The last ten minutes of my last afternoon photographing in Kolkata was spent on the side of Park Circus railway track, leaning towards the underbelly of a diesel-spewing, broad gauge train. Nothing prepared me for the swirl of diesel dust, the screeching and clanking of the pistons, and the enormous scale of the bogeys at eye level as they passed through the lives of the railway dwellers.
Walking unannounced into the railway community might not have gone down well, with my lack of Bengali and camera slung suspiciously around my neck. Mintu, from Future Hope, (a brilliant street kids charity in Kolkata) kindly accompanied me to have a brief look into the lives of the railway slum to photograph and talk to a family he knew. I'd been photographing the Future Hope kids at their new school site, mucking about with tadpoles in jamjars and the kids fishing in the pond with bamboo rods. The Park Circus visit was a moment to understand where some of the Future Hope kids had come from, the difficulty of the lives they had left.
As we walked up and over the railway tracks into the lives of the Park Circus railway community, I felt a tension rise in me as I crossed the heavy railway lines. Picking my way over the metal carefully, Mintu watched me and smiled and laughed, telling me crossing the lines was safe. It didn't feel safe. It felt exposed and raw and grimy. I had Mintu as my protector, so I was alright. We both knew the people living there were not always so protected.
"How often do the trains come?" I asked, looking down the tracks. Nervous.
"Not that often". Mintu, twinkling. We walked along the tracks for a little while, then Mintu stopped to chat to a small, pretty women in a brown sari with various children around her. The boys were bald, with shaved heads, and the women had a resigned, tired look about her. Her husband had died three months back, and the shaved heads were a sign of mourning. She had three children, and as I looked into her little shack with its one bed, I could see the youngest boy of eight or nine months asleep on the bed, a shaft of gentle afternoon light crossing his peaceful little body. After a while Mintu asked if I could take some photos, and I turned to take a photo of the smallest family member, but he had been snatched from the arms of Morpheus and was now in the arms of his sister, cross and bewildered at being woken to be a prop in photographs.
Big sister, littlest brother.
The few minutes of quiet, unannounced photography I had hoped for were equally snatched away from me as the kids on the immediate either side of the tracks erupted in front of my camera. For ten minutes I became the photographic pied piper, allowing the kids to be models and give me their two fingers across their faces/Blue Steel looks borrowed from their favourite Bollywood dance tracks. One of the neighbouring kids, a smart, fast talking nine year old with attitude and savvy threw me some moves, and we did a coupe of shots with her posing like Priyanka Chopra. A girl can dream.
Dance moves on the family bed
All the kids do this. Bald head because his dad died recently.
These are not the images I want in my mind's eye, but these are the poses the kids want to make. A moment of escapism for them, five minutes of fame. There was tussling and struggling to get the prime place in front of the lens, a microcosm of life's struggle playing out in front of me. It grew rough, and Mintu had to step in. Boundaries are different on the street, and there was plenty of camera grabbing to see the digital display. I managed to re-focus attention on one shy little brother in the shack, then all the family were on the bed, romping and swinging off various parts of the roof, fighting with each other on the bed in a tangle of limbs and bald heads. The mother stayed outside with Mintu, the discussion grave, her face serious.
Rough housing
Middle brother on the family bed (sleeps 5). Plastic sacking walls. No locks.
The conversation was about taking the mother to the children's court on Monday where she could start the process of legally allowing Future Hope to take one of her brood into its folds. Life with Future Hope, as I had found, is filled with love, opportunity and a lot of hope. She wanted to give one of the boys up, but Future Hope felt that the girl was much more vulnerable. Mintu was not specific but later, over chai in clay cups, the difficulties faced by families of this kind became clearer. In order to fund this little fatherless family's survival the mother had to go rag picking. In her conversations with Mintu, she told him that she took the boys with her to do this, leaving the baby and her eight year old girl at home with the baby. Therefore she couldn't let the girl go to Future Hope as there was no-one to watch the baby when she went out. Mintu told me that he had talked to the other kids in nearby shacks, and that they had told him the girl was often left on her own as the mother took the baby to help her begging. I asked about why the girl was vulnerable, and Mintu's face hardened.
"People come, you know, and they take these girls. Often the mothers come back and the girl has gone. Especially at night".
I hazarded a strong guess. "Sex trafficking?"
Mintu nodded. I looked down the tracks at the various families cooking and washing dishes, a mother and big sister bathing a howling small boy between them, little body shiny and wet. I hope the mother will take a difficult decision and find a way to give her daughter a chance with Future Hope. A train comes, hooting long, almost soft toots, running slowly, giving the families time to scatter to one side or the other. I stand behind Mintu, trying not to show terror at the scale and proximity of this huge metal beast. Others clearly are so accustomed to their presence it's neither here nor there.
