When asked what my favorite place is in Kolkata, it's an easy answer for me as a photographer: the Dhakuria Railway Colony. This settlement has been here for what I presume to be decades, having existed long before my discovery of it around 2011 or so. It took me a few years to get the courage up to go down and wander around the place and take pictures, but after doing so for the first time, I've made it a point to do so at every opportunity whenever I visit.

If you've ever visited Howrah Station and taken the bridge across to reach there, you may have noticed the intermittent but neverending stream of porters sluffing bags to and from the station. When you get up close and personal with them, you get to see how hard and tiring that kind of work is.