Badol
Mednipur district, where Badol was born and has lived all his life long, is renowned for its prosperous flower business. In fact, cultivators from Mednipur represent an important, if small, group at Calcutta’s world-famous flower market: the status as cultivators and landowners, rather than retailers or simple hawkers, gives them a particular self-esteem. Not that their lives would be very easy though. To be able to take care of his fields every afternoon, Badol puts up with an extremely hectic routine: every day, waking up at 2 in the morning, he transports a bulk of flowers to the near train station on his bicycle and travels for two-and-half hours to Howrah Station amidst sleepy fellow cultivators and the smell of innumerable sorts of flowers, just to fight for three-four hours with cunning retailers and customers over an adequate price. At 11am, when the market just seems to have woken up, he leaves again, hoping the trains will be on time.