East of Croydon

by Sue Perkins

  The moment I set foot inside, I was set upon by a pair of distinctly wheezy Pugs, one of which went for my ankles.

  FATHER: Don’t worry about her. She is curious, but she will soon lose interest.

  I’d heard that before.

  ME: What’s she called?

  I flinched as her snotty muzzle brushed across my flip-flops.

  FATHER: Ah – that’s Brooke Shields.

  ME: Brooke Shields?

  FATHER: Yes. Brooke Shields.

  It was an act of will not to laugh. I thankfully maintained my composure. Standards.

  FATHER: And this …

  He pointed towards the second dog, which was busy licking my big toe like a lolly.

  FATHER: This is …

  He muttered a name. I couldn’t quite make it out over the din of the street, but it sounded an awful lot like Moira Stewart.

  Brooke Shields was now desperately trying to gnaw my fibula, but her face was so flat her teeth couldn’t gain purchase. Instead, she decided to gum the hem of my trousers until they became soggy. It was like being savaged by an asthmatic draught excluder. Moira Stewart had seemingly given up on trying to dissolve my foot with her acrid saliva, so retired to the corner of the room and set free a heady, high-pitched fart.

  I sat down. Marion, the matriarch of the family, approached.

  MARION: Would you like some Christmas cake?

  It was early October and 35 degrees in the shade.

  ‘Of course,’ I said – as if that were the most normal request in the world. ‘That would be wonderful.’ I was keen to not offend my generous hosts. I wondered if they served Simnel cake in January and birthday cake at funerals. It didn’t matter: cake is always wonderful, however anachronous.

  FATHER: We love Christmas.

  MARION: Yes. It is our favourite time.

  SON: (proudly) We can sing ‘Jingle Bells’.

  Great, I thought. Please don’t.

  Around me were stationed myriad pictures of the Queen, and other, less luminescent, royals, fashioned on commemorative china plates and cups. They were everywhere, mounted on walls, adorning shelves and bookcases.

  FATHER: We love the Queen.

  ME: So I see.

  MARION: We love her.

  SON: Yes. We love her.

  There was an expectant pause. Everyone stared at me.

  ME: Oh, yes. Sorry. Yes. I love her too. Of course. She’s wonderful.

  FATHER: Have you met her?

  The family leant forward in eager anticipation.

  ME: No. No, I haven’t.

  A volley of dry crumbs erupted from my mouth as I spoke.

  FATHER: Oh.

  MARION: Oh.

  The sense of disappointment in the room was palpable. Even Brooke Shields paused from her damp mouthings to reflect on my lack of prestige. I started wondering whether someone in production had lied to the family in order to secure the interview – implying, perhaps, that I had royal connections. Maybe they’d been led to believe that I’d played real tennis with the Earl of Wessex, or at the very least been on an all-night Jägermeister bender at Chinawhite’s with Princess Eugenie.

  No one moved to cover the silence. I filled the awkward pause by mainlining what remained of the fruitcake into my mush.

  Then out came the photos. First a black-and-white snapshot of a quintessential Englishman in Royal Navy dress uniform, arms folded and smoking a pipe. It transpired this was the father’s grandfather. His son had been the only survivor of a torpedo attack off the Sri Lankan coast in the Second World War. Then came a photocopied sheet, seemingly tracing the family name back to Elvidge – a rare Anglo-Saxon Old English and pre-seventh-century moniker.

  FATHER: We may even be royalty.

  Even he didn’t sound convinced.

  ME: Really?

  FATHER: Yes. Henry VIII had many more wives than we know about.

  I’m not sure he did, I thought – but it wasn’t for me to piss on their parade.

  Another of the sons drifted in, also in full England football strip. I was now at the stage where, if a Beefeater had walked through the door singing ‘Greensleeves’ and morris dancing, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.

  I started again, desperate to keep the interview on track.

  ME: So, have you ever been to England?

  FATHER: No.

  ME: Do you think about it?

  ALL: Yes.

  ME: And what do you think about it? What do you think it’s like?

  FATHER: Good.

  SON: Green.

  SON 2: Home.

  Everyone in the room nodded sagely.

  FATHER: Yes. Home.

  I tried to speak, but no words came. I am rarely lost for words, but that response just felled me.

  Home.

  We abandoned these people. They are the sons and daughters of Mother India and Empire, who return, time and time again, to a crystalline version of our traditions, faithfully observing what we, in the UK, are beginning to neglect.

  I returned to the cake, full of more questions than my little brain could answer. Then, once the last piece of marzipan had been swallowed, I put on my dog-dampened flip-flops and, like all the other white Brits before me, I turned on my heels and left.

  27. Faith, Hope and Love

  Kolkata has long been synonymous with desperate, grinding poverty, and although things have improved since the dark days of Mother Teresa’s mission, there is, even to the casual visitor’s eye, still much to do. The bulk of this work falls to charities, and we were about to embark on a night shoot with one of them: the Hope Foundation. We set off at 10 p.m. with social worker Geeta and her team, driving their ambulance around, checking on children and vulnerable families living in the most desperate conditions.

