Monday 2nd October
Day 5

To rise at 4am every morning at home would surely kill me, or at least make me feel rather sick but rising so early over here is actually quite enjoyable. We managed to grab a few hours without sweating and a good half hour or so of uninterrupted walking to the train station. No horns, no roaring motorbikes, no bicycle after bicycle after bicycle and no mobs of children endlessly shouting, “How are you? I am fine. How are you? I am fine”, whilst tugging on our trousers. However by the time we arrived at the station to catch our train to Sealdah, the crowds had formed, the sun had risen and here began another bustling day in India.

As we’d already spent last Friday morning at Sealdah, I kept telling myself what to expect as the train pulled in but as we made our way through the station to platform 10A, I found it very distressing and wasn’t actually sure if I could go through with the day. It’s the smell of Sealdah that hits you first, like piss, faeces and decaying flesh all mixed together but pleasantly sweet and spicy at the same time. Bodies everywhere litter the floors of the monstrous station, some sleeping (I like to imagine that they are definitely sleeping), some rocking and muttering, some wandering aimlessly and most of them simply sitting and staring vacantly through time. I am unable to convey the desperate feeling of sheer helplessness when I see these wasted lives, these starving, fevery faces lost and forgotten in an Indian train station. Of course these are only the inhabitants of the station, the homeless who live there, throw in a couple of thousand commuters and haggling stall sellers and you have Sealdah.

The kids range from newborn (accompanied by wide-eyed, scatty mother) to around eighteen years old and once they’d woken up from under their pieces of cardboard, they joined us on platform 10A for a few hours of stimulation. Christie and Sheena took charge of washing and dressing which is carried out by a communal tap inside the station and after buying the bananas and bread Jonny joined me on the platform where we proceeded to hand out worksheets, colouring books and crayons to the ever increasing group of children. Some of the older boys are extremely bright as they have managed to complete a couple of years at school and they left me struggling to devise problems quick enough to keep them entertained. The tiny ones were happy to sit all day colouring in just the one sheet of paper but only as long as they could show it to us when they’d finished and we promised not to let it get crumpled in the bag. They are all extremely proud. Most of them are filthy and stink, most of them have huge bags under their eyes, most have greasy, matted hair, runny noses and a fevery forehead and some of the older ones (six and upwards) are on drugs and all of them have eyes I will never forget.

After a couple of hours of ‘informal education’ and playtime, the children formed a queue and we handed out their milk, bananas and bread. As we had overbought today we were able to satisfy the hunger of a few of the many homeless adults who hang around the group begging for scraps. I picked a few of the children up for a squeeze before we left but most of them don’t really know how to react to affection and I don’t want to scare them too early. They all have a huge amount of love and laughter to give but they’re not quite sure how to give it. The babies are smacked by their older siblings (3-5) who are in return smacked by their older siblings (5-10) who are in return smacked by the teenagers or mother. An endless cycle of beating.

We were all fairly silent during the journey back and only started to talk once we were well away from Sealdah and heading home.