Bengali Child Catchers, & other smatters and snatches.

Kolkata, West Bengal, deeply mysterious one day, way enigmatic the next.

Here the time honoured rules just don’t apply.

This Lady, for example, seems to believe that orange and green shouldn’t be seen…unless there’s a wacking great pot on your head.

Or is it pink and yeller that shouldn’t be seen…unless there’s a blue and white road divider in between ?

The mysteries proliferate, piling one upon the other.

This below ?  Don’t ask us, we just don’t know !  A small golden head at a drunken angle, on the end of a torch clutched by a giant paint spattered black hand ?  Well…..that’d be…..ummmmm…..let’s see……..errrrr……..no, we give up.

A dignified Sikh steps past a building site – laundromat.

A small bicycle propelled metal cage filled with school children rumbles by.

?!!?*#?!!!

We blink, and pinch ourselves.

Is this it ?  Is it time for the men with the butterfly nets to check us into the clinic where we can spend the rest of our days weaving baskets out of spaghetti ?  Have we finally cracked and slipped through a portal into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang land ?  Is Bobby Helpmann at the reins ?

No, not at all, just your friendly local sub contractor taking the kids from the Lake School for Girls home.  Phew !

Garbage monkeys, painted peacocks and achingly beautiful (even though incredibly commonplace) buildings look on.