This is a picture from a pornographic magazine. It’s been neatly cut out, pasted onto a piece of cardboard, and now, a smiling gentleman is holding it up to my face.

I’m still not entirely sure how we got into this mess. We were walking across Hooglie Park – a vast and dirty scrubland in the centre of Kolkata. Bodies lay everywhere, stretched out in the dusty heat. Aga and I had been playing a guessing game: ‘Dead or Sleeping?’

Somewhere along the way a polite young Indian guy had joined us. His English was pretty good and he seemed to want to practice. So far he’d been filling us in on interesting facts about India’s economy – potentially quite useful for a budding journalist such as myself. But a while ago he’d decided to shift the conversation:

“My skin is dirty,” he told me.

I didn’t really know what to say to this.  He spoke again.

“My skin is dirty and yours is clean.”

I was beginning to feel uneasy.  Aga the Photographer  had long ago fallen silent, armed as she was with a healthy dose of Polish ‘don’t give me your bullshit’ charm. But there I was, awkwardly intrenched in a conversation I didn’t want to be part of with a self-loathing Indian man. I cursed my British politeness.

“It’s’s not easy to keep clean when the air is so dusty and dry,” I said. (When in doubt, always talk about the weather. ) “Where I come from, it’s always raining.

Our companion ignored me. He changed the subject,

“We think Westerners look so cool.”

“How so?” said I.

“Because your skin is white,” he said at once. “My skin is dirty. It’s brown, like dirt.”

Again, I was almost speechless.

“Well to us, Indian people look cool,” I told him, diplomatically. “Everyone’s so exotic.”

We passed an emaciated horse. I tried to change the subject.

“Look,” I said. “A horse.”

He said nothing. We walked on in silence for a while. A crowd of flies were attacking my face and the heat was becoming a bit relentless. In the distance we saw England’s bastardising stamp on Kolkata: The Victoria Memorial.

“That’s the Victoria Memorial,” our guide told us.

“I know,” I said. “That’s where we’re going.

Silence. Then,

“There’s a very nice garden in the Victoria Memorial,”

I was actually interested this time. “Oh, really?”

“Yes. They call it Lover’s Garden,”

“Oh,”

“Yes. Do you know why they call it that?”

We’d been warned about ‘love’ in the guide book. ‘Single women – do NOT talk with strangers about intercourse. They will very quickly become excited…’

I stalled: “Because it’s lovely?”

“They call it the Lover’s Garden because young people go there to have sex.”

I said nothing.

He repeated himself.

“People go to the Lover’s Garden to have sex.”

We came to a very lonely stretch of land. I raised my voice

“Well I’m not sure our HUSBANDS would like us talking about that,” I said to him. Very pointedly, I felt.

We walked on. Silence.

Then,

“Look,” he said.

I looked. And there he was, holding the picture. It was quite large. I have no idea where it came from, or how he managed to get it out so quickly. But there it was, glaring at me from his dirty little self-loathing hands.

“Gross!” I cried. We doubled our pace. Aga and I veered away from the path and away from this stranger in a fast, anxious V. The stranger stood still for a moment longer.

“Bye,” he said. And off he went.

THE END

Kolkata

If you’ve ever watched The Jungle Book, you might be able to form yourself up a fairly good image of my first view of Kolkata. The ground emerged from beneath misty aeroplane haze. I saw luscious, jungly clusters of palm trees and odd, irregular-shaped houses. Deep jewels glistened and shimmered in the ground, eventually revealing themselves to be dark pools of water. But as we came to land I noticed that the rivers were filthy and strewn with litter.

This is a city of constant paradox. Rich vibrant colours scream out for attention, but are numbed and mattified by the relentless dust. Bejewelled, beautiful women sit barefoot in the dirt next to filthy, swollen nippled bitch-dogs. The rich/poor divide reaches out constantly to slap you in the face.

Safety checks

India’s got a thing for pointless bureaucracy, and we were just going through our third passport check when my companion, Aga the Photographer, had to go on ahead. I suddenly realised I was the last person in the queue, alone but for one painting of a Bengal tiger and an official with a gammy eye. Gammy eye looked at me, gripped my passport with both his hands and began to tell me in hurried tones about how his son was dying and he needed my money “please madam, please.”

This was my first impression of the Indian people. I was mentally calculating how many rupees I could afford to offer to get my passport back (and how many more times this might happen) when a collection of slightly more official officials passed on by. I took the opportunity to wrestle away my passport and flee.

I passed a clapped out, threadbare old wheelchair and went to pick up my own custom-made one from baggage reclaim. We made it out of the airport with both passports and all of our rupees intact, leaping (after quite some negotiation and another attempt from our failed con-artist friends) into the best taxi they had. Almost all of the tyres were even inflated, almost fully.

I have no idea where this taxi driver is taking us. We’ve passed Bollywood bright markets and destitute favella-style slums. Less Jungle Book now, more Scrapheap Challenge. Out on the streets there are people sleeping, washing their clothes and living their lives. None of the cars have wing mirrors, but they all like to prove they have horns. Aga has gone unusually quiet. I wonder what the hell we’ve let ourselves in for…

But I’m also intrigued. Lonely Planet describes Kolkata as ’Simultaneously noble and squalid, cultured and desperate…a festival of human existence.’ That sounds like a night at Poetry Unplugged. From the preliminary research I’ve managed to establish that whilst Westerners find the poverty immensely shocking, it seems that many of the families who live those lives don’t actually realise that things could be different. Several of the local doctors point-blank refused to believe that there are countries out there where malnourishment isn’t a major issue.

Is this shocking, or is it just life? I’ll be going to find out. Watch this space…

…Still watching the space? Log on to www.cini.org.uk and find out how you can Double Your Impact!

