Bheestis (Water Carriers) with their leather bottles at Calcutta, India. Photograph circa 1903, Underwood & Underwood archives.

You are near the northern end of the great, open park which they call the Maidan or Esplanade, and are facing east. The Eden Gardens are behind you, with the Ganges river flowing by still farther beyond the gardens. The terminal stations of the East India Railway are over on the other side of the river at the northwest. Dal-housie Square, the Government House and the Post Office are off at your left, beyond those trees; the swarming streets of Calcutta lie partly in that direction and partly at the east (ahead) beyond the Maidan. This roadway along here is a favorite drive for British residents. Notice the sign in English on that tall lamp-post.
These water-carriers perform one of the absolutely indispensable public services here in tropical Calcutta, for they are busy all day long sprinkling the streets from those goatskin bottles, re-filling at the public tanks and sprinkling again and again. Without them the fearful heat would be multiplied as to discomfort. Private house holders engage the regular services of a bheesti to sprinkle the ground about a house and to fill the jars for cleaning, cooking and other domestic uses, (laundry work is not done on the premises)-