RoustAbout

Goats strung together and hustled away Yesterday evening I was going from Dhakuria to Shambazar by Uber. We were a little past Park Circus Maidan when he announced 'Google abhi Convent Road se raasta dikha raha hai'. I was surprised. Circular Road diye jabo na. 'Nahi yeh paanch minute short raasta hai, koi red light nahi hai' bole he drove into a darkish gulli off the main road near Sales tax bahaban. Soon we were on Canal West road passing under a railway bridge behind Sealdah station. The day before on a Sunday we had marvelled how neat and clean the relatively empty streets in Jadavpur and beyond towards Baisnabghata Patuli in deepest South Kolkata  were. Small parks, with benches, smartly coloured railings on pavements , the roads recently swept. But here Beleghata in the middle of the city it was grimy and nothing seemed to be different from the late 70s when my way to school passed this way. I asked the driver 'jaldi hoga is raaste se?' He answered co...

Last week I was in Rwanda for the International Conference on Family Planning. I had long wished to visit Rwanda, intrigued how a country was coping with a genocide that had killed nearly 1 million people and affected almost everyone. The border police at the immigration counter was very polite, Rwanda has a visa on arrival policy and it did not make getting a visa difficult at all. Travelling on my flight was an Indian skilled labourer who had landed without a visa and without a penny in foreign exchange. I did a bit of translation for him but the immigration officer did not seem to lose his cool at this man who couldn’t understand much English, did not have a visa, did not have a hotel address, did not have any foreign exchange and only waved a letter of invitation to work as a fitter for a Rwandan steel company. Thankfully he had the telephone number of a contact and the immigration officer seemed inclined to make a call on his behalf using his personal phone when I finished my bus...