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Nov 27 .79 Calcutta

People rush madly for tickets to a new Hindi movie and enterprising ticket scalpers buy large blocks of tickets which they sell at grossly inflated illegal prices. To be able to conduct their business on the sidewalk outside the theater they pay bribes to the local cop. The policeman on duty near the Pieali cinema is known as a greedy brutal fellow. His excessive demands eventually provoke a revolt and the scalpers manage to get the authorities to have him transferred to another district. He is replaced by a less greedy cop whose demands are more reasonable. But the first cop is so greedy he comes back and expects the scalpers to still pay him. He is stabbed to death in daylight before hundreds of people. The killing is publicly blamed on the Noxilitus and the killers never caught. Violent political times always

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provide a cover for settling old debts. The only time I have trouble photographing is in a district where they load and unload trucks. The police openly take bribes from the truck drivers. A hand reaches out of a truck window and a policeman's arm stretches up to receive a few coins. I see this dozens of times. The bribes are small in this case: 50 paise (about 6 or 7 cents). And allow the drivers to park illegally, make illegal turns etc. And the police are not highly paid. Every society evolves a system of loopholes that allows people to survive either legally or illegally. I of course am caught in the crossfire, a stranger to the system with a camera. A cop accosts my assistant and says I have no right to take pictures here. He then harasses my friend in Bengali about bringing a foreigner here to photograph slums when the pictures will be sold for great prices abroad