East of Croydon

by Sue Perkins

  So, back to Vicky:

  VICKY: How are you feeling?

  I made the translation in my head.

  VICKY: Do you want to tell us on camera how you are feeling?

  ME: Vic. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not in the mood.

  I growled at her. Deep down, however, I knew that the wound on my hand was going to need bandaging, and that the sudden appearance of that bandage on screen was going to require an explanation. She was right.

  ME: OK, fine. Let’s just get it done.

  I was properly grumpy.

  Matt swung round, ever-ready.

  MATT: Good to go. Speed.

  I started talking. Actually, not talking – raging. I barely paused for breath as I described how I felt.

  There was a pause. Yep, I thought. Nailed it. That was some righteous chat, right there.

  VICKY: Great.

  Oh, shit. Let’s remember the translation:

  DIRECTOR: Great.

  Translation: I need you to do that again.

  I began once more, describing the accident, how I felt – the smell, the chaos, the grinding poverty. I came to a stop after several minutes. Well, that’s sorted that.

  VICKY: Great.

  Oh, God. Not again.

  VICKY: Just one more thing. Could we make it a little less edgy?

  ME: (howling) What?

  VICKY: We need it more mainstream – you know, a bit more BBC1 …

  ‘HOW DO YOU MAKE FALLING IN HUMAN SHIT MORE BBC1?’ I raged. How can a headlong tumble into steaming ordure be made more fucking mainstream? What alternative phraseology for ‘I am covered in cack and bleeding like a stuck pig’ would be more acceptable to the primary channel of our nation’s public broadcaster?

  I took a deep breath, channelled the ancient gods of Dimbleby, and yes, I made it all a little more BBC1.

  Then I went home, poured iodine on every pore of my body, bandaged my arm, slept for three hours and got up again, determined to give Varanasi another crack of the whip.

  The next morning, I had the wonderful Navneet as my guide around this labyrinthine city. He wove effortlessly through its snaking tunnels, his white kurta flapping as he led me through the endless clay-coloured streets. I followed him, the tacky soles of my flip-flops sticking to the baking cobbles.

  The narrow passageways are full of dead-eyed men, begging for food. Grandmas hold parasols in one hand and a limp, dying cobra in the other. They grab it by the throat and hold it up. Picture? You want picture?

  No, no picture. No picture. Just let it go. Please, just let it go.

  Cows wander in and out of shops; bikes and motorbikes weave through the shit. There is never-ending noise and bustle. Young dogs give birth in the gutter, whilst the older ones look on, scarred, battle worn – eyeless, limbless. Everything suffers here – nothing, no one is exempt.

  A dentist sits in the gutter. His eleven o’clock appointment has arrived. His patient crouches in the road and opens her mouth wide. He fills a gum shield with what looks like pink expandable foam and pushes it onto her upper jaw. Moments later, he removes it, places it on the pavement and waits for the impression to dry. He picks up a rusty tool and starts work fashioning some dentures.

  A young woman comes towards me, holding a new-born babe in her arms. He is fast asleep. She looks at me and chants, ‘Milk, milk, MILK.’ She raises her thumb to her mouth to indicate drinking from a bottle. ‘Milk, milk, MILK.’ The thin little baby doesn’t stir. I can’t watch it any more. I put my hand into my pocket and move towards them.

  ‘Don’t,’ says Navneet. ‘Don’t.’

  I learn later that this woman works as part of a gang in a coordinated scam. The women scout the slums for new mothers, then rent their babies from them for a few rupees a day. Let that sink in. They rent babies. They rent babies. They then bring the babies to the city, drug them so they don’t cry and interrupt business, and start working the streets, begging. But these women don’t ask for money – they are way too smart for that. They ask for milk. This way they look like credible mothers to us naive tourists.

  If you fall for it, they will refuse to take your money. That’s the second way they gain your trust. In an effort to prove how honest they are in their request, they will walk you to a shop that sells milk. You buy the milk and give it to the ‘mother’. She is grateful, so grateful. You walk away feeling swollen with a sense of a good deed done in a shitty world.

