 Summary of this article
- Beneath Kolkata’s flyovers live thousands of paperless Bangladeshi migrants who physically transform into animals at night to stay invisible.
- Their ancient survival technique, born during 13th-century invasions and refined across centuries of borders, lets them escape detection and deportation.
- A hospital doctor discovers the truth and quietly plants trees and leaves food to protect the “overbridge people” who sweep the city by day and change by night.
I. The Night Walk
The emergency had taken most of the night. By the time I stepped out of SSKM Hospital, it was a little past two in the morning—Kolkata's hour of suspension, when the noise dies but the city doesn't quite sleep. The air smelled of wet dust, diesel, and the faint antiseptic I had carried out on my clothes. My cousin was stable, sedated, breathing evenly under the bluish hospital lights. There was nothing more I could do.
The auto stand was empty. A lone taxi passed, too fast to flag down. So I began walking, letting the night wrap itself around me like a damp shawl. Forty minutes if I cut across the Rabindra Sadan/Maa overbridge—a route I had walked countless times. But that night the shadows felt thicker, the silence more alert.
As I approached the overbridge, I noticed movement near its pillars. At first, I thought it was the usual—people sleeping rough, wrapped in thin blankets. But these shapes were not sleeping. They were emerging from somewhere beneath the concrete itself, crawling from narrow openings I had never noticed in years of passing.
Their limbs moved wrong. Too low to the ground. Bent at angles that made my throat tighten.
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I should have crossed the road. Should have looked away.
Instead, I stepped closer.
One figure straightened, slow and deliberate, brushing soil off his shirt. The streetlight caught his face.
"Bappada?"
He froze. In the dim orange glow, I could see it was indeed him—the sweeper from our hospital, the quiet man who greeted me every morning with folded hands and a soft "Good morning, sir."
Only now his face was covered with coarse dark hair, almost like an animal's pelt. His eyes glinted amber, reflecting the streetlight the way cats' eyes do in headlights.
"Sir," he said hoarsely, his voice tight with fear. "You should not be here."
Behind him, more shapes gathered in the sodium light. A woman crouched on all fours, her spine curved in a way human backs don't curve, moving with fluid animal grace. Two children stood half-hidden—one with something like feathers poking through a torn shirt, the other hopping on legs that had fused into a single powerful limb. An elderly man's face had begun elongating into a blunt snout.
Their eyes—all of them—watched me with a wary, feral intelligence.
My mouth had gone dry. "Bappada, what is this? What are you?"
He raised a trembling hand. "Please, sir. Sit with me. Not near the openings—those lead down. But sit. I will tell you."
TMC Seeks Renaming Of West Bengal As 'Bangla'
BY PTI |
