India 2012: Kolkata, Calcultta, Tomato, Tomato (4/9-4/12)

No matter how you pronounce it, Kolkata is a big place to tackle in two days.  But two days was all we had, so we tackled.

We didn’t want to go, but we had to!  Cecilia’s India visa was expiring on the 14th of April, and I had to go home to pick up some freelance work.

Yep.  After three months, work worth taking finally came knocking.  These trips don’t pay for themselves!  That said, backpacking is really not that expensive.  If you eat and sleep cheaply, it can be more affordable to be abroad than to be home.

For example, even in big cities in India, it’s perfectly feasible to:

• eat breakfast for $2 US
• eat lunch for $3-5 US
• eat dinner for $3-5 US
• stay in a room that runs $6 US
• Ride the bus or metro around town for a dollar or two a day.

That’s about $20 US per day for eating and walking around if you’re frugal.  It’s cheaper than staying home and moping around, that’s for sure!

We arrived at Kolkata’s Howrah Station by (inexpensive) 16-hour sleeper-class train from Varanasi.

Morning on the night train from Varanasi to Kolkata.  The guy in the red shirt and his wife were the lovey-est couple in India.

Oddly, there were no rickshaw drivers to greet us upon disembarkation from the train at Kolkata’s Howrah station.  There were hardly any rickshaw drivers anywhere.  Something was different.  There was a sense of modernity and organization in the air.  Kolkata was DIFFERENT.

A tout-less late morning arrival in Kolkata.

From Howrah station, Kolkata proper is located to the east, across the Hooghly River, a distributary of the Ganga.  Once you exit the station, there are a number of ferry companies located just across the road that’ll shuttle you to different points along the east riverbank.  We chose the first ferry company we saw in the standard traveler way of “act like you know where you’re going even though you have no idea”, paid our four-or-so Rupees apiece and settled in for a short, loud ride across the river.

A man in his twenties with mangled legs stood about as tall as our knees and made rounds on the uncrowded ferry collecting spare Rupees.  I got to thinking about India’s many poor.

What I thought:  wouldn’t it be nice if there was a job for this person?  If he’s going to ride the ferry all day anyway, why not find a way to give him self-worth and purpose?  Even jobs as small as cleaning the boat or collecting tickets could be awarded to a man such as this.  Why not?

There are plenty of instances of this throughout the subcontinent such as the young begging boys that clean the floors of the trains by pushing trash with their forearms while they scoot along the dirty surface and begging along the way.  Would it be possible to hire said boys to clean the train for a wage?

Edit, 6/25/12:  I know these views are a bit idealistic and don’t capture the big picture.  But upon first exposure to such things, this is the direction my brain went.  Things are more nuanced / complicated than I know, and I’m not offering a solution nor a grand overview.  Just my feelings.

Since this post, I’ve learned that sleeper class is subsidized, and thus services hover at a bit lower point than the AC cars.  It adds up.  That said, I still prefer sleeper class to the higher tiers and am not complaining about the quality of service or cleanliness.

Copywriter need smarter brain.

Still no rickshaws on the other side of the river, so we jumped in an old black-and-yellow Ambassador cab.  Something like 100 Rupees got us to Sudder Street, the primary backpacker ghetto of Kolkata and all-around good jump off point for activity in the city.  Sudder Street is also a short distance from Mother Teresa house – a great place to volunteer if you have enough time to do so.  Unfortunately, we didn’t this time around.

We needed a room for two short nights and settled on the second place we saw with a shrug.

The Hotel Paragon, down a narrow alley off Sudder St, was a dump, and the management were jerks, but it would have to do for the 350 Rupees we were spending for a double.  We nicknamed the Spartan room “jail”.  Returning to the room?  “Going to jail.”

Cecilia serves a short sentence.

“jail” exterior.

our contribution.

It was good enough, though.  Jail was a dry, somewhat clean place to sleep, and we planned only spending sleeping hours there anyway – there was so much more to do outside the room!

The first thing we noticed about Kolkata was its air of charming, slightly decayed modernity that set it apart from other Indian cities I had spent time in, including Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.  Wide sidewalks, fully paved roads, buildings that were made to last, no cows.  It felt a strange Indian mix of Chicago and Bangkok.

I like the sort of chaos and unpredictability that many Indian cities offer, but a little predictability/reliability wasn’t unwelcome in Kolkata.

Thanks to the clean and orderly Kolkata metro, it was easy to get around, too.  Though the main line of the metro only runs north-south, it hits most of the places on the general touristic list.

Kolkata’s British Raj-equivalent to the Taj Mahal is Victoria Memorial, and it’s an easy first stop in Kolkata.  Take the metro to the “Maidan” stop for a short walk to the memorial grounds.  Admission is 150 Rupees for foreigners.

Victoria Memorial from the south. The 338 ft (103 m) high white marble tribute to British rule of India was inaugurated in 1921.

It was impossible to leave India without one last weird “sir, one photo” opportunity.

Again, it’s a tourist destination, and it’s only worth about 60-90 minutes if you want to tick the box and have other things to do.  If you want to stay longer, please do – there’s a large museum that chronicles the history of the British Raj inside as well as rotating art collections.  We kept moving.

Back onto the metro to the Kalighat Station and one last Hindu temple (my idea, even though we were both pretty templed-out after three months).

Kali was always an odd Hindu goddess to me – the sabre, the necklace of severed heads, the long, almost Maori-warrior-esque tongue sticking out of her mouth, and her regular stance on top of her husband, Shiva.  I figured a major temple to Kali might be an interesting one.  It was.

