skip's blog

Kolkatta, Pt 1

I hated leaving Hyderabad. I really did. It felt like a young, optimistic city, and – despite the things about it that induced a certain type of cultural whiplash – it was a place where I felt totally okay in my own skin.

Nothing about Hyderabad would prepare you for Kolkata anymore than Louisville would prepare a guy for Detroit. Kolkata – formerly known as Calcutta – is a hardcore place. I’ve been to some tough places, but Kolkata takes the cake. I’d seen poverty, but let’s put it this way. If poverty was basketball, everything I’d seen in the States was Bill Russell. New Delhi was Wilt Chamberlain. Kolkatta was fast forward to Shaq, Kobe, and Kevin Garnett.

The city airport is maybe twenty minutes out of town, but you feel like you’re in the heart of things long before you’re even in the proper city limits. There’s a lot of movement late into the night, streetside food stands, tuk-tuks, beggars, and the general city loitering of thin brown men in short sleeves that is a constant in urban India.

As Hyderabad is a city evolving, Kolkata looks as if its best days have come and gone. The British got there in 1690, to take advantage of the tea and spice trade, and shaped the city in their own image. The British influence is still strong despite their not having any say over India since the 1940’s. The English provincial architecture brings to mind all those clips of London in the 1950’s. But the pollution has cast a harsh, dingy, grey soot all over the city, and even the nice buildings look to have seen better days. And they have.

But Kolkata is also a city full of life. There are street vendors, hotels, computer stores, bars, restaurants, men’s shops, book stores… No matter how poor the poor here may be, commerce abounds. People walking around with purpose. Things to do, gotta be on time.

The pollution is like absolutely nothing I have ever encountered, with the exception of the San Fernando Valley during the days of the fires in the summer months of 2009. The air is so bad you could cut it with a knife. The taxis are in bad repair, from the exhaust system on up, so the carbon monoxide smell on the streets is up to the minute. You get headaches and your eyes hurt. The traffic is like New Delhi pissed off. The taxi drivers will try to rip you off as a rule. Everyone advises me to demand the drivers turn the meter on, otherwise… And, this being India, the amount on the meters is doubled plus you add two rupees. This is because it has been so long since the fare boxes were updated that everyone is required to know this piece of commuter methodology. And, this being India, everyone does.
My computer broke the night we got there. I asked someone at the American Center if there someone knew where to go to get an Apple iBook looked at. They found me a place that was a short hop down the street, just slightly too far to walk. I grabbed a cab and told the guy to turn on the meter and take me to the train station just over the bridge. From there, it was just a block or two to the local Apple authorized repair shop.

Well, the driver got me there. The fare box said thirty rupees. I gave him sixty-five, got out, and started walking down a big business street whose name I can’t recall. It was high noon, and I felt like I was in something like a cross between The Cabinet Of Dr Calgeri and Wall Street. Kolkata is one of the great cities of the modern world in some ways, but it is fucking gothic. I don’t care how tough your town is – Kolkata will sober you up.

The poverty here is likely the most intense in India. I don’t know what the official numbers are, but anything you can imagine is likely correct. Those little begging kids like in Slumdog Millionaire are out in force, and they’re insistent. There are old blind people lumbering around with bowls. They’re filthy. I saw a guy about my age laying on the curb with a gaping hole in his left foot where his toes had been not long before. This was a brand new wound. One of his toes was a few feet away. I think he had been hit shortly before by some small vehicle. It was positively grotesque.

Coming face to face with one’s own humanity in this situation is unavoidable. Do you call a cop? Do you give the guy money? Or do you just walk on?

The byword of traveling in India is – after “don’t drink the water” – not to give any money to anyone begging. You will be surrounded by beggars in nanoseconds. No joke. Tracy gave a lollipop to a kid in one of the outdoor markets, and she was nearly stomped by a horde of children with their hands out. Coming up in Philly during the Reagan era gave me important training for looking away from people in dire circumstances. And the age range of Kolkatta’s begging forces is about 5 years up to however old you can live to be when you’re homeless, blind, missing a limb, and whatever else can be heaped upon a human in the name of desperation. Thanks to trickle-down economics, I can look past anyone’s misery and just keep walking. Even in Kolkatta.

The Government College of Art & Craft (the GCAC) is on a big main street called Jawharlal Nehru Rd, which is lined with outdoor stalls like 52nd St in West Philly. You need a wallet, purse, fake Gucci, sunglasses, this is it. I bought a bunch of wallets, keychains, and toys to give as gifts. The leather stuff there is a steal for the price. Also, the coordinator from the American Center was having a special dinner for Tracy at the Calcutta Club – which is one of those old-money clubs like the one Dan Akyroyd gets thrown out of in the early part of Trading Places – so I bought a pair of black pleated slacks at one of the local men’s stores there. Cost about twelve dollars, and they’re pretty nice.

The college was built in the 1850’s by the British. They had originally intended it as a school for engineering and architecture, but the fine arts prevailed.
It’s a very contained campus. It looks vaguely fortress-y from the front. If you’re driving in, you come through a gate. The building – and sidewalk -- is basically four sides outlining a square grassy courtyard spotted with a variety of trees and shrubs. These are some very motivated young people, and – much as it was in Hyderabad -- I fell in love with these people to a one, starting with the painting professor, Dipali Bhattacharya, who is one of the greatest hostesses I’ve ever encountered. Upon finding out that Tracy and I liked what we’d had of Bengali food but didn’t really know our way around the menu, she announced that she would personally cook the next day’s lunch.

posted by skip heller @ 3:34 PM