Calcutta: Two Years in the City

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It was probably three years ago that the poet Utpal Kumar Basu reported to me a couple of observations he’d overheard in the nocturnal din of North Calcutta. They both came from the same source, an old woman whom Utpalda calls, with some irony, khurima (“aunt”) and gyana-bhandar (“treasure trove of wisdom”). The woman, herself homeless, would cook for the homeless on a porch near Sealdah Station. The memory is from circa 2003, and Utpalda is pretty certain that the group of people he saw that year must have moved on. Utpalda possesses a context for Khurima’s first observation: a man had once come to the group of destitute and desultory wage-earners looking for someone — say, Nipen — with Nipen’s address (probably a landmark and directions) on a piece of paper. Khurima had responded dismissively: “Thhikana diye ki hobe? Soye kothhai seta bolo.” That is: “What good is an address? Tell me where he rests his head.” Utpalda had found the remark “illuminating” (his word): “Quite true,” he thought. “For the homeless, an address has no meaning. What’s far more important is where they find a place to sleep.”

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