The pace of rural Bengal

It is our second year of collaboration with the school at Kolaghat. We plan to meet the new batch of children of Class IX and their families, and also intend to catch up with the group whose education we “adopted” last year, and who will be facing their Board Examinations at the end of the session. 

 The speed of activities in this part of the world could rival a snail! We had thought that it would help the children if they were sponsored at the start of their academic session, now in January. But with one thing or another considered unavoidable, our scheduling keeps getting disrupted, pushed back to nearly the middle of the session. School and Board exams, paper corrections, election duties and government directives of school holidays, all take precedence. I begin to wonder whether there is a need at all for our kind of inputs in society. Perhaps we just fool ourselves that we make a difference in wanting to sponsor kids through high school!

  

 

When we finally set off for the school, the weather is hot, hot, hot. The fact that the weather seems to change so, must be due to global warming.  It is temperatures in the forties degrees Celsius, but we are not drenched in sweat as before. The weather patterns have changed noticeably. Humidity has come down; however, the thunder-squalls that we expect at this time to bring us relief from the heat, are no shows. The national highway on our route has a few diversions because of men at work on the asphalt. Still, without the continual traffic signal stops that are major impediments in the city, we make good progress. We thank our stars that it is the weekend and traffic is comparatively thin.

As we arrive in rural Bengal, it becomes easier to breathe. We leave behind the asphalt, but ‘roads’ become progressively narrower. The dirt roads of Kolaghat look bright red in the glorious sunshine. We slow down drastically, sometimes at speed no more than 2 Kmph and it takes us nearly an hour to travel about 15 Kms. We have to pass through the fish and vegetable marketplace that springs up every morning along the roadside.  Shoppers plant themselves on the road, and bend over to examine the merchandise. They are oblivious to traffic. We are greeted by this array of ‘hairpin bends’ that refuse to straighten up or move to let us through. Our persistent honking irritates, and some yell out that we go too fast, although we are literally standing on the brakes to avoid anything untoward.

A couple of times we have to back up to allow another vehicle to get by. Since the car obviously does not belong to the area, the locals want to make sure we do the reversing out of the way. A young man trying to get onto the wooden bridge first is distracted and topples over. He stares when he sees us and picks himself and his bicycle up quickly. Nevertheless, a crowd gathers around the car to shout insults.  They are a little nonplussed to see women in the car. The traditional respect for the sari kicks in and the usual aggressiveness towards outsiders peters out pretty quickly. It is good to see girls and women venturing out, riding bicycles. They jump in to tell off the men and our passage is immediately smoother! In two hours we are at our destination about 82 Kms away, in the Headmaster’s office, eager to get to work and do some good for the community with our perspective of educational support.