City of Sweat - Kolkata

---

In my imagination Calcutta was a romantic, exotic place; home of the British Raj. I imagined old steamboats chugging up the Houghli River arriving at veranda bungalows. This image was battling beside what I knew was one of the world's most besieged cities, the waves of floods, people, poverty and pollution had caused other travellers to warn us that it was not a place to hang around in. Still it is India's cultural capital; many great authors, academics and cricketers hail from here.

Calcutta has not disappointed. Now known as Kalkota it is described as "the City of Joy" or "the City of the Heart" in the tourist blurb, but the name comes from "Kali Ghat", meaning the riverbank (ghat) of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction. Fancy Raj buildings and churches are dotted around the city centre, interspersed with monstrous 60’s tower blocks and some newer shiny glass buildings too.

After half an hour of paperwork we get our bikes released from the cargo shed and cycle out of the enormous station into the legendary chaos of Kolkata traffic. We crossed the Houghli river on the world’s busiest bridge, but found the experience not as hectic as we feared. This is apparently the busiest bridge in the world.The pace of traffic was necessarily slow and we joined the many other cyclists pedalling over the great river. In fact the traffic is really not that bad at all; roads have lane markings, there are traffic lights, stop lines and policeman directing traffic and amazingly the cars, buses, taxis, rickshaws and countless motorbikes all obey these traffic rules! It is quite bizarre to us, used as we are to the usual anarchic free-for-all.

In addition to this moving around Kolkata is made even easier by a network of street-trams, admittedly many are pretty ancient, battered beasts that clatter along slowly reminding us of the old soviet era trams in L’viv back in Ukraine. Kolkata also has India’s first metro; although its no longer as smart as Delhi’s brand new one it is years ahead of Glasgow’s! Every time we go out into the town we are surprised again by the efficiency of the place; there are zebra crossings and traffic lights that the cars respect! The litter is no way near as bad as other Indian cities. There are no cows around nor are there piles of sh*t in the street. The one unique form of transport in
Kolkata is the human powered rickshaw - instead of a cycle rickshaw this is basically a 2 person chariot that is pulled by a tiny Bengali guy who runs full pelt down busy streets barefoot, with tingling bells on the handles to alert pedestrians to get out of the way (there are no brakes…). I had thought that the cycle rickshawaw pullers had a hard enough job until we saw these guys.

We head to Sudder Street but find cheaper lodgings around the corner in an alley full of hotels used mostly by visiting Bangladeshi’s. Sudder Street was once home to the legendary Bengali writer Rabindranth Tagore, but is now Kolkata’s backpacker ghetto. We had heard nasty stories about the place but it was pretty tame in comparison to Pahar Ganj in Delhi.

Our first mission is to try and collect a package of much needed cycle parts from the Post Office, and we set off expecting it to take all afternoon, possibly longer. The city streets are bustling with shoppers and traders and we really like the atmosphere of the place. At the GPO the staff instantly know what we are talking about when we ask for
Poste Restante collection and a few minutes later we have our parts! This leaves us free to wander aimlessly through the city centre which is just what we do. The pavements are crowed and uneven and packed with people but there is no hectic rush and everyone seems to be happy. Traders and hawkers spread their wares all over the place and it is something of an obstacle course but a fun one.

Our favourite street traders are the guys selling big green drinking coconuts. For few rupees they deftly split the top open with a machete and stick a straw in for you drink the pure coconut water. When this is finished they split the coconut in two and slice off a piece of husk so you can scoop out the white fleshy meat to eat - delicious. Whilst we learn this technique for the first time a Bengali businessman chats to us and is surprised to learn we have no coconuts in Britain - “but it is a very coastal place and these fruits are growing in coastal areas, no?” We try to explain that Scotland is not quite as tropical as Bengal.

Many of the street and place names sounded familiar, Dalhousie Square, Ochterlony Monument, Fort William, we think other Scots were here before us. Of course Calcutta was the base of the British East India Company and later the Capital of the British Raj, Britain’s Empire in India. Many of the prominent early colonists and East India company members were Scots and their names have been immortalised in Calcutta’s geography. A dubious period of Scottish history to say the least and one that shows the myth of many Scots’ belief that Scotland was as much a victim of the “English Empire” as countries like India were.

