Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Several thousand dairy cows are crowded into stables all over the slum.
They belong to outside owners.
Their excrement and refuse block the sewage canals,
causing them to overflow, especially in the rainy season.
In the heart of the slum, potters make clay cups,
which are dried in the sun.
They are intended for the city's numerous tea shops
and are broken after use.
In Howrah, where this slum is located,
garbage has not been collected for several months.
The municipality is short of funds.
These patties made of coal dust and cow dung are used as fuel.
Several compounds in this slum are reserved for lepers.
They live in strict quarantine, with their own wells and food.
Most of them are beggars in the city.
They earn a living better than those in the slum who work.
At the first signs of illness,
a *** must immediately go to one of these compounds with his family.
Lepers form a separate caste,
of Hindus and Muslims both, and marry among themselves.
Leprosy is not hereditary,
but since the lepers' children can't leave the quarantine,
they catch the illness by contagion.
At the very end of the slum, alongside the railway warehouses,
families who have come recently from the state of Madras,
at the southernmost tip of India, are crowded into straw huts.
Their skin is darker and they speak Tamil,
a language totally different from Bengali.
They have a bad reputation and don't mix with their neighbors.
Many are ragpickers. Their children don't go to school.
These men and women have voluntarily left their village
and come here in hopes of finding work.
They are astonished to be filmed, to be pitied,
to be a source of indignation.