Early morning streets of Calcutta are full of mist and the smoke of burning trash which exude a smell only familiar to India; I think it's the leaves that the street sweepers toss on the pyres. Hundreds of sleeping bodies wrapped in blankets and R.E.M. lined the sidewalks along the roads on the way in the final minutes before dawn.
My taxi dropped me just before the road veers into the bridge. There I was above the Mullick ghat(bathing steps to the river) think the Mullicks of Burrabazar but this one was erected by the British in their name. Here is one of the oldest bathing ghats in Calcutta, there in the shadows of the metal trellis architecture of the Howrah Bridge, enshrouded in mystery by the fading darkness.....this ghat has a special 'Zenana Ghat' (a section exclusively for women) attached to it which is a witness to that era when women of the aristocratic families were brought here in palanquins. The whole carriage was then dipped into the holy river so that the lady of the house was not seen by the proletariat. 
I witheld my descent down the steps because 25 feet below was something out of a scene from Constantinople. Gerbers sunflowers, roses, dahlias and mountains of marigolds amid throngs of bodies moving them from one hand to next. Garlands being draped about sellers bodies like some cosmic dress of the Gods. Exhuberant shouting, the zealous pander... all as the sun was rising on this rainbow spectacle between shanty shacks, railroad tracks and the grey shores of the Hooghly. I walked silently through the morning and this parade of petals with my lens wide open and was offered a tea in a terracotta cup at the end of the line.
