Pod Academy

Jeremy Seabrook talks to Caspar Melville about life in Muslim communities in the slums of Kolkata, and paints a powerful and shocking picture of people who have suffered centuries of expropriation, loss, driven migration and involuntary separations and now find themselves at the wrong end of globalisation. The conversation draws on the study by Jeremy Seabrook and Imram Ahmed Siddiqui, People Without History (Pluto Press) Caspar started by asking Jeremy to describe  the Kolkata slums. Jeremy Seabrook:   The first thing you notice in the poorest part of Topsia is the canal – which is the channel for waste water.  So the first thing you notice is the smell.  The smell of decaying garbage and sewage.  It is overwhelming. The second is the way houses have been constructed out of industrial debris, old bamboo, wood, boxes, and old bags of fertiliser and phosphate, all kinds of stuff. It is a very improvised looking place.  It is very stony, the houses are very close together.  There is just about room to trundle