BEAUTY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF BUSINESS

Kolkata starts its day on slow simmer. The sun rises over the Hooghly by 6 a.m, but the city does not rush itself. Breakfast is a leisurely affair over tea, luchi alur-dom and deem paurutis.

- TEXT BY SHRITI DAS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADITYARAJ MEHTA PRODUCED BY MRUDUL PATHAK KUNDU

The City of Joy respects appetite and delays with equanimity. But on the other side of the Hooghly, under the Howrah Bridge, the Mullick Ghat flower market has already finished its day's most intense work. The flowers have long reached neighbourhoods that are just beginning to stir. It's 5 a.m. as we make our way down from the bridge, navigating smaller flower vendors into the bigger market that bustles on the banks of the Hooghly. The market is wide awake, like it never slept, as if it has pulled an all-nighter and carried the same energy into the early hours of the day.

Unlike the rest of Kolkata, where people are generally unhurried and surprisingly patient, there is no such generosity here. "Didi raasta chhaadun," a man yells at me. Loosely translating to, "Sister, give way," I am rebuked by men hurrying past us with their arms raised, carrying cascades of marigold garlands held high above their heads, or at times balancing wide baskets of flowers. It is difficult to walk fast as muck (petals, stems, river water and dark alluvial mud) keeps clinging to my shoes. In theory it's the same fertile silt that blooms these flowers but under my shoes, it's noticeably less romantic and indifferent to what I find beautiful, gathering everything that we have come to admire and what we find disgusting. But if you get past the grime, you notice the beauty that exists despite the crud.