The traffic is globally notorious in India, Kol & Mumbai in particular...& there's no doubt that a ride in the ubiquitous yellow Ambassador cabs is an experience like no other!
It's on the sidewalks that one truly is pulled into the joys, sorrows, of daily life for most. You can find anything on the sidewalks of Kolkata. In my week of walking I've seen:
• service vendors - cobblers, horse & buggy rides, shoe shine, an opportunity to weigh yourself on a bathroom scale, mobile phone charging, clothing repair, motorcycle repair, barbers cutting hair or shaving men in the morning, sitting on a crate, with customers facing them on another crate, garbage sorters who have many tasks, including one woman who was pulling apart wet, dark grey cardboard looking 4" x 6" squares, laying them in the sun to dry, presumably to be recycled into more cardboard, & a man, squatting, sorting through a huge pile of receipts, each gathered into equal piles, rubber banded, then re-stacked again, ten bindered stacks together, to be tied with a course, thick twine. He was working through about half the sack, with neatly sorted stacks of ten rubber bands in one pile, twine bound together in skeins the size of his fist, and paper, paper everywhere. Brick makers are in a continual state of plying their craft, usually right in the middle of the sidewalk, utilizing every bit of clay then can find...digging out under the cobblestones put down decades ago, dredging out the grey clay with large hoes, filling the space with sand, replacing the cobblestones & carrying the clay down the block, or several blocks where a production line is formed of mixing clay with sand or grit, patting the mixture into molds, spread out in the sun, then others tapping out the finished bricks, stacked in tall stacks half the width of the already congested sidewalk.
• food vendors - breads & main courses, served on tin plates lined with banana leaves, chai, rose water, fresh fruit (papaya, bananas, watermelon, star fruit, a fruit we don't have that is green on the outside & like firm, white kiwi in the inside), fresh lemon and lime juice, freshly squeezed cane sugar juice, peeled cucumbers with salt, freshly roasting peanuts, snacks (mostly puri, a mixture of puffed bites, mixed with marsala spices & oil, tossed in a bowl & served in the day's newspapers, expertly folded into a cone with a tightly sealed bottom), fresh vegetables, fresh meats (very fresh, i.e, pick out your chicken to be butchered), fresh papaya or coconut drinks, w/ large machetes sitting at the ready to chisel off the top so a straw can be inserted, making a natural cup!, ice cream carts, filtered water carts, rice or bean in bulk
• merchandise vendors - a man who writes your name on rice to thread onto a necklace, jewelry, knick-knacks, basic cloth items like hankies, socks & t-shirts, shoes, mobile phone & computer screen covers, electrical plugs, etc., books, magazines, music CDs, postcards, maps, tobacco, small household items such as spoons, tea filters & linens, old coins & collectables
• even saw GreenPeace workers taking a survey & trying to get folks to donate, just like they do in NE and Uptown!
Many vendors, & all food stands, have more than one employee, with the youngest apprentices squatting on their haunches peeling stacks of potatoes or onions taller than they are. Add customers, cords stretched to hold up the tarps which form temporary roofs when it rains, puddles folks are trying to avoid after the rain burst, a block adopted stray dog, men playing cards between work shifts, clusters of folks gathered to chat over chai, stacks of building materials for the bamboo scaffolding & metal work going on constantly in some portions of the city as it grows into the malay & soon there's barely an aisle for one strand of pedestrians in each direction!
There are sad vignettes, too, as you move from place to place, though many fewer than when I first visited in 2007. I walked around a woman laying on a thin reed mat in the middle of the cobblestone sidewalk, a dark headed boy of three or four, using her thigh as a pillow, bent to contort with her shape to maximize the mat's surface area. Then, curled around her shoulder, the mother's arm crescent wrapped around her, a naked girl of maybe 18 months, small hands tucked into her mother's head scarf, using it as a thin pillow. Between the three barely a bit of the mat showed - all three were sound asleep, though a shower had just passed, & the cacophony of Kol traffic was in full, blaring blast of rush hour. Workmen were repairing the lighting of a sign feet from them, adding a ladder obstacle people had to navigate around, forcing them so very near to the small zone of protection she'd tried to create. I'd not seen this poignant an example of poverty directly downtown during my 2010 visit, hoping the gradual transformation from Communism to Socialism to Independent party this fall was eliminating the lowest level of living for Kolkatan citizens.
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