Podhi

Podhi attached herself to us as soon as we entered the park.  In the two and a half hours it took to walk around the historic Botanical Gardens on the Howra side of the Hughli river she never once left our side.  The park, now more than three hundred years old is a sprawling collection of exotic plants from around the world and is the legacy of Calcutta's earliest British colonists who sought to gentrify the primitive landscape and lend to it the familiarity and structure of England's finest gardens.  Once elegant, stately, and perfectly maintained it is now a ghost of its former self, gone to seed and ruled by those species best able to survive the oppressive climate of eastern India without the intervention of men and their care.  Similarly, once the exclusive domain of colonial gentry, it is now the workplace of the beggar class working their wiles on the tourists and well to do visitors from the city across the river.  

Podhi was enchanting, a soft spoken waif in a tattered dress.  She had little to say and it was obvious she was truly amazed we allowed her to walk along with us, likely having been shooed away by most people she approached.  Shellie was with me, back from Nepal, and we took the day to sightsee.  I'd gathered my 'crew' of local friends Niyaz and Dinesh to come along and run interference and they treated Podhi with the same disdain they reserved for more aggressive con men and beggars.  But Shellie and I were so taken with Podhi we made it clear we wanted her to hang out and so as the walk progressed we learned a lot about her.

She was from Kalighat on the other side of the river and made the one hour trip over by bus daily.  This was her turf, the area her family had staked out long ago.  Her elder siblings had moved on to other grounds where the prospects were better.  This was a training ground and there was no expectation of results beyond learning the tricks of the trade.  The refund on the two water bottles we gave her would cover the one way bus fare and anything else she managed to gather that day would get her home.  If there was net profit it would go into the household finances to support her parents and siblings.  

But today she took a day off, she asked for nothing and she enjoyed her time with us, just walking through the deteriorating gardens making small talk and holding our hands.  She seemed blissfully happy.  Shellie and I seemed instinctively to fall into a biologically inscribed fantasy of procreated fulfillment.  Rough as it had become this place still had a magical energy about it.  Several miles from the city's core, the absence of crowds and the oppressive noise make these gardens an oasis.  As we walked with Podhi we, like her, shed the burden of our socio-economic differences and along with them the harsh realities we were all too soon to rediscover.

When we came to the river Dinesh and Niyaz arranged a boat to take us back to the Calcutta side.  There was much negotiating and flailing of arms before a deal was reached with the oarsmen.  Four dollars would cover the two hour trip back up-river against the tide.  As we climbed aboard the boat and sat on the open deck Dinesh took the hopeful Podhi by the hand and led her back to the shore.  Shellie and I simultaneously protested but Niyaz calmly explained the folly of taking responsibility for her.  She had a family and a life and while that scenario may not have met our standards it would have been cruel and irresponsible to interfere.  I knew instantly he was right, the notion that we could help her, is the flawed foundation on which the colonial project built its ethical justifications.  Podhi, Shellie and I shared a dream but nothing more.  As the boat pulled away and she stood watching us go I snapped a picture.