From a train

Somewhere between kolkata and varanasi...

A long journey west, about 24 hours from room to room...train delayed eight and a half hours so 0630 start from Howrah after night spent upon wooden luggage rack in waiting room, some sleep found but also a return to rough sleep in train stations, always an oddly romantic thing in my world... but only an hour late into mughal sarai which left a dusty run into the old town, twisted alleys and reckless ill lit dustbowl roads in the murk, only shadowed figures cloaked against grime and fallen night.

And kolkata...a place of utter contradiction: harsh scars upon streets in the degraded flesh of the poor and the I'll...one ragged woman sitting slicing herself with a razor blade as the city passed by...a hard place. But it's got something and it's been a dreamlike or dreamladen time of it, captivated by the otherness of days...polluted and cough carrying now bit grateful to have found something unexpected in the harsh survival of the city...