And it wasn’t just the speakers who had something to say. In advance, the audience were all given an opportunity to choose a few key words which were printed onto badges. During the breaks we were all encouraged to take these key words and begin a conversation with a stranger.

This led to a whole load of people straining to see what was written on my breasts. Next time I’m going to ask them to make the print smaller…

Anyway, here’s my top idea of the night:

Simon Berry - Cola Life

What really grabbed me about Berry’s idea was his blatant exploitation of the capitalist market. I love it. Recently so many people have been talking about deconstructing our Western ways into some idealistic pipe dream that may or may not bear any more fruit for the suffering masses than our current wasteful economy. Berry says: ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!’

Take a holiday to the remotest, most obscure, hidden corner of the Earth and you can bet your bottom dollar that Coca Cola will have been there first. You can purchase yourself a bottle of the fat man’s favourite from villages where they don’t even have running water.

Berry’s idea is to get Coca Cola to open up their distribution channels to carry ‘social products’, such as oral rehydration salts and medicines, to the people who need them desperately. This could be done by incorporating an ‘aidpod‘ into Coca-Cola crates. The content of the aidpods would be locally determined by health professionals.

The advantages of this are, firstly, that it’s an affordable, simple start to helping those who need it most. It’s well designed, and it makes Coca Cola look really really nice.

But do we really know what we’re dealing with? Can we ensure that the medicine would reach those for whom it was intended? One potential solution is through Frontline SMS, where the person who delivers the Cola bundle is paid through text message upon confirmation of the Aidpod’s arrival. But we still need to ensure that the medicines would distributed and administered properly once they get there.

Similarly, some asked whether one could ever really trust an organization like Coca Cola. A valid point – these are the guys who redressed Santa Claus. Does Berry really know who he’s climbing into bed with?

But Simon Berry is not a stupid man. Check out his blog article ‘Is Wealth Creation the New Philanthropy?‘ In a fascinating, hazy post-TEDx conflab, he argued to me that no man is completely altruistic, but no man is completely evil either. So long as the deal is financially beneficial for both Coca Cola and their independent distributors, there’s absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t lap it up.

On another note, today is Friday and ever since the talk I’ve been gagging for a cool glass bottle of the sugary brown stuff. Make of that what you will…

Yesterday I read an essay where they talked about Tolstoy’s clumsy repetition of words in ‘War and Peace.’ I’ve never read it. But the man who wrote the essay argued that in translations of the novel the repetition should be left as it was because it was clearly intentional, and indeed, it’s the clumsiness of the repetition that makes the sentiments expressed so raw and genuine. I bought the essay at the same time as I bought your collection ‘The Not Dead,’ and in the same bookshop. So maybe you’ve seen it. I like the idea that you’d know a book just because it was on the shelf next to your own. Like you go around bookshops looking for your own work.

I’d quite like to do that one day. What really hurt about your poetry was that I suddenly realised I could never ever write anything nearly as dark and delicate and fragile as that. Not ever. The real pain was the sudden realisation that now I have to try.

With Kind Regards,

Abi Palmer

Bohemian Squalor meets Upper-Class niceties – the essence of Feliks for only 30p

Yes it’s here. The first of Feliks Topolski’s Brand New Chronicle comes to you on a shabby little chipshop printout, together with a fullscale poster of a Topolski Original. Full to the brim of fascinating observations – sketches, poetry, illicit letters and a fascinating editorial (courtesy of moi), the Chronicle will hopefully be the next step in bringing back the essence of what Feliks’ own artwork was all about.

But then I remember how we treat our meat
How living creatures sit
Raw-bellied, swollen, stacked
On shelves, the smell of dead
Flesh, grey, clinging to half-alive skin

I tear up fistfuls of battery method turkey,
Season it with salt and pepper,
And dress it up with garlic, I garnish
And swallow it down.

I spent the first half of the evening trying to cajole everyone into having as much good ol’ fashioned fun as we all did at Bang! Said the Gun last week. I handed out free lemonade and biscuits and made ridiculous jokes. I kept forcing everybody to clap, even though I know all too well that it ceases to be fun when the palms of your hands are stinging and raw and you start to consider a career as a performing seal. But towards the end I eventually sat down to relax.

I looked around the room. The last-minute spotlight set a dark and ambient vibe. Felix the Cat was playing on mute in the corner. Topolski’s old chronicles were hanging off the walls and Peter Mead was performing his first ever feature set of the most captivating, deliciously worded and genuine poetry I’ve heard in a long long time.

It was time to stop trying. There I was, surrounded by beautiful writing, amazing artwork and a room full of creative, fascinating people who give enough of a shit about their work to dedicate a Thursday evening to it. Feliks’ work is cool, it holds its own in an event like that. Luckily the same can be said for a lot of the performers we saw. Next time I’m going to spread out cushions and a comfy rug, put my feet up and let the evening carry itself. This is everything I ever wanted life to be.

Boo sucks to political correctness. Wheelchairs are ugly. They come in utilitarian grey and wipe-clean plastic. They put you at half the height of regular standing folk so people immediately have to look down at you, messing up the power balance. And they move like a machine. 

Designers, step forward and change this. It’s not enough to say that we might not be able to afford better designed machines. First impressions count. If it’s something you’re stuck in for your whole life, the first thing people see when they look at you, it’s going to have a huge impact on your identity. Wouldn’t it be nice to still have a choice of what that identity is? Like with glasses – something fun, something quirky, something that suits your style. Sporty or casual, luxurious or plain. Just give people a choice.

Potential solution # 1: Honda unveils new ‘Segway-style’ unicycle. The multi-directional wheel system reminds me of Ezekiel’s Chariot of God. No three headed angels though…