Forget space travel. If you’re looking to visit another world, why not give Kolkata a spin.
Freelance writer, Babu Basu, touches down in the heart of West Bengal and loses himself to an unrelenting, and inescapably vibrant city.
I ought to start by my declaring my allegiance to Kolkata. Well sort of.
The city is part of my childhood, my adulthood. Part of me.
The creativity, the chaos. The unceasing, unnerving energy of it all.
I’ve tried desperately hard to deny it, but the non-stop madness is part of who I am.
Kolkata (known as Calcutta by the British) gets into your blood.
Like India, it finds ways of infiltrating your soul. Crammed full of unexpected beauty and astounding heritage, Kolkata has an unnerving ability to make you question who you are and how you live your life.
Famous for producing artists, writers, musicians and philosophers, Kolkata and it’s surrounding province, West Bengal, is said to provide the intellectual ‘crème de la crème’ of India.
Well, that’s what they tell me.
Having witnessed the city’s unruliness, I’m not so sure. But more on that later.
Welcome to the Paris of the East
Just as in the Paris of the West, Kolkata is laden down with incredible architecture.
For almost 300 years, Kolkata was the British capital of India. A cursory glance round this city reveals magnificent municipal structures and awe inspiring monuments.
The Victoria Memorial is a vision in white marble. This gigantic tribute to Queen Victoria (who’s said to have a soft spot for the city) contains within its 65 metre marble edifice, formal gardens and sprawling water courses.
Described as, ‘the city’s most distinguished landmark’ (they’re fond of using grand over-formal language in Kolkata), the building, designed by Sir William Emerson (granted, not your average Indian name), combines a ‘unique blend of British and Mughal architecture’.
The Mughals by the way, were an overly powerful, overly wealthy and overly ruthless royal dynasty, responsible (amongst other things) for the legendary Taj Mahal. If you’re looking for an equally influential European family, think of the hugely prosperous [and hugely devious] Medici clan from Italy.
As with most capital cities, the rich lived in Kolkata. And, like all rich people, they needed grand places to live.
Great houses and private palaces (many now in decline) pepper the city at almost every turn.
A dash round South Kolkata and palaces abound – inviting you to stop and marvel at their beauty. Grand houses in the north (filled with large and viciously blood sucking mosquitoes), stand side by side with modern (and sometimes equally ramshackle constructions).
The relentless sun and all pervading dust are enemies of architecture. Even the grandest Kolkattan buildings lose their sparkle in a thrice. Being house proud in this city is an expensive business. Both the interior and exterior of a house needs painting every year or every other.
Cleaning and dusting is something that has to be done daily, even hourly, in some circumstances.
Described as having a ‘colonial style’, the palaces have wide sweeping staircases leading up to the front of the house. Grecian style columns greet the visitor along with tall elegant windows paired with painted wooden shutters. The grandness of the exterior is just a hint of the exuberance within.
As a child, I visited one such house.
The crumbling façade and cracked interior walls could not hide the undeniable glamour within. Inside, heavy antique furniture made of dark exotic wood, complemented brass mirrors, grand chandeliers and obligatory Tiger’s head rug, strewn lazily across the marble floor.
Uniformed servants busied themselves. Tea was to be made and guests were to be overfed. It was a social requirement.
“Do you take tea?”
Quaint, antiquated English abounds in this city. This language seems almost fitting, when spoken in a palace.
In case you are wondering about that Tiger’s head, it was real. They don’t shoot Tigers anymore, (it’s a protected species and symbol of India). And they don’t build houses like this anymore.
The other Paris…
Also like Paris, Kolkata is full of the worst driving imaginable. Those of you familiar with Parisian driving, particularly on the notorious Ring Road, may (and should) shudder in fear.
Kolkata driving makes Paris driving look positively playful.
It is little wonder that the dashboard of trucks and taxis are festooned with religious imagery. Forget road sense, only the Divine can help you now. Hinduism (still the most prevalent religion in West Bengal) gives its’ believers a ‘Come what may attitude’. You see it in their driving. If they’re going to die on the roads today, then so be it.
Over the years I’ve visited over 14 countries and I have yet to see driving worse than in India. The Kolkata’s roads are in a shocking state of disrepair (one of the joys of a Communist led Province) and are constantly overwhelmed by unceasing legions of temperamental traffic.
I’d never experienced ‘gridlock’ until I saw it in Kolkata.
Drivers, desperate to make their way, push the noses and tails of their vehicles into the smallest, most ridiculous of places. Within seconds, a supposedly three lane road, with traffic flowing one way, becomes an all mighty mass of traffic trying to shoot out in all directions. Think medusa but with traffic, not snakes.
The more haphazard the driving, the more authentic it is to the city.
Any chance of the traffic jams clearing evaporates into the night air. Yes, even the night air. On this trip, I was trapped by traffic at midnight! This city never stops.
Being on the roads makes you religious – even if you’re not.
Once, I caught a unlikely looking taxi. I say unlikely, because it was unlikely that this taxi was going anywhere at all.
The vehicle appeared to be held together by an assortment of greasy rags and string. T
Through its floor I could see daylight and the ground slowly passing me by. The engine whimpered and moaned at me, shuddering at the thought of having to carry me, my aunts, the driver and his mate.
As predicted, the taxi broke down – and in heavy traffic. The driver turned round to me (the only male in the back) and asked me to get out and push.
With great reluctance (and more than smidgen of fear) I stepped out of the car and slowly began to push. With trucks, cars and auto-rickshaws, flying at you from every conceivable (and inconceivable) angle, my mortality was in question.
My relatives (including my mother, thanks Ma), sitting in the relative safety of the cab, thought it all highly amusing. It didn’t seem to occur to them that only Divine Providence (or blind luck) that kept me upright and breathing.
I’d love to see what passes as a driving test in this country.
Even if they do have a ’strict’ test (which I very much doubt), there’s bound me a lot of drivers driving without a licence. Kolkata has never been a city for rules. Rules are for chumps (and the more prosperous, better organised [less intellectual] cities in India.)
I wonder if the people of Kolkata are argumentative because they’re smart, or not smart enough. Naive as I am, I believe that intelligence includes an ability to pick your battles. To know when to fight, and know when to stop shouting.
I think the British (now long gone in Kolkata) still seem to be hear today. Apart from the architecture, plumbing, education and roads, the Brits have got into the soul of Kolkata.
The Raj, (the majestic sounding [and perhaps ironic] name given to the British rule in India), symbolized law and order in the city. It also represented at times a cruel and unwanted foreign force, sapping away precious resources, lording it over ‘unruly natives’.
Historians may tell you that the Raj was burned into the Indian psyche.
I wonder, did rule breaking became Kolkata’s form of insolence? Was it a two fingered gesture to the British and the order that they strived for?
Alas, current day rule breaking hampers the city and slows down the region’s economy.
As the national economy grows stronger, more people will buy cars and the greater the chaos will become. Kolkata’s current to solution is to build ‘fly-overs’, large multi-laned bridges that become overcrowded the moment they’re opened.
I wonder how long they can keep doing this.
As the West will tell you, economic development has it’s downside too.
(Join me in a week’s time for Kolkata Part II – where I take a look at some unlikely bedfellows: food, haggling and fake movie stardom).
at some unlikely bedfellows: food, haggling and fake movie stardom).
