Final Countdown

One of the benefits of working within an organization is that they sometime propose experiences that you would never have access to alone.

Like the weekly bathing of street children in a center on the outskirts of Kolkata.

It all began with a bus ride through the streets, slums and every changing scenery of this place; past crowds of men performing their morning ablutions in the murky brown water of a public water pump, children squatting naked in the streets as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes with grimy fists, and cows grazing on piles of refuse, until our arrival at the center for the dying and the destitute.

Only every Sunday, that place is transformed from a place of death to one of life.

A hundred street kids dressed in rags stood waiting for us at the entrance gates, dressed in rags, holding hands and smiling.

'Auntie auntie!'
They descended on us with screams and shouts. The ritual of hope had begun.

Myself and five other women (can I call myself a woman at this point?) spent an hour and a half
pouring buckets of almost fresh water over these bundles of joy and tragedy. Scrubbing a week's accumulated grim from their skin and bones, laughing and exchanging a moment of love with these girls, I experienced a mix of euphoria and total devastation.

Cleaning a starving child. But a happy starving child. How is that supposed to make you feel?



Of course, as with so many of the adventures I've had in this city of joy, it was not the planned experience that will remain with me. Instead, a moment in that day will be anchored in my mind forever.

As I scrubbed my fiftieth body of the day, a girl around five years old came up to me, holding the hand of her little sister/daughter/friend. Relationships on the streets are complex. You become an adult by the age of 4, responsible for the fate of those younger than you.

"Auntie, mal." she said, her mouth set in a grim line, as she pointed to her younger charge's foot.

I looked down to see a foot covered in yellow, pussing cuts. Closer inspection revealed scars from similar injuries all over this little one's legs.

I don't know what those scars were from. At that point, it didn't matter.

Taking the scared little girl's hand, I gently removed her clothes and washed her frail body as she stood with her head bowed and eyes shut tightly.

After her shower, I helped her back into the dirty rags she wears each day (for laundry service is unfortunately not included in this program), and at last she looked up into my eyes.

Big brown saucers stared up at me, as this little Indian princess lifted her arms in the universally recognized plea to be held.

I picked her up. She must have wieghed about 10 pounds. I walked with her to the mobile dispensary, where a man was having his thumb sown back on with no ansethetic.

Trying to sheild the little bundle in my arms from a sight that was traumtizing even to me, I quietly sang into her ear

"The sun will come out, tomorrow"....

Her eyes never left the impromptu surgery being performed before us. Eyes that have seen far too much of the world in far too few years. Eyes that take in everything before them, eyes that have witnessed poverty and abuse and blood and tragedy since they were first opened. Eyes that are more open than mine ever could be.

Holding that little girl for ten minutes as we waited for her turn to get her wounds cleaned and wrapped up, I fought back the tears.

But tears don't have a place here. Tears don't make sense in this world - they're simply a manifestation of my own guilt. Tears don't belong in this 10 lb bundle's life. Tears don't help.

What helps is that at noon that Sunday, this little girl whose name I will never know sat down to a hot meal, along with 99 other children from the sidewalks of Kolkata. Clean skin shining in the mid-day sun, a crisp white bandage wrapped around her foot, she scooped handfuls of dal and rice from a tin plate into her mouth.

And an hour later, she joined the troop of hardened street children as they walked out the gates and back to their homes, a banana tucked into their pockets, hand in hand with their sisters and brothers, smiling from ear to ear.




That was my last day in Kolkata. My last chance to explore and experience, to be challenged and hyperstimulated and confused. That was one of my final memories of a world that I have slowly fallen in love with.

And as I head to the airport, to the skies, to the comforts of European cuisine, clean sheets, a bath and family, I don't know how to say goodbye to that world.

So I guess I"ll have to come back....