Taking Sides
The Last Taboo
What unites the Vatican, lefties, conservatives, environmentalists, and
scientists in a conspiracy of silence?
It’s midnight on the streets of Calcutta. Old women cook over open fires
on the sidewalks. Men wait in line at municipal hand pumps to lather skin,
hair, and lungis (skirts), bathing without undressing. Girls sit in the open beds
of bicycle-powered trucks, braiding their hair. The monsoon’s not yet over, and
grandfathers under umbrellas squat on their heels, arguing over card games,
while mothers hold bare-bottomed toddlers over open latrines. On every other
block, shops the size of broom closets are still open, kerosene lights blazing,
their proprietors seated cross-legged on tiny shelves built above their wares of
plastic buckets or machetes or radios. Many people sleep through the lively
darkness, draped over sacks or on work carts full of paper or rags or hay. Groups
of men and women, far from their home villages, sprawl haphazardly across
the sidewalks, snoring.
I’m crossing the city in one of Calcutta’s famously broken-down Ambassador taxis. The seat’s been replaced with a box, the windows don’t work,
there never were seat belts. Sneezes of rain blow through. It’s always like this,
arriving in the dead of night after incomprehensibly long international flights,
exiting the hermetically sealed jet onto humid and smoky streets perfumed
with gardenias and shit. The coal haze is thick as magician’s smoke. Out of the
dark, suddenly, the huge haunches of a working elephant appear, tail switching, big feet plodding carefully over piles of garbage, each footfall spooking a
hungry dog. The mahout tucked between her ears nonchalantly chats on a cell
phone. . . .
That so many can live among the ruins seems impossible. Yet so many
do. The city is home to about 5 million people, at a population density of
70,000 per square mile—2.5 times more crowded
What unites the Vatican, lefties, conservatives, environmentalists, and
scientists in a conspiracy of silence?
It’s midnight on the streets of Calcutta. Old women cook over open fires
on the sidewalks. Men wait in line at municipal hand pumps to lather skin,
hair, and lungis (skirts), bathing without undressing. Girls sit in the open beds
of bicycle-powered trucks, braiding their hair. The monsoon’s not yet over, and
grandfathers under umbrellas squat on their heels, arguing over card games,
while mothers hold bare-bottomed toddlers over open latrines. On every other
block, shops the size of broom closets are still open, kerosene lights blazing,
their proprietors seated cross-legged on tiny shelves built above their wares of
plastic buckets or machetes or radios. Many people sleep through the lively
darkness, draped over sacks or on work carts full of paper or rags or hay. Groups
of men and women, far from their home villages, sprawl haphazardly across
the sidewalks, snoring.
I’m crossing the city in one of Calcutta’s famously broken-down Ambassador taxis. The seat’s been replaced with a box, the windows don’t work,
there never were seat belts. Sneezes of rain blow through. It’s always like this,
arriving in the dead of night after incomprehensibly long international flights,
exiting the hermetically sealed jet onto humid and smoky streets perfumed
with gardenias and shit. The coal haze is thick as magician’s smoke. Out of the
dark, suddenly, the huge haunches of a working elephant appear, tail switching, big feet plodding carefully over piles of garbage, each footfall spooking a
hungry dog. The mahout tucked between her ears nonchalantly chats on a cell
phone. . . .
That so many can live among the ruins seems impossible. Yet so many
do. The city is home to about 5 million people, at a population density of
70,000 per square mile—2.5 times more crowded