Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25059
PHOTO: GRETCHEN COOMBS Park Street, Southward, the Bengali 5th Avenue playground. Obese light-skinned women wrapped in heavy silk saris waddle into Kwality or Peter Pan for their spiceless evening meal of butter, meat and ice cream; the husbands might even drink a beer. These are the beautifully white Indians, inheritors of Empire. They have traveled to America and London and have two or three children in the Western literate tradition. They patronize Raj-relic clubs and celebrated Bengali literary auteurs, selectively proud of their culture they habitually consider the state of Indian politics-in English. They wear only gold. Human rickshaw-pullers are banned from Park Street on the pretext of traffic inefficiency. The rickshaws look like Ben Hur battle relics, each thick wheel heavier than a thin man. They pull even through mid-afternoon, when the sun beats the back and the temperature and humidity both average above 95°F. There is dignity in this strength, in one's identity, in sweaty beauti ful sacrifice; working for Kali, working for Allah, for the family-their fathers had done it. Like many Indians they are often blind ly friendly, patient. Eastward, one of many Muslim neighborhoods: Narrow, vegetable vendor-streets scattered with excited children playing cricket, typical families rich enough to live in a home but no electricity, no running water. Among the normal road residue of human shit, deformed plastic water bottles and sewage-sleeping bristly black pigs, lie rotting smelly goat heads, indecipherable bits of carcass. These deaths define the area as Muslim, not Hindu-a source of local identity, if not pride-sweets-making, meat-loving, traditional Islamic Bengalis. Goats roam freely through the flesh, their bulging button eyes ignorant of their fate. low moans warble infrequently in imperfect unison throughout the neighborhood and down the streets, the call to prayer crying daily at SAM; soothing, spiritu.al sadness and devotion. Men wear white square caps and lacy head coverings, always white, pure. PHOTO: ZIN FOTO