There’s a long pause from Dr Ethel Crowley when she is asked how re-entry to whining old Ireland felt after six weeks in the “falling down” city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). The rather shy, Cork-based sociologist and jam-maker extraordinaire, says finally: “What we think are problems aren’t problems at all.” In measured tones, she talks about the filthy, throat-clogging air, the constant honking of car-horns, the in-your-face disconnect between the destitute pavement dwellers and western-style apartments, the haunted face of the little country girl forced into prostitution, the intelligence radiating from the rickshaw-puller, earning 80 cent a day: “Who knows what he might have been, born into a different place?”
This week, she launched a 145-page book of superbly researched words and pictures on the Hope Foundation’s mighty works with Kolkata’s slum children, getting beyond the cliches of “the country of 1,600 languages” with a keen, scientific eye and hefty doses of realism.
If you press her, the keen cook might also impart her recipe for rhubarb jam, a sweet little fund-raiser.
Daring to Dream – The Work of The Hope Foundation in Indiais available from hopefoundation.ie for €25.99. All proceeds go straight to the foundation. The children pictured have parents engaged with Hope's HIV/Aids hospice.
