business appointment; to become a couple; to study girls; to be a consumer—and once they’re done, they’re gone. The beggars, too, had their reasons for being here—they didn’t actually belong to Park Street. With the destitute, whom you hardly notice, you invariably make an assumption that they’re integral to the milieu and landscape they inhabit; as they don’t have a home, you presume their home is where they are. This wasn’t true of the beggars in front of Music World—like everything else (cars, shoppers, students, coffee drinkers) that made up the strange energy at that junction, they were ephemeral. Chance had brought me and them together, but, actually, there was no guarantee I’d run into them at this spot tomorrow.
I discovered this while talking to them. One woman in particular stood out: sparse-haired, large, in a colourful rag of a sari she’d wrapped round herself, she sensed why I was here and promised me a story. “Listen to me, dada!” she cried. “Not now!”I said, “tomorrow!” She made a sign of disgust. “I won’t be here tomorrow!” she said, and walked off.
The reason I was distracted was the other woman I’d begun to talk to over the din. She was plain-looking and reticent, and, in her way, I thought, lovely. She had a small boy with her. While the others asked for money, she asked for money to buy medicine— “Dada, oshudh kinbo” : a well-worn ploy. I countered this with “I won’t give you money, I’ll buy you the medicine,” to which, to my surprise, she nodded faintly and said, “All right.” Around this time the other woman warned me, “I won’t be here tomorrow!” and walked away, while I gestured to this young woman—she’d be in her late twenties—and her son to follow me to Free School Street, because there was a pharmacy there; as we waited to cross at the lights, and the other beggars quickly lost interest, I sensed that Park Street is, essentially (even for the destitute), a place of brief acquaintances and meetings—no one has too much time for anyone else, you yourself are part of a web of motivations that are fading and resurrecting—and you must be on the move constantly to be in the street’s ebb and flow of traffic.
We crossed the road—Christmas preparations were already on, and, at the turning of Free School Street, opposite the petrol pump, I saw a man walk past carrying a large cotton wool beard and an immense red suit: bits that would coalesce, at some point, into a figure of Santa.
At Ramayan Shah’s, I asked for the nearest pharmacy, as I had months ago when the boy had been lying on a shelf with clenched fingers, and, once again, someone pointed peremptorily ahead—“Aagey, aagey”—towards the right.
I had thought the woman was Bengali—she fitted perfectly with my childhood notion of the Bengali woman: pretty,intelligent-looking, fairly small, an embodiment of puritan dignity, with the straight hair combed into a bun on either side of her parting—but she was, to my surprise, originally from Bihar, and her name was Baby Misra. She said she was thirty years old; and she’d shown me a prescription on a doctor’s letterhead to vouch for the authenticity of her plea. I was right to think, though, that she wasn’t a beggar—she lived just outside of Calcutta, in Howrah—the graveyard of Bengal’s industry—and there she was a part-time domestic help, washing dishes and cleaning up at two homes in the morning, earning two hundred rupees monthly at one house, three hundred at the other. That left her afternoons free, and she’d embarked for Park Street at 1 p.m.
Marvelling at the journeys that had brought us to the front of Music World and the large glass windows of Flurys, I asked her, crudely, why she wasn’t begging in Howrah. She admitted, without any of the pride that was implicit in her simple appearance, that she didn’t want to be spotted by people she knew. Her journey to Flurys seemed to me, then, both
I discovered this while talking to them. One woman in particular stood out: sparse-haired, large, in a colourful rag of a sari she’d wrapped round herself, she sensed why I was here and promised me a story. “Listen to me, dada!” she cried. “Not now!”I said, “tomorrow!” She made a sign of disgust. “I won’t be here tomorrow!” she said, and walked off.
The reason I was distracted was the other woman I’d begun to talk to over the din. She was plain-looking and reticent, and, in her way, I thought, lovely. She had a small boy with her. While the others asked for money, she asked for money to buy medicine— “Dada, oshudh kinbo” : a well-worn ploy. I countered this with “I won’t give you money, I’ll buy you the medicine,” to which, to my surprise, she nodded faintly and said, “All right.” Around this time the other woman warned me, “I won’t be here tomorrow!” and walked away, while I gestured to this young woman—she’d be in her late twenties—and her son to follow me to Free School Street, because there was a pharmacy there; as we waited to cross at the lights, and the other beggars quickly lost interest, I sensed that Park Street is, essentially (even for the destitute), a place of brief acquaintances and meetings—no one has too much time for anyone else, you yourself are part of a web of motivations that are fading and resurrecting—and you must be on the move constantly to be in the street’s ebb and flow of traffic.
We crossed the road—Christmas preparations were already on, and, at the turning of Free School Street, opposite the petrol pump, I saw a man walk past carrying a large cotton wool beard and an immense red suit: bits that would coalesce, at some point, into a figure of Santa.
At Ramayan Shah’s, I asked for the nearest pharmacy, as I had months ago when the boy had been lying on a shelf with clenched fingers, and, once again, someone pointed peremptorily ahead—“Aagey, aagey”—towards the right.
I had thought the woman was Bengali—she fitted perfectly with my childhood notion of the Bengali woman: pretty,intelligent-looking, fairly small, an embodiment of puritan dignity, with the straight hair combed into a bun on either side of her parting—but she was, to my surprise, originally from Bihar, and her name was Baby Misra. She said she was thirty years old; and she’d shown me a prescription on a doctor’s letterhead to vouch for the authenticity of her plea. I was right to think, though, that she wasn’t a beggar—she lived just outside of Calcutta, in Howrah—the graveyard of Bengal’s industry—and there she was a part-time domestic help, washing dishes and cleaning up at two homes in the morning, earning two hundred rupees monthly at one house, three hundred at the other. That left her afternoons free, and she’d embarked for Park Street at 1 p.m.
Marvelling at the journeys that had brought us to the front of Music World and the large glass windows of Flurys, I asked her, crudely, why she wasn’t begging in Howrah. She admitted, without any of the pride that was implicit in her simple appearance, that she didn’t want to be spotted by people she knew. Her journey to Flurys seemed to me, then, both
Similar Books
![[Fae Scandals 1]Prince of Submission](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/545402/thumbs/152x264/fae-scandals-1prince-of-submission.jpg)
