Mother City

Today I have not thought about many things except of getting from point a to point b. I am a little numb and Krista is a little sick. Our surroundings are taking their toll on my head and on Krista's immune system.

I have been trying to remember all afternoon a conversation I had with a new aquaintance so that I could record it here this evening- but my brain is foggy. Helmut- I am guessing at the spelling here- is a German grandfather who devotes six months a year to this place. Through the hustle of winter when all the international volunteers arrive and crime and drug trafficking skyrockets- all through the spring and summer when the rain begins, bringing with it the heat and an influx of disease and not a pair of willing hands are in sight. He has done so for 8 years. He has finished his life- left his home-left his retirement to come here and be a grandfather,to the best of his ability, in what even he described as hell on earth.

Helmut explained to Krista and I in unpracticed English that people who make it to Prem Dan don't have a story. They don't have a legacy- they didn't have the advantage of a career or education- they haven't accomplished anything. They have no mother or father- no relative who would take them in- maybe spouses who discarded them or disabled them. They have only the absence of everything we have. This made my face flush hot with shame- because this was one reason I had traveled here. I had believed that maybe at the end of life people have a moment of clarity- words rich with wisdom- life experience worth its weight in gold-stories worth remembering and recounting. Helmut buried that notion in such a matter of fact way- he had been here 8 years trying to accomplish what I had allotted only 6 weeks for and he knows that we will both come up short. He has said only that people here are survivors- they kept breathing when they weren't supposed to, they recovered from fatal injuries, they scavenged like the many crows of Kolkata and they lived. Barely. And those little thread-bare successes had not mattered to anyone. For every old person that dies in these beds-there is a very long queue of children living towards the same end.

Helmut has tried to rescue, tried to rehabilitate, tried to mend, tried to comfort-little by little he has become a friend to some of them but father to none. "They will not be fathered here", he said, "Their mother is Kolkata. Sometimes they will fight like animals to get back to her. They will only live a very little while. They cannot comprehend anything beyond Her."

At lunch today a dirty little 8 year old boy carried a dirty 3 year old boy to the sidewalk restaurant that we frequent. The 3 yr old was naked except for half of a t shirt. Both were without shoes. A young french tourist bought them a meal.The little boys ate it on the ground like little wolf pups. Stuffing handfuls of food into their mouths- nearly choking on it. The baby would not leave a scrap of food on the plate-when his older brother tried to pull him away he writhed and screamed. This was the beginning. If they live, if they survive their mothering they will become the men I met the other night in the dark streets of this place,they will abuse the women I met in Sonagachi and die in the same condition of those in Prem Dan.

I met Khali today, I think. The celebrated goddess of death and destruction is killing nearly 17 million people. All of them. In some way or another. And she is nothing more than an overwhelming and seemingly inescapable lie.

Sorry my thoughts are heavy tonight. Pray for the many hands, like Helmut's, that are working here to do good things. There is a small harvest that to them, I am sure, is a great reward.

Goodnight,

Ev