  We headed for the Hastings Underpass, a ten-kilometre stretch of road and wasteland that provides shelter for approximately ten thousand people. Many of the homeless sleeping here are domestic workers, tending other people’s houses by day, with no roof over their own heads at night.

  Blankets, saris and tarpaulin sag from wonky bamboo poles. Makeshift washing lines are decked with clothing burnished black by the pollution and ambient filth. Kids sleep on urine-soaked blankets, atop raw sewage, while drug addicts and alcoholics brawl around them. Welcome to a hell more vivid and terrifying than Bruegel or Bosch. A hell wrought by something more prosaic than Satan: inequality.

  We walk from the ambulance towards a large gathering. Small fires punctuate the gloom. I can see women, silhouetted in the flames, rocking. There are kids hobbling in the dust with legs bent like plumbers’ pipes.

  I ask Geeta if I can talk to some of the young mothers. One approaches. She looks no more than a child herself, her skin glued so tightly to her skull that, from a distance, she looks like nothing more than a bronzed skeleton.

  She does not give me her name – names are superfluous here since all experience is identical. She tells me she was born in this place, in the shadow of the underpass, and that she will live out her days without a second’s respite from its horror and sadness. As she begins to speak, more women start to join us, then more, until there are so many that Geeta struggles to interpret all the different voices that surround us.

  I can smell the fear on them. I can smell it on myself. Even as we talk I become aware of the men in the shadows, the unpredictable, lurching men high on glue – kicking dogs, swearing – coming for us. The women respond by chattering ever louder, some grabbing at me for attention, pulling at my hands and shoulders.

  One woman rushes towards us, holding a photo. The others part to let her through. They all begin jabbing their fingers at the image she is holding.

  ‘Yes’ I say. ‘I can see.’

  It is a picture of a child, a beautiful child, maybe two years old at most, wearing an ornate dress. She is sleeping.

  The babble is becoming hysterical, the gesticulating more and more frantic.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s all right. It’s
OK. I can see.’

  I am holding their hands. I am holding as many hands as I can.

  And then Geeta speaks. It is easy for her to translate the message, because the women are all saying exactly the same thing.

  GEETA: This child is not sleeping, Sue. This child is dead. She was abducted and raped to death.

  Raped. To death.

  Dead.

  It’s raining, I think. Thank God, it’s raining. Let it come in a roar, in a deluge, let it wash all of this away and me along with it.

  And then comes the slow understanding that emerges from beneath the shock and horror: that there is no rain, that the steady drips that hit the sand beneath me are coming from my eyes. I have gone into shock, but my eyes are still working – still pumping tears. I want to scream until my lungs burn out, but I stand there and I listen. I feel dizzy. But I will not faint. I will stand here and bear witness.

  After that abduction, these women now tie themselves to their children by the wrist at night. Imagine that for a second – the place you call home is so unsafe you tether your family like animals so that if someone tries to steal them in the night, the jerk of your limbs will sound the alarm.

  We hug. We listen. Finally, we have to move on, the ambulance chugging through the sepia gloom of the streetlights.

  Through the murk I can see hundreds more silhouettes. These are the shadow people, those who live in the city under the city. They fall with the sun to the ground. When the last deal is done, when the last trader has hawked his wares, they sink like ash into the earth, where they lie with the dogs in the shit and the plastic. And at first light they rise again – back to clean your house, to fix your car, to serve your breakfast.

  Welcome to the boulevards of the dispossessed – the left-behinds, the unwanted.

  Welcome to capitalism’s forgotten children.

  Geeta is the calmest, kindest soul you could ever wish to meet. When the ambulance wheezes to a halt and she gets out, a crowd immediately forms around her – mainly children, who hold her hand and laugh. She begins her rounds, visiting the street families and asking how they are, enquiring about this child’s health, this mother’s mental state, this father’s drug abuse and so on. She explains to me that her role is to listen, to allow people to unburden themselves, share their problems. She is an ear on wheels.

  I want to have a role, and it doesn’t take long before one presents itself.

  Of course, I am a curiosity here. I’m the plump white girl who doesn’t look much like a girl at all. I have squeaky new shoes. I have glasses made for me that I can actually see out of. The kids emerge from the margins of the street, desperate to poke at my pale flesh, dozens of them – they grab my hands and twirl around me, giggling, and it’s not long before we all start to play.

  For hours I run up and down the pavement, catching one, tickling another, throwing another upside down. I chase them through the human huddles, past the smoking fires and cooking pots, past the weaving men on solvent highs. We laugh so much we nearly throw up, pausing for breath, before the hide and seek begins again.

  Their mothers are hunched together on the pavement, chopping vegetables, trying to get the youngest kids to bed – exactly the same sorts of tasks as we’d be performing at this time of night, except these women are making their evening meal on a pavement, by the side of one of the most congested roads in the world. Kids with matted hair weave in and out of the traffic, oblivious to danger. This is their home. This toxic highway is their manor. There are white rabbits, crammed into cages, piled five high – dinner, no doubt. I can’t look at them. I can’t even summon any extra pity for them, because nothing lives or dies well here.

