Photos

Streets are the life-blood for most of Kolkata's residents--it is where people make their daily living, or where they purchase the ingredients for a meal. A vendor sells cauliflower by a bus stop, early in the evening, hoping to complete his sales before it gets too late. Each rearragement in the position of the vegetables is an unquantifiable attempt to attract a new customer.

As supermarkets begin their relentless global push to homogenise our experiences of the diversity of food, we should not romanticise the conditions depicted here. But we should at least reflect on why the only official alternative to eaking out an existence selling food on the street is a hypermarket which will destroy this vendor's livelihood.

(reason for the title, a quote from Mark Twain: "Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education")