The Forgotten / A Morning In Allahbad (Photographs & Article by C. Lazarus).

Morning had hardly broken into song, when our Tuk Tuk driver flicked his spliff out the side of his vehicle and violently pulled into a gas station, coming to a screeching halt. Three men in rags sauntered over and without notice they burst into a heated debate. After five minutes of squabbling the three men filled the tank, somehow making use of all six collective hands and the driver through a dialect of sign language insisted we pay. It was too early to barter, we just paid and got on our way.

We passed the railway station where locals gathered to utilise the fresh water facilities. It was still menacingly dark outside, but the city was awakening. door ways filled with maids, who hurriedly swept at the evening's dust and litter gathering. It had been stormy through the night and the evidence lay scattered across the streets.

Allahbad wasn't designed for tourists or visitors. The locals barely turned their heads as I hung from the side of the Tuk Tuk clicking away like a woodpecker, moustache blowing in the wind. The engine choking away obnoxiously like a fat hungover Brit who's burping and farting at the breakfast table, talking loudly into a cellphone without a care in the world.

It had been somewhat promised to us by a man with no teeth, that the morning scene by the Triveni Sangam, where three major rivers come together was top of the list of activities and things to do in Allahbad. You couldn't get a word in without someone mentioning the Sangam.

As the pollution began to drift across the water we arrived at first light. It gave the scene a makeover that sort of masked the filth and dirt gathering on the banks. But like most places in India it seemed to be just another gathering of men with nothing else to do, but chew tobacco and argue endlessly every daily task. Skinny animals stood on weak and wobbly legs grazing on scraps, a Baba, who looked a far cry from the ones featured in guide books poked about with his stick looking for something to eat or smoke. He glanced at me for a moment and smiled. I thought, shit, India is fucked.

The government is failing in India's biggest and well-known cities. It has been for decades and the abandonment and delapidation of this haunted place is more clear than anywhere else I'd been. It was a city of ghosts.

It seemed on every corner there was something to watch that left you heart-broken. Strangely my attention always turns to the dogs like this poor soul left trailing through sludge for something to eat.

Have a good day,
Cotton Lazarus.