Calcutta Calling
21 Apr
Going back to a city for the second, third, fourth time, always feels different. Returning to Hong Kong on the second time I felt less disconnect from my Chineseness, and on the third time felt at ease. In Seoul on the second time I discovered how awesome Korean food could be, on the third and fourth, learning to piece together the mysteries of _hangul_ and its script.
Going back to Calcutta for the second time feels part homecoming. Leaving the plane, smelling the air (swear it smells distinctly Kolkata – must be the pollution, but still). I know the city but it does not know me. Wandering part of the city alone, in search of paracetemol, I aimlessly wandered from Free School and Sudder Street (backpackers’ ghetto), through the alleys to Lindsay and Hogg Street, buying lunch along the way: chicken egg kathi roll (Rs 14), big cup of chai (Rs 2), papri chaat (Rs 12), bhel puri (Rs 10).
The election machines are in swing, there are campaigns, and people talking politics everywhere. There wasn’t a better place to experience that than at the Indian Coffee House, so we wandered down College Street, and found the ICH – home to generations of Calcutta University students, and the city’s intelligentsia. It was surreal to be there, in the “midst of history”:http://in.geocities.com/kolkatabeckons/coffee.html, sipping cold coffee with cream and eating a chicken kaviraji.
This is a city that demands you pay it full attention; a city not for everyone. A city _in extremis_. Walking along the road you have to pay attention to your right, a car might be reversing from the lot; to the left, a rickshaw might be ferrying two young children to school and just nearly run over your left foot. The front, and back, always. Looking down to avoid potholes and the assortment of things which shouldn’t be on the ground but are.
Fab Cal, Crazy Cal – I’ve been asked thrice which part of India I come from, 4 times if I was married, a few more times if I loved India. Z. reckons she’s managed to find herself in India with an Indian grandmother, and she’d be right: at any moment you’re likely to find me extolling the virtues of ayurveda (particularly _neem_ and tumeric), smelling of said ayurveda concoctions, and of coconut oil (for hair softening), eating my _ice cream sandesh_ and _misti doi_; snacking on papri chat out of a bag made from yesterday’s newspaper.
It’s taken us only 2 days to appear on Calcutta television: we appear on the state news tonight. Which leaves me to wonder how many days it will take for us to be a Bollywood extra when we get to Mumbai.
Tonight we leave on the _Darjeeling Mail_ and spend a week in the mountains, in Darjeeling and in Sikkim, before moving on to hotter places in the northern plains. We’re safe, happy, and very, very hot.
And I couldn’t be happier with the Calcutta guesthouse I found.
