Kolkata (Calcutta), India

I’ve rather enjoyed my 6 days here in Kolkata. I’d like it better than Mumbai if Mumbai wasn’t more international with western things to do. I’ve always thought Bengalis tended to be pretty nice, and my experience here, as brief as it’s been, bears that out. Other little things that I notice are that the traffic isn’t predatory toward pedestrians, there is less “Come into my shop”, and the rickshaw guys or whatever take “no” for an answer. There are more beggars, though. No, I didn’t go see any “City of God”. (Did you ever read that?) I’ve seen enough already. Yes, I did go to Mother Theresa’s Home for the Sick and Dying Destitute.

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That was a really touching experience. I sort of expected, at least hoped, that it would be a good place. It seemed to be fine. Inside, there are two big rooms. One is for woman and one is for men. I’d say their capacity is about 50-60. it was totally clean and they had several people running around giving bedside care. The sisters seemed to be the ones providing skilled care. The beds were clean and not ancient. The patients all had on clean, or were clean until maybe 15 minutes ago, blue pajamas. They had some decent looking supplies. Best was all over the place were Biblical quotes and quotes from the pope and Mother Theresa encouraging right right attitude, right effort and a right mind to do the job with compassion. Obviously it has better funding than almost anything like it in India, but I’m glad they are getting it done. Maybe they could expand. Maybe they should. But then again, there are dozens of her homes like this all over the world. No pictures of the inside, for obvious reasons. Everything is pretty out there to see.

I sort of followed my usual pattern for visiting big cities. I got near the tourist ghetto. It didn’t look like I needed to be in it, which is good. I was close enough that I could walk 10 minutes to get my favorite western breakfast of meusli with fruit and curd. Then I made increasing distant ventures away from that nest, using Lonely Planet for ideas.  Here are a couple of street scenes. They could be anywhere is a big city in India.

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Here’s the Howrah Bridge, which is the main way over the Houghly River. There are many ferries and a toll bridge farther down the river.

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Public transportation is good. There are buses, a subway cslled the metro, intracity and intercity trains to the suburbs, and a trolley system. I am told they will be discontinuing the trolleys, though, because they get in the way of the ever increasing street traffic. Sound familiar? Most of the streetcars are pretty moth eaten, but here is a nice one.

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Mostly I walked and took the metro. There are signs in there that say “no photography”, but sometimes my eyes glaze over at the blizzard of signs, even if they are in English. I took a couple of pictures and was detained by the police who made me show them all of the 180 pictures I have on this memory card and delete the train ones. Originally they wanted me to delete all my pictures, but I pleaded tourist stupidity. I really should have known because they have had several terrorist attacks on trains. I was going to say how excellent the metro system is. It is excellent, amazingly clean for India, fast, efficient and cheap, costing a dime to 15 cents to go the length of itwhich is maybe 10-15 km. But when i was taking it back from today’s wanderings, the undercarriage of the car behind me caught of fire. There was smoke all over the place in there and prople booked it outta there like they did at Candlestick when Loma Prieta hit just before that World Series game in 1989. I stuck around because it looked like we’d all be able to breathe for quite a while. In fact, it never got too bad. In fact, after about 10 minutes of guys working underneath, we departed again. I love India. That’d be news in America, and there would be all kinds of baloney about getting rolling again. I think people fear death, pain and disfigurement more than they need to.

There are some nice sites and areas in Kolkata. A big green called the Maidan flanks the east side of the river for about 3 km. There are many soccer and cricket fields, just green area, gardens and shrines. At the top is a big athletic stadium. Sheep and goats handle the lawnmowing. Y’know what? The ponies in the road in this picture make me realize that there are almost no homeless cows in the downtown area. That’s rare. They must round them up.

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The nicest architectural thing here is the Victoria Memorial. Here are some pics.

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Today I walked and walked before riding back on the metro. There were many buildings from the 19th century Victorian era when the Brits were riding high there. I went into a nice one called the Marble Palace, built by one of the raj toadies a hundred and something years ago. His decendents still live there and it has been closed to the public, sort of. For some backsheesh you can get the guards to give you a tour of the parts the family doesn’t use. Most of that old Indian royalty has fallen on hard times since Indira Gandhi cut off their stipend. My guess is that some money goes to the family and some to the guards, and that they just want top limit the crowds. The are all kinds of fine artwork inside, including a couple Reubens’. No photos allowed.  There are a lot of tribal people in West Bengal and the other eastern states. At least a couple of them were having some kind of a rally today and were all decked out and marching to their music.

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That’s about it for me here in Kolkata. Beatrice and I decided to hook up again in Manali. She got back in one piece, more or less I gather, from her six additional weeks of trekking. I’m leaving by train tomorrow morning, should arrive in Delhi around noon on the day after tomorrow, and hope to get an overnight bus to Manali that night. I’ll write about that sometime, baby. Maybe we’ll lounge around Manali for a while, then go to Rajastan and/or Diu, a beach resorty area in Gujarat.

Be well, all of you.

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