Welcome to India : BB2 9pm

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n8278

“Don’t you think it’s outstanding that our planet supports 7 billion of us… and counting” 

THE END AND THE BEGINNING

Over 1,500 years ago in Southern Italy lived Zeno of Elea. A kind of C5thBC Willy-Wonker-meets-Will-Self, Zeno decided that his philosophising friends had bitten off a little too much of the proverbial biscuit and that it was time to really shake up the biscuit tin. To help unleash his cunning plan upon the world he called upon a tortoise to assist. He challenged this tortoise to a race against the ancient Greek version of Usain Bolt, Achilles, but gave him a 100-metre head start (he is a tortoise after all). 

However, (and Olympics officials cover your ears here) Zeno rigs the race with a brilliantly absurdist piece of logic: Bolt can never overtake the Tortoise because to over-take him, he must first reach and pass the point at which the tortoise started the race. And by the time Bolt reaches this point, the tortoise will have moved slightly further on, and so the process continues infinitely. Bolt is bolted to second place, rather than bolts to first. 

GOLD IN THE GUTTER

Luckily for the future Olympians, it is possible to solve this conundrum by simply taking a walk. “Solvitur Ambulando”. And it’s this idea that brings me to the stories of Kaale and Rajesh, two slum-dwellers in C21st Kolkata, the subjects of BBC2’s ‘Welcome to India’, part 1. Both have awe-inspiringly entrepreneurial answers to what many see as the dead-end of extreme poverty. From panning for gold in the city’s sewers, to selling illegal alcohol on a squatter’s beach, they show that existence can be secured by taking a walk around a city with eyes open to its practical possibilities; that human ingenuity can always fight paradox that holds back with absurdist pragmatism that moves forward. Where I would see a drain, Kaale sees golden plenty. 

As you meet their families and friends, you fall ever deeper into their lives. It’s almost visceral: the seeping sludge of the sewer, the warm satisfaction of imagining how to order a new home. The crunch of the program for me is Kaale’s sense that he is being cheated by the gold-trader who buys his sewage. When he finally secures a fair deal, you suspect his happiness is as great as any banker’s on getting his bonus. Their stories leave you feeling that the achievements of the ‘Developed’ are built upon the shoulders of giants like Kaale and Rajesh; their far away lives showing application, sacrifice, endurance, resourcefulness and hope afresh and up-close.

INFINITELY DEMANDING

 Sometimes The Great Capitalised challenges facing our planet – Poverty, Climate Change, Depleted Resources – feel as if they’ve had the-Achillies-and-the-Tortoise logic applied to them. When I start thinking about them my grey cells get stuck in a deeply frustrating, tortoise-always-out-of-reach loop. However, just as some of the stories we tell  - like Zeno’s paradox - can get us into these dead-ends, so others – like Welcome to India – get us out.  Zeno’s paradox is solved by the gloriously simple, physical, practical act of walking, which, like great documentaries, redirects our attention to our world-bound physicality. And it also makes us think infinitely. As Georg Cantor argued, some infinities are bigger than others. But it’s not the size, nor the speed, nor the race that matters. It’s the walking and the infinity themselves. Kaale and Rajesh’s walk is seriously tough, and could be tragically short, and I wouldn’t, probably couldn’t, swap places with them. But programs like Welcome To India suggest that it’s their invisible lives we need to pay more attention to -  in order to better face our own.