Although there a few fancy colonial era buildings Kolkata has few of the ancient monuments that the likes of Old Delhi, Agra or Jaipur have; none of the more modern imperial state complexes of New Delhi, and few of the temples, mosques and religious complexes of a city like Varanasi. Instead central Kolkata is simply a busy, bustling, thriving business city but for some reason we liked it more than many of these other cities. I’m still not sure why but the atmosphere and language all helped. Perhaps it is the legacy of the British that has meant that we enjoy this place more than others, or maybe it is down to the communist/socialist local government. Anyway whatever the reason Kalkota has a well educated and friendly population and plenty of historical buildings to amuse the foreign visitor for a while.

We have left the Hindi speaking world behind; the local language is Bengali but nearly everyone also speaks excellent English - India’s common language outside if the Hindi ‘cowbelt’ of the northern plains. English language dominates and we have no difficulty communicating with most locals. Many have very clear BBC style accents and understand us readily, unlike in other parts of India where Robin had to adopt an Indian accent and head waggle to be understood, and I usually couldn’t be understood at all. I even ask one guy if he had lived or studied in the UK because of his accent but he laughs and says “no, I had a Kolkata education”.

The majority of signs and notices are also in English, including numerous political posters etc. and the fact we can read and understand these probably adds a lot to our enjoyment of the city, we feel closer and to what is happening and the vibes of the place as we have more of an insight into what is going on. The city is controlled by the Communist Party of India and is highly socialist. Not surprising in such a crowded city, and it was rare to wander far without finding some sort of protest or demonstration happening from small scale strikes and protests by the workers of individual shops or banks to much larger marches or street demo’s.

Alongside the thriving business culture and the evident riches of some, and despite a socialist government, there is also deep poverty in Kolkata. Turn a corner from the busy business streets and you will find the pavement dwellers, and not just the paan traders who sleep on the pavements next to their small wooden boxes containing their livelihood but whole families that sleep under tarpaulins. During the day the tarps are rolled up and they live on their patch of cement with their few belongings piled around them; a blackened stove and set of pans, a few wooden boxes perhaps with their only possessions inside and rolled up mattress and blankets. Small children play in the rubbish while we join the thousands of others who walk through their living room/kitchen/bedroom during the day, trying not to imagine their life. As dusk falls the stoves and cooking fires are lit, the men return from work or from looking for work and groups huddle together to eat and share stories about the day. The tarpaulins are tied up again, beds are unrolled and we walk in the quieter roads that are now lined with these permanent ‘homes’.

After the success of getting our parts from the GPO Robin needs to buy some quality steel balls to re-build his dodgy rear hub, and one afternoon sets off thinking it will be an easy mission. Unfortunately the bearings agents he had spotted nearby only sold bearings rings for trucks, but one of them gives him an address for a ball bearing dealer telling him it is close by. He sets off optimistically with his scrap of paper asking for directions to BRB Bose road. Unfortunately 2 hours later having walked in many large circles he is still searching. Nobody wants to admit they don’t know where the road is and usually after consulting a few other passers by, they wave him off in a certain direction, only for him to end up somewhere he has already been and then be sent back the way he has just come by the next group of helpers. On the verge of giving up a group of paan sellers decipher the full name of the road - the BRB being an acronym for the full name of some prominent Bengali. Indians, especially Bengali’s it seems, simply love acronyms.

With the road name in full he has slightly more success and soon finds his way to BRB Bose Road, more commonly known as BRB Basu Road. Of course there are many ways to transliterate from Bengali script to English, but had he been asking for Basu road it may have saved a lot of time. He then realises the road is even more commonly known by the old colonial name of Canning Street!! Had he been asking for Canning Street it would have taken about 10 minutes. The search is far from over though, the address he had is for number 138 but this turns out to span an entire block with hundreds of shops on it. It is an old colonial red-brick hulk of a building that has been sub-divided over and over without any re-numbering. He can’t find Ghandi & Ghandi anywhere, and is told it is “backside” i.e. around the back. The far side of the building is on a different street and has a different number, however. He is about to give up again when he spots a narrow, dark hole in the front of the building. Inside is labyrinth of narrow alleyways that lead deeper into the bowels of the building and are lined with tiny shops, and eventually he finds the bearing guys at the deepest, darkest corner. The shopkeepers are surprised to see a foreigner, especially one who is so happy to have finally found them!

