Life And Lines

A pungent smell, tracks filled with trash and the busy locals is what greeted me on the first day when I visited this slum. This slum has grown over the years on both the sides of active railway tracks in South Kolkata, India. All the make and shift shacks of the slum are too small and shabby to provide a healthy living to their residents. As I walked along the tracks, I observed that due to this, the locals have to venture out on the busy tracks to do most of their daily chores like cooking, bathing and other things.

Casualty while on tracks in such a living is not an uncommon thing for this slum, but most of them seemed to have got used to this. "What's the value of our life? Government doesn't arrange for better homes, we don't have money - if today I get run over by a train - people will mourn till my funeral.", said the old lady when asked if she wasn't afraid to have a sunbath sitting dangerously close to a track frequented by trains almost every 10 minutes. In the past years, several rehabilitation processes was started by the local government, but better homes could not be arranged properly till date. Presently, political hooliganism and negligence has subjected a large part of the slum’s youth to find peace through several ways of intoxications thus making the place a dangerous one, especially in the nights. It’s only during the festivals people from other parts of the city are able to loiter around that area in the nights.

The locals, however, don’t let their pain to take over their lives’ and try to reap happiness from the smallest of the things. From playing football games on the tracks every evening to celebrating festivals, their life is incomplete without these lines.