  As soon as you are out of sight, the ‘mother’ walks back into the shop, returns the formula to the shelf and gets the money, minus the shopkeeper’s cut. They’re all in it together.

  ‘Don’t,’ says Navneet.

  I can’t breathe. That child. That child locked in an opiate daze. Prey – from the very get-go, from the moment it draws breath. A prop. A money-earner. A mewling cash prize.

  I can’t breathe.

  Don’t.

  I feel I am in the very Heart of Darkness. What was it Conrad said? ‘He hated all this, and somehow he couldn’t get away.’ I am here for two weeks. Day and night. The horror – the horror.

  I am trying to drink it in. I am trying to be a journalist and be objective, almost dispassionate about my surroundings, while proffering a personal opinion when and where relevant.

  But the truth is, I am descending into madness. The heat and the stink are burning out my nostrils. My ears ring constantly from the incessant shouting. I feel jumbled, disoriented, but most of all – vulnerable.

  Perhaps the most famous destination for visitors to Varanasi is the Manikarnika ghat: the cremation site where Indians from all over the country bring their loved ones to be burnt by the waters of Ma Ganga, thereby achieving moksha, or freedom from the material world. The fires burn twenty-four hours a day, every single day of the year; some fifty to sixty million trees a year are felled to keep these pyres alight. Everything here takes place in a heat haze, faces and limbs distorted by the raging flames that encircle you. This place is Bosch, directed by David Lynch with art direction by Syd Mead.

  The sandalwood used at the cremation ghat is expensive, and not everyone can afford it. Some bodies don’t make it as far as the official burning site, some are just doused in paraffin further downstream and tipped in, partially burnt. As we floated past we saw a dog carrying a human arm. After that I stopped looking at the banks.

  In town, through the narrow, cobbled lanes, bodies wrapped in gold, orange and pink satin, decked with flowers, are transported on bamboo biers. Bells are rung. There are drums. The mourners follow.

  Most tourists charter boats and float past the Manikarnika, but we got close to the cremation area itself. The heat was unlike anything I’d ever experienced and I could barely breathe in the smoke. I could hear the anguished sobs of mourners processing round the bodies. Ash rained down from the sky in an unrelenting grey. Mad dogs, not content with the heat of the midday sun, decided to get a little more cosy by lying right next to the flaming pyres, on a bed of smouldering ash and bone.

  ME: Why are the dogs so close to the bodies?

  GUIDE: You see, you will see.

  I turned to Olly, who has been round the globe at least twice.

  ME: Is this the worst place in the world?

  OLLY: No.

  ME: OK.

  OLLY: It’s the second worst. Kigali narrowly trumps it.

  I start talking to camera again. Behind me, a mourner smashes the skull of his dead auntie, with a thick stick, to free her spirit. As visceral as this place is, at least the relatives get to engage with their grief. In the West, we put our loved ones in a box, then wonder why we can never move on with our grief. Here they watch the flesh decay, and witness the spirit released. The mourners arrive weeping; they leave believing their relative has achieved eternal freedom. As I talk, ash whirls around my face, and grit lands on my lips. Human grit. Human grit in my mouth and in my eyes.

  I am mid-sentence when a black ball is thrown from the pyre towards me. It lands at my feet. A dog launches
itself on it, biting into it and releasing an odour unlike anything I have ever encountered. If pressed, I would describe it as a cross between molten Époisses, cat piss and vomit.

  I gagged. Olly gagged, the boom swaying in his hands.

  OLLY: Oh, God, I’d heard about this.

  ME: Jesus. What is it? What is that smell?

  OLLY: Oh, God, it’s awful. It’s … it’s …

  It’s the central nervous system of a human being. It doesn’t fully disintegrate in the heat. Instead it retracts, like a network of reeking rubber bands, into a tight ball. And guess what? Dogs, the filthy fuckers, love it.

  OLLY: I take it back.

  ME: What?

  OLLY: This is the worst place on earth.

