Mission of Charity

Millions of people follow their unique paths from womb to tomb on the streets of Kolkata - the overpopulated capital of West Bengal, which rots and blossoms on the carcass of the British colonial metropolis. Hundreds of volunteers come every year to this den of bare life and social suffering to devote themselves to humanitarian work. Many of them end up at Kalighat Home for Dying Destitutes run by the Catholic order of Missionaries of Charity. The home is a place where borders are transgressed, where dirt is seen as an attribute of sacred life, where young fair skin touches crippled suffering dark body of the Other, where death is an everyday routine. The collision of worlds, languages, bodies and souls under the roof of an old Hindu shrine turned into a Home for the Dying in the heart of the 'blessed hell' of Kolkata doesn't leave anyone who once entered it intact.