All These Colors Tour: India Part 16
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Kolkata, India
Today, I walked over to Chowringhee Road and aimed myself North to see what might cross my path and my lens. Proceeding up the sidewalk just outside Maidan Park, a seemingly endless strip of trash and grime and the acrid smell of urine and shit forced me out onto the street. Apparently, a lot of homeless people have settled in this area. The city really needs to clean up their mess. After a few minutes, I happened upon the massive and ramshackle Esplanade bus station, where I wandered around and snapped a few pics of the colorful wheeled behemoths all weighed down with an overload of cargo on their roofs and humans in their guts.
As I took a photo of the side of a small truck brandishing interesting lettering, some young dudes standing 10 feet away in front of it gathered around me to see what I was up to. One of them said something to me, but it was hard to tell if he wanted money for photographing his truck or what, so I just showed them the two photos, deleted each one, and walked away without saying a word. I wasn’t about to whip out my wallet with several people around me, because I’d have to pay off all of them. A few minutes later, I saw a huge, weird-looking water tower and headed over there.
At the base of it, I discovered a whimsical-looking looking Hindu temple dedicated to the deity Hanuman, with rad paintings all over the place. I shot a couple of video clips and photos, and made plans to return sometime earlier in the day when there’s more light, as there were a few more murals hiding in the shadows that I wanted to shoot. After I crossed back over Chowringhee Road, I wearily sliced my way through the thick crowds in the New Market / Lindsay Street area. My final goal of the day was to eat and do a little surfing on the electronic ocean.
Roll over photos for captions.
Words and photos ©2012 Arcane Candy.
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