We have not actually had enough energy to do justice to Kalkota; unfortunately I have not shaken off the stomach trouble that I brought here from Varanasi. Our original plan was to buy Bangladeshi visas and then cycle through Bangladesh towards Assam and the North Eastern states of India, however illnesses and the heavy heat and humidity caused us to re-think. We had had enough of the sweltering, overcrowded plains and so decided to try our luck on the trains again, taking a quicker but less direct route to Assam.

It took a good 3 hours to actually manage to buy the train ticket and try to find out the procedure here for booking our bikes on. In the process we visit nearly every shed and counter in the enormous cargo area of Kolkata’s massive Howgarth station but are assured there will be no problems loading our bikes onto the train once we have the tickets. Buying the tickets is a nightmare as there is an enormous scrum for the tiny windows. Robin joins the men and learns about the various elbowing techniques; fortunately I manage to join the VIP queue for ladies travelling alone, senior citizens and freedom fighters!! Despite the fact I am not travelling alone they sell me 2 tickets anyway and we take the river ferry back across the Houghli as the sunsets. The river boats are a great way to see the city and the thick, brown river which that evening is flowing rapidly inland with a rising tide from the Bay of Bengal.

Our train doesn’t leave for a couple of days which means we can spend some time sightseeing, in between simply stewing in our own sweat and taking regular cold showers. We spend a lot of time in the huge Maidan park that dominates the city centre and is the only green space in the city - green space like this being a rare thing in any Indian city. The park is often really busy with groups of boys and young men playing cricket, herds of goats grazing the grass, even a few ponies, and lots of couples out strolling in the cooler evening air. On Sunday it is crammed full of people, there are ponies galloping paying punters up and down through the middle of dozens of cricket games and some huge communist rally that has been bussed in for a day in the park.

In the centre of the park stands the colonial era Victoria Monument, looking a bit like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The nearby St. Paul’s Cathedral looks totally different however. We pay a visit to this church, the head of the Anglican Church in India. It is quite a strange experience to visit a church again as opposed to the mosques and Hindu temples we have been used to for the last year. It doesn’t really feel very spiritual at all, perhaps because we keep our shoes on inside, or maybe just because we are not concerned about committing some cultural faux-pas. The walls inside are covered in memorial plaques to British soldiers or “members of the honorable company”, many with Scottish sounding names again. The only Indians commemorated on the walls are the native wives taken by some Britishers, though these focus not on their ‘great deeds’ in life but on their conversion from ‘hindoo-ism’. The head of the church is still a white Britisher, as it always has been. Robin found the huge banyan tree in the gardens outside a lot more spiritual.

We also visit the British cemetery, where the prominent members of the Raj were buried. Beneath a canopy of jungle trees lies a maze of truly bizarre mausoleums and monuments which give some insight into the opulence of these people's lives. Even in death they behave like royalty or even gods, many of the tombs are modeled on Greek or Roman temples; there are a few obelisks and even a decent sized pyramid! Talk about pharaoh complexes..! Many of the dead had died very young though, often shortly after arriving in India or even on the voyage out from Britain. Some had clearly taken to native life quite well though; one stone informed us that the man buried below had “perished from inordinate use of the hookah pipe”. I can think of worse ways to go.

---

Photos

Howrah Bridge and Houghli River
This is apparently the busiest bridge in the world.

Bad 1960's Architecture
Gets everywhere eh?

Most Unwanted
Ah-ha! I was so happy to see this all over Kolkata, not even in Iran or Pakistan did we see such a thing. And from the Street Hawkers Union no less... Power to the People!

B.B.D Bagh, a.k.a Dalhousie Square
Suprisngly full of water.

Modest Memorial
The Cemetary for 'Britishers'

Comments

[maider]

salut les amis!!!
Just a word to tell you that i m happy each time i can read something about u. I want to send to you few good thoughts. see u and besos maider

[Farhan]

i LIke kolk ata