Calcutta Drawings 7 English

toilet. ‘They were crouched on the ground, eating rice bare-chested. “Why are you blue?” I asked.’ The consul looks at me as if prepared for the worst. ‘And?’ he enquires expectantly. ‘They were responsible for paint maintenance on government buildings. They paint without shirts on because they don’t want their clothes to get covered in blue and white paint spatters. It’s easier to get paint stains off your skin than out of your clothes.’ The consul smiles and admits that he’d never known such a group existed. ‘They must have wondered who you were, the only white person there – covered in chalk,’ he says. In that sense, I fall into the same category as the blue men, I think to myself and laugh.

‘You know about the Dalits?’ he asks seriously. I know the word from books, but no one calls themselves that on the streets. ‘The Dalits are the untouchables, a group of the population fundamentally designated as inferior,’ he holds forth. ‘At least sixteen percent of the people in India are Dalit, or outcaste. All told that adds up to some 213 million people, a large percentage of whom live in Calcutta.’ He pauses to give me a chance to apprehend the notion of 213 million people falling outside the system. ‘So as to have some kind of roof over their heads, many of them live under flyovers and bridges, where it is dry and shady. They shouldn’t be