  We manage to finish up, and I walk past the smoking corpses to the water’s edge. To my right, a man is cleaning his teeth with a twig and some Colgate, before scooping a handful of river-water into his mouth to swill it all out. I thought about the pollution levels in the river, clinically dead and full of raw sewage. Cleaning your teeth in it seems the oral equivalent of having a bath, then rolling in fox shit.

  There was something I wanted to do before I left. I shut my eyes. There was the crackle and pop of flesh behind me. I tried to tune into the ebb and flow of the river. I cleared my head of any thoughts, bar one.

  I thought of the kind urologist, and I thought of his dad. I wasn’t sure whether he was dead or alive. But I asked the river, and the sky and the birds and whatever else in the universe was listening to me in that moment to grant him peace and moksha by proxy. I didn’t even know if it was possible for a non-believer to ask for such a thing. But I asked for it anyway, and I truly meant it.

  As we headed off, away from the smoke and the stink, I noticed a large gap in one of the bridges crossing the river. I’m not sure whether it was mid-construction, or whether the central part had worn away over time. That’s the thing about India: the weathering and degradation caused by heat and humidity means it’s impossible to tell whether something is just beginning or slowly coming to its end. I stared at this gap, this space between two certainties, this passage of light and air between the strutting steel.

  And I thought, That’s it. That’s Varanasi. This is not a city simply based on what is concrete and present. This is a city based on belief. It is part construct, a portal to another world that cannot be captured in an iPhoto or a travel book. To truly inhabit Varanasi requires faith, the leap into the void that lends this place its extra dimension.

  For those of us without that faith – it jars. It is chaotic, infuriating and oppressive. For me, it was hell. But to those who believe, who can see beyond the temporal, rest assured, it is nothing short of paradise.

  THE FINAL PUSH

  * * *

  45. Return to Rakhi

  Vicky had been teasing me for months, little hints here and there, that there might be a surprise in store for me on my return to Kolkata. Once in the city, with the pressures of filming upon us, it became impossible for her to keep the secret any longer. The team had arranged for me to catch up with Geeta at the Hope Foundation, and with little Rakhi, the pesky, brilliant street kid I’d fallen in love with some three years earlier.

  ME: How is she? Tell me! Tell me!

  VICKY: (beaming) You’ll have to wait and see …

  That sounded good. Everything sounded good. I was trilling with excitement. What was she doing? Was she off the streets? In school, perhaps? Would she remember that night when we played in the streets all that time ago?

  We parked up in a familiar street. Olly went on ahead to mike up Rakhi. I stayed behind, waiting excitedly. I could just make out the silhouette of Geeta further up the road and started grinning from ear to ear. It took all my energy not to run up the road to them and smother them all in a giant hug.

  Twenty minutes later Olly returned.

  ME: How is she? Is she well? Does she look good? What news?

  OLLY: Yeah. Yeah …

  His voice trailed away.

  ME: What?

  OLLY: Yeah, she’s … she’s different.

  A warning bell sounds – faint but audible.

  It was time to go. ‘Speed,’ said Matt, walking backwards, taking yet another personal leap of faith as his trainers skirted a turd.

  I wandered towards the group. Two girls were standing, one side on, the other looking away. Both were in regulation navy school uniform. I felt a strange anxiety as I approached. Geeta waved. The girl standing side on waved. The girl with her back to me didn’t turn around.

  That girl was Rakhi.

  Geeta and I hugged. Rakhi looked down at the ground.

  I wanted to grab her and hold her close, but my hands fell limp at my side, superfluous.

  ME: Hey, Rakhi.

  She turned to face me. It was then I knew. Her eyes, which had held the sparkle of polished glass, were now dull and unfocused. It was like she was looking through us, all of us, in an effort to see something or somewhere else.

  The other little girl was Rekha, Rakhi’s sister who I hadn’t had the chance to meet on my last trip. She was happy and full of chat, which made the difference between them all the more painful.

  We headed into a café and ordered tea. Rakhi seemed disturbed by the hiss of the water boiling. When we sat down, I noticed that she would constantly look around her. Every sound, every sudden movement, would prompt a glance backwards or a frightened shift in her seat.

