Boatmen

What struck me first when I returned to Calcutta this time was that the roads had shrunk. It was a strange feeling, like watching a miniature model of my memory of the city. Despite the ban on rickety old buses, the pollution levels have hardly reduced. Smoking diesel engines fill the air, choking us and causing headaches.

Today S and I had planned to go a boat-ride on the city's outskirts, coincidentally between two rather well known temples in these areas. The Ganges on the plains is choked with sludge, but the late evening ride on it under pleasant autumn weather is as lazy as it is enjoyable.

Boatmen have been subjects for many odes in these parts going back more than a century and it is quite easy to see why.


P.S. It's the same boatman in the two shots with landscape orientation.

Larger.