Howrah Bridge!!

‘Oye, here’s chicken, eat it’

Will you believe me if I tell you that this was the most depressing statement I ever heard in my life? Yeah, you might be wondering what’s wrong with that.

Well, turning 21 and starting to work as an assistant director, I got to see the world in a way which others wouldn’t have seen! We shoot in places where most people would never accept to step their foot at. It was same with me! But once you step your foot on the place you will really understand how blessed we are in this cursed world.

We were shooting at the slum near Howrah Bridge, Calcutta! I started witnessing a lot of people living on the banks of Ganga with their family! Their house was a mosquito net. Well, digesting the facts seeing them, it was hard not to notice how hard their life was, but they made it look easy. They didn’t complain! They just lived. Kids played with each other, adults were mostly high on something which I really couldn’t recognise!

It was time the shooting team got our food. First of all, I couldn’t eat seeing the way they were starving! It was totally very emotional scenario. Well coming to back to the chicken thing, after we ate we put our plastic plates in a black garbage cover and we resumed our shoot. My director calls out and tells me to get something, when I went to the place to get what he asked me, I witnessed the real sadness of life. The dogs were eating from the garbage bag, it was normal, but then two seriously malnutritioned men were digging from the same bag and when one person found an half eaten chicken he smiled and looked at his friend and told him ‘oye, here’s chicken eat it’

I lost my control over everything. I was fixed to the spot. I don’t know if it’s disgusting or should I say I was moved by their readiness to eat from the same place same as the dogs. I saw 5 year olds buying beedi, I saw the real world under Howrah bridge. Being from a family who pampered me from when I was born I have never got to witness such things in life. But the real world didnt just surprise me it moved me, changed me in a lot of ways.

I remember how angry I used to get over particular things in life! We have everything, anything we ask we get it, we can dream.

For them dreaming was itself a dream.

I don’t know if I should be angry with God or humanity or what. But I just realised that life is beyond us. It’s not just us. There is more to life. I don’t know how we can change this, I just hope things change. More than sympathy it’s empathy! Both maybe!

We are all blessed in a cursed world, let’s use the blessings to help at least one person in our lives. Let’s give more than what we receive. Love too, give it out to people who deserve it. Let’s not worry anymore only about ourselves. Let’s worry about people around us too, let’s do something that will change at least one person’s life. Let’s make it possible for at least one person to dream about dreaming.

I am sorry if I disgusted you with my experience, but it deserves notice! I don’t know what change I can do. But I know theres a lot of change ‘we’ can do. Real world is too much for us with golden spoon to realise how hard it is for the people without any spoon, well why spoon, when there is no food itself.

Let’s share our blessings to the less fortunate! God can’t be everywhere, but humanity can be!

The base of humanity is not even as strong as the base of a Bridge! When we humans can build wonders, we can build a good society too.

Open your eyes, see the life beyond you.

Ps. I am not telling I realised this only in Calcutta. But this event hit me harder than anything and made me put it into words.