Take this picture, Aunty! Still with kite string being mended in one hand.
It took me a little while. Camera, of course.
We walked further down the tracks. Mintu knows this community, knows who the vulnerable families are. The process of helping these families, providing outreach, is something he feels deeply and strongly. Once a street kid himself, he understands the way these things work, and how Future Hope is such an opportunity for survival. He talks gently and kindly to these families, from a position of experience. I spot a well-fed dog being given a plate of rice and veg, his lady owner making sure he enjoyed his supper. The irony is not lost on both Mintu and I that the dog looks better fed than many of the kids. The dog looks up, and has a big old bark at me, worried I'm disturbing his supper, or perhaps threatening his family. I smell different to him. I stand behind Mintu (again) in case he decides he needs to protect his pack. It occurs to me that feeding this old battle-scarred hound is an investment in security for these ladies. If I lived in a shack with plastic walls and had daughters vulnerable to drugged or drunken men coming along the tracks at night looking for sex, I'd feed a big dog to protect me.
Distracted from borrowing sugar from a neighbour, two girls pose on the tracks for me.
I notice that some of the shacks are trying to grow plants out of a soil-filled dunny, training the green tendrils of a vegetable plant onto the roof of their homes. Here and there are plants in pots, a painted wall. A stab at a normal life despite living illegally on the side of the railway tracks. Some (not all) of the kids are spotlessly clean. A couple of ladies are combing and oiling each other's hair, squatting on the tracks by their homes, a normal activity reinforcing affectionate family ties.
Potted plants, a horseshoe & Krishna.
Family ties.
We stop to chat to a very young mother and her baby, engaging in toothy activity in a plastic veggie box parked on the stone chip track between the railway lines. The aunty and mother are sitting on the railway track instead of a verandah, playing with her in the safety of her tiny improvised baby den. She looks at the white lady with the camera and starts to cry uncertainly. The tracks are her playground.
Life on the tracks.
Small fellow and his grandpa.
Another train comes, faster this time, and I am on the other side of the tracks to Mintu.
"Get down, get down" he shouts urgently, and as the train driver leans harshly on his air horn, I slither into a nullah by the side of a couple of shacks, dirt and rocks giving way underneath me. The train thunders by, snorting, farting, screeching. I find myself leaning in towards it, trying with my slow lens and irritating camera-lag to capture the kids on the other side of the train through the gaps in the steel wheels and pistons. The baby sitting in the plastic box with her aunty and mother has been tucked into their shack. The train thunders by.
Life barely disrupted by the broad gauge train thundering by.
Life resumes once it has passed, people barely noticing the disruption. I feel traumatised by its proximity, then as we continue along the tracks, realise I am adjusting to stepping on and over the railway lines. I laugh inwardly at myself for finding ways to cope so fast, noting the speed with which railway life has normalised after my initial fear. We humans are a flexible, adjustable species. Equally we are total bastards, shockingly open to finding opportunities to make money out of vulnerable children by trading little girls for sex. There's no way to sugarcoat what this eight year old girl faces if she doesn't get into the arms of Future Hope. If she is stolen (or sold) she faces a life of continual rape and bondage, physical and mental violence. Her mother is economically and socially powerless to do anything about it, and she will become just another number in the faceless, whispered sex trade that feeds on young vulnerable children.
An unregistered, unknown life.
I do not get the chance to wash my hair before I leave Kolkata, busy with a lovely dinner and then packing. The water for the pump to the bathroom has not been activated, and there is no water for a shower the morning I fly back to the UK. I dress, thinking about the lack of bathrooms in Park Circus slum. Once home, I have a long bath and wash my hair. When the water drains out, I notice large black particles in the bathtub that I have to encourage towards the plughole. I can't think what they are for a minute. Then it occurs to me. These are chunks of dirt and dust thrown up by the train. A physical reminder of life on Kolkata's railway tracks. I see the look in the little girl's eyes when she curls up for a photo on her family bed, leaning against the plastic sheeting for a wall. It is a faraway look. A knowing look. I know that I represent an impossible dream of a life as I wander along the tracks looking into their lives. I can leave, go home to masonry, hot water, safety.
Future hope.
They are home, and it is a difficult reality.
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All images in this blog are for sale with 100% of profits going to Future Hope. You can reach me at aliwarnerphotography@gmail.com for thumbnails and costs. I'd love you to follow me and share my blog with your friends.
You can also make a difference by donating directly via the link below.
https://www.futurehope.net/get-involved/donate/
For those of you interested in the camerawork, images in this blog were taken with an Olympus EP1 and a 17mm lens. All images are the sole copyright of Ali Warner Photography 2019.
Places still available on the Nov 2019 Shimmering Sands Photography Tour, email Ali on info@aliwarnerphotography.com