Fifty foot of Calcutta's pavement has more life on it than entire cities elsewhere

Tahir Shah is obsessed with Calcutta, and in searching for the city's mysterious underbelly. He believes that the only way to delve into the maze of hidden layers is by total interaction. To this end, he plans to give up his comfortable life and go and live for a month with the million people whose homes are on the Calcutta street. Tahir will sleep on the pavement, wash in the gutters, and try to eke a living along with everyone else.

Calcutta's street dwellers all rely on their incredible ingenuity to survive. It's this rare quality that Tahir will have to develop if he's to survive: whether it be telling fortunes or touting knicknacks, treating wounds, or selling toilet paper pilfered from fancy hotels. His guide to the underbelly of India's most overpowering city will be a twelve-year-old survivor of the street, Bhalu Das. Expert fixer and diehard Calcuttan, Bhalu will watch Tahir's back, as well as making sure he doesn't slope off for a quick Big Mac.

The film (proposed one hour on Super-16 & DV) will involve the process of Tahir selecting a stretch of pavement on which to live, and learning the ropes from others who already live there. We see it as very important that the film isn't just a stunt, but is more dynamic: that it draws the audience into a world which is usually hidden and misunderstood.

The theme of Calcutta's ingenuity is one we want to explore through Tahir's interaction. Possible masters of ingenuity who Tahir has encountered before in Calcutta are:

Shamila Roy: She runs a street café in the centre of town. It’s always packed with beggars. The unusual thing is that you don’t need money, but you have to pay if you want to eat. Every morning Sharmila’s daughters forage through dustbins and get scraps, which they spice heavily and serve up. The café doesn’t take money in payment, but odds and ends: a lightbulb stolen from the train, an old shoe or a dog-eared paperback.

Rajma Bose: She sits on the street corner with a cow and a heap of freshly cut grass. Passing commuters pay her a small coin and then feed a few strands of grass to the sacred animal. Most people don’t look twice, and are missing Calcutta’s ingenuity. Rajma doesn’t own the cow, she just looks after it for the milkman, who’s finished with it after milking at 5AM. The situation suits everyone: The milkman’s happy to have the cow looked after and fed for free; Rajma’s happy too as she’s got a livelihood; the commuters are happy as they will get blessed in the afterlife for a divine act; and the cow is thrilled to be pampered and fed all day.

Shom Bannerjee: If you go into the Bow Bazaar you’ll find Shom sweeping the dust from jewellery workshops. He’s not employed to do this, but rather he pays the workshop owners for the privilege. He takes the dust and processes it with barium on a fire in the street. The process leaves him with a few beads of gold, which he sells. In Calcutta 100,000 people make their living in the same way.