival. I’m off to buy some fabric tomorrow with one of the girls from the vocational centre – I do hope to find me some bargains!!!