Necropolis

Scenes of Kolkata are like the set of blade runner and I wanted to write something about this, about how the extraordinary becomes gradually normalized, but I was reading a book while here, and came upon this monologue delivered by a character in the novel.  Her words are an interesting place to start a dialogue about the city.

Would I be capable of giving up everything for something I believed, in something I wanted without thinking about the risks? Have I ever believed in anything or anybody intensely enough to do that? I realized that I never believed in anything seriously and that's why I never made a radical commitment. Does it have something to do with the fact of being more or less European and white and being born in that rich protectorate that is the north of the world, where everything is arranged so that nothing ever shocks you where life really ought to disgust one.

That is what many of us feel just shame or controllable anger. I feel ridiculous poor disgustingly poor in spirit. I feel infinite sadness having it all and at the same time having nothing. It is contradictory isn't it? 

The things that stifle me today are the result of wars and destruction and learned books and terrible peace treaties; many people have died so that we the grandchildren of the century can have what is crushing us today, as if we were on the verge of falling into a deep sleep and opium sleep. Coming to a place like this is a way of breaking up completely, opening your eyes and once they are wide open you can't let them close, Beyond the borders of our beautiful countries there is a terrifying outside world filled with life, a black sun that stretches over a number of continents only revealing its beauty after the first impact. What we see on the surface is horrible and cold but slowly the beauty emerges in this world. 

On the other hand our world has a surface that is lovely and everything is bright and shiny, But with time what we see is the horror. I do not want to go back to that Opium dream that is out paradise of the north. I'm staying here with real people and real problems, Where everyone has to go up on the trapeze without a net and the struggle for existence is real and not a metaphor; I've found life here, I've understood the value of that miraculous fragile thing called life and that's why I developed an overwhelming desire to live it to exhaust it to the last drop, what a miracle.

      (loosely or freely quoted from) Santiago Gamboa: Necropolis