Goddess Kali.  The priest at Kalighat explained to us that Kali sticks her tongue out to “apologize to her husband Shiva for dancing on him”.  I don’t get it yet, but I like it.

The temple was fairly easy to find once you fought your way through the touts.  Like any other holy site, there are rows and rows of merchants selling god/goddess-related trinkets, and plenty of them would like to steer you into their shop with an explanation that it’s a shortcut to the temple.

A brahmin priest who spoke pleasant English fielded us upon arrival at Kalighat Temple and like-it-or-not escorted us through the temple grounds.

We removed our shoes upon request and the priest sprinkled green-tinted water on our hands to “purify”.  What was it?

“Holy water from the Ganga,” he smiled.

It felt a bit sticky/slimy.

Kali requires goat blood daily, so goats are ritualistically sacrificed each day on altars outside the main chamber of the temple.  A few goats waited on death row while a temple worker chipped away at a previous victim’s skull with a machete.

It was time to see Kali herself.  We were led into the main chamber of the temple.  I expected the usual no-admittance “HINDU ONLY” sign I had become accustomed to seeing, but no sign of it – we could walk right in unfettered.  Unusual.

It was a small room, maybe five meters long by three meters wide, and filled with moaning/shoving Indian men trying to get a glimpse of Kali.  The priest motioned for us to enter the fray to sneak a peak.  We did, briefly, and what we saw was somewhat unexpected/unsettling, and unlike any of the other Kali imagery I knew prior.

Goddess Kali @ Kalighat. Not my picture, but an accurate close-up picture of what we saw.  Hey nerds:  does this idol eerily remind you of some sort of “Neon Genesis Evangelion” Angel?  Me too, nerds, me too.

The three orange eyes of Kali burned into me more than I would have expected – the energy that the devotees were putting toward the idol made it come strangely alive.  Kneeling, wailing men grabbed at our ankles when we tried to leave.  We shook them off as best we could and kept moving, a bit shaken ourselves.  That was enough Kali for a while – we headed back to the metro with wide eyes.

Now boarding: the northbound metro to Dum Dum.

Two Lonely-Planet sanctioned tourist stops was all we had time for in our two short days.  We devoted the rest of our daylight to wandering around in Kolkata’s decaying colonial streets.  The weather was hot, but the people were nice.  Lots of smiles!  Most of the below pictures were taken north of Sudder Street in and around the BBD Bagh area.

we were eating ice cream in the street. she wanted to introduce herself, and did.

bye!

blue jeans drying en masse.

Bengali lunchtime. Tangy, saucy fish and giant prawn with a near wheelbarrow full of rice.

Kolkata is one of the few remaining places you’ll find manually-pulled rickshaws in regular use.

There’s a food item I have fallen in love with in Kolkata: the kati roll. At base level, it’s kabab meat rolled in a paratha. Add onion, hot sauce and egg and you’ve got my favorite version. It’s about as easy and tasty of street food as I could ask for for 30 Rupees, and feels like a great combination of Mexican, middle-eastern and Indian. Kati roll shops dot Kolkata – just look for the busy stalls that look like they’re selling burritos.

Would I have liked to stay in Kolkata for more than two days?  Yes, definitely.  If I was just touristing, four to five nights would have been great.  If volunteering, more.

BREAKING SAREE UPDATE:  Cecilia bought a saree in Varanasi, but we didn’t have time to finish it there.  In Kolkata we achieved the goal – a completed, wearable saree!  We hired a tailor just north of Sudder Street to do a 24-hour rush sewing job on a blouse and petticoat (the previously missing elements) and picked them up just before we left for Kolkata International Airport.  Close call, but mission accomplished!  Here’s the result:

feeling a bit silly, but looking cute!

On April 12th, 2012, we hoisted our backpacks one last Indian time and climbed into a yellow ambassador cab, destination Kolkata International Airport.  It was hot, traffic was ugly, and my stomach started tying itself into the according “what would we possibly do if we missed our flight” knots.  For distraction, I took Cecilia’s acoustic guitar out of its case and played the few songs I could summon.  Passengers in other open-windowed, gridlocked vehicles shot us confused smiles.

We arrived at the international terminal and found it quiet – too quiet.  Were we in the right place?  So it seemed.  There were maybe 150 people in the whole place, including staff.  Strange for a city of 15 million / country of over a billion!

The only other backpacker at the sparsely populated airport was another Finn.  He was carrying the tiniest backpack I’d seen and dropped hints via his gravely voice that he was smuggling (internationally, no less) small amounts of opium.  We quickly agreed to dislike like him and edged away.  Nothing good could come of hanging with this dude.

Our airplane was late to arrive, but that didn’t stop the Indian passengers in the terminal from forming a meaningless queue to get on a vessel that wasn’t even there.  They stood for thirty empty minutes without complaint.  We sat it out and sauntered down the jetway to an underbooked flight and took our seats without issue.  Oh Indian crowd dynamics, how I’ll miss you!

It was sad to go.

My trip to India was over, and for practical purposes, I was headed home to St Louis, Missouri, USA – but not directly.  As things worked out, it was cheaper for me to first fly from Kolkata to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia via Air Asia than to go straight home.  I would have a total of twenty hours to kill in KL (with Cecilia!).

Was I putting off the inevitable?  Definitely!  I had never been to Malaysia before.  Can you blame me?

NEXT STOP/LAST STOP (for this trip):  TWENTY HOURS IN KUALA LUMPUR

Kolkata’s ghost town of an international terminal. Bengal, India.