  Each family has a chunk of concrete pavement to call their own, divided into kitchen, sleeping area and so on. Of course, there are no walls, but you can tell, where the pots give way to blankets, that you are entering a bedroom. Toothbrushes hang from an electrical pole – that’ll be the bathroom. There are even shrines set up in the gutter.

  After midnight, the traffic thins. The children take to their beds in groups. The lucky ones have roll-up mattresses, a centimetre or two thick. The others make do with an old sari or newspaper. They sleep on headlines. Just savour the bitter irony of that. Stray dogs materialize from the margins and take up residence at their feet, guarding them through the long night – hopeful for a little dal or bread by way of reward the next morning. There is no peace. The horns never stop. The bursts of shouting, the screams of pain – they never stop. But somehow, these kids have acclimatized to the din and the smoke, and they manage to sleep at least partway through the night.

  ‘We cannot give them all a home,’ said Geeta. ‘But we can give them education and fun and love, and help them to dream.’

  Just as we’re about to get back into the ambulance, Geeta spots a little girl she’s keen to check up on. She is the cutest kid I’ve ever seen, all smiles and cheek in a torn purple frock with a rather fancy cream crimped neckline. It’s like she’s off to a party. But it’s the middle of the night and she’s on her own in this hellish jungle.

  GEETA: Rakhi! Where are your friends? Where is Puja?

  RAKHI: Puja is over there. (To me) She is my best friend.

  This girl’s name is Rakhi. Even though I have only just met her, she is very keen to impress upon me she does NOT like being absent from school. I sense this information is more to appease Geeta, who is hovering over her, listening to her every word. I think about Geeta’s words – we can help them to dream – so I ask Rakhi what she wants to be when she grows up. She grins, and tells me she wants to be a doctor. We laugh and she hugs me and I hold her close and I don’t want to let her go.

  GEETA: You should have gone to sleep. Why are you still awake? Are you not afraid?

  Rakhi merely shrugs, almost like she doesn’t understand the question.

  Rakhi’s mum is dead, and she is looked after by her father. He sells buckets and old clothes to get her food.

  GEETA: Where is he?

  RAKHI: Sleeping.

  ME: Right. It’s late, you need to sleep. Come on, you need to find Puja …

  And with that, I walk her down the long pavement, past a thousand bodies, supine in the dust, until I find Puja, hunched over an old transistor radio, singing. I wrap them in their sari and put them to bed.

  As I get back into the ambulance, I instinctively take off my squeaky shoes and place them by the roadside. It is time for someone else to have them. I would have done the same with my shirt and my trousers, were it not for the large camera lens in my face. Quite frankly, I don’t have the posterior for posterity so it was the best thing for everyone that I kept my clothes on.

  We headed back into town. It was now maybe two or three o’clock in the morning, and the place was beginning to settle.

  It was then I saw a shape, a single horizontal breaking the horizon. Framed against the yellow smog of the evening was a young boy, maybe ten years old, alone. No fires, no dogs, no junkies. Not one living soul around him.

  ME: Who is that?

  GEETA: He is one of our children. We visit him. He has HIV.

  ME: Doesn’t he have any family?

  GEETA: No, they are gone.

  ME: Is he alone?

  GEETA: Yes.

  ME: Does no one go to him? Go and touch him? Hold him?

  GEETA: No, no one.

  I want to get out. I can’t. My palm is against the window, pressing hard on the glass. We drive on.

  I go back to the hotel, walk through the lobby and feel the cool marble against my soles. The night porter tries not to look alarmed as he sees me, soot-faced and barefoot, heading back to my room. I come in, double-lock my door and turn on the shower. I stand in it for maybe an hour. Lost. I don’t even feel the water on my skin – it’s like it’s going straight through me.

  That is how I feel after simply hearing about their experiences.

  For months after my return, I would dream of Rakhi. I would dream of her lying upstairs
in the spare room, next to her mate Puja, their little fingers linked together as they snored. I would dream of them being safe, going to school, moaning about maths and physics and English lessons. I dreamt of making them tea every night – ‘It’s so plain, Auntie. This food is so boring, Auntie.’

  I dreamt I got out of the ambulance. I was under that bridge again, marching through the yellow smog to the distant figure ahead of me. I kept on going until the vague blur on the horizon took form, until the silhouette sharpened, until I could see the bump of that little spine through his vest. And I picked him up and held him, so everyone could see. This boy, with HIV, in my arms. And I walked back, all the way back, through oceans and rivers, through desert and forest, across white cliffs and fresh tarmac until he crossed my threshold and met his two sisters and his second mum and was …

  … safe.

  28. A Googly Near the Hooghly

  Our diplomatic liaison in Kolkata was a wonderful man called Scott, who was forever torn between his love of the city and the acknowledgement that the pollution in it was turning his kids’ lungs into something resembling discarded crisp packets. After two night shoots on the trot, it became clear we needed to get out and do something fun – Bengalis are party people, after all – and we’d be doing the place a great disservice if we simply focused on its darker side.

  Scott arranged for us to go to the cricket – a match between local team (and current champions, no less) the Kolkata Knight Riders and their sworn rivals, the Mumbai Indians. ‘I’ll send a car for you,’ he said.