  I know what this is. I know it all too well. This is a stress response. This is the behaviour of someone who has been bent out of shape by fear. I wander outside and grab a moment with Geeta. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Rakhi is a very different girl from the one I met three years ago.

  GEETA: There are some boys, calling for her at night. And that scared her. She now understands that she has to protect her body. And that reality is hitting her hard. So that is reflected in her face.

  I feel like a fool. I know Rakhi for moments. I see her in snapshots, framed by sentiment, without context. Without the grinding reality that is bringing her down. What a fool I am to think she would be untouched. You cannot live on the street and not be eaten alive by it.

  I can feel a pressure building in my head. I want to burst. Now is not the time. Rakhi is rocking from side to side, one foot to another. Her head swivelling round and round. She taps her chin rhythmically with her index finger. This is a symptom of PTSD.

  ME: Does your sister take good care of you?

  A beat.

  ME: Do you think anybody can take care of you?

  Nothing. Just rocking.

  And then, finally, she speaks. Geeta translates:

  RAKHI: I just want a good sleep in a safe place at night.

  Think of the simplicity of that request as it falls on Western ears – a good sleep in a safe place. It is a request verging on the banal where we come from. Here, on the streets, it is a virtual impossibility. It is nothing but a vague dream, held in the out-of-reach place.

  But that’s OK, I thought. I can fix that. I can sort her somewhere. I have money. I will give her family money. It seems like an easy solution, and to suggest it exposes my ignorance – because easy doesn’t exist in her world. The truth is that both girls could have a place in a boarding school, but Rakhi is too scared to go.

  REKHA: She’s frightened of a ghost because a man died by the school.

  Only Rakhi can overcome this fear. Money can’t do it. My insistence that there are no ghosts can’t do it.

  There’s another reason she doesn’t want to go away to school – she doesn’t want to leave her dad. Her dad is a kind, sweet man who has brought up his children alone. He earns pennies selling buckets on the streets. It’s an impossible decision for the girls. Do they go to school, pursue their dream of becoming doctors, or be around their only surviving parent and help him, like he has tried to help them?

  Rakhi is stuck in a prison of limitations, both physical and mental that is so complex it’s pai
nful to watch.

  What was I expecting? Fun? A fun sequence? Fun doesn’t feature when you’re an adolescent kid sleeping on the street. Danger does. That kid I met three years ago doesn’t exist any more. She’s been whittled down by poverty and fear. The camera rolled, and I cried because of all the potential wasted, the trajectory thwarted. And I raged because of how angry I felt at those predatory boys, possibly victims themselves, who had no idea how a look or a word could transform a young woman’s world.

  And then, almost inevitably, Steve asked for a version in which I wasn’t crying as much, or swearing as much, and I said, ‘Go fuck yourself, Steve.’ And he nodded, because he got that sometimes rage and expletives and tears are the only, and perfectly natural, human response to this God-awful situation.

  Real help is hard to give. Things must happen slowly. And that’s the most difficult understanding of all. There is no quick fix.

  But it’s OK, because I have time. I have time, Rakhi – and I am not going anywhere.

  46. The Sundarbans

  I head further south. The wind gets up and the air begins to clear as the river widens to greet the sea. I am in the Sunderbans, a cluster of low-lying islands in the Bay of Bengal famed for its unique mangrove forests. Not only is this delta a haven for many rare and endangered species, it’s also home to over four and a half million people.

  It is hard to imagine a more delicately balanced ecosystem than this one, and yet it’s under constant threat. Land reclamation, logging and shrimp farming all contribute to an erosion of the landscape, which, if continued unchecked, could prove nothing short of calamitous to the region. The mud flats and vast tangle of mangrove roots that stretch along the coastline of India and Bangladesh, where land meets sea, where freshwater meets seawater, are Nature’s own shield, providing protection from cyclones to the dense population surrounding it. To destroy the mangroves is to offer the earth up, unchecked, to the raging elements.