Calcutta: the Great Unwashed

Hi, everyone. I'm too freaked out by all the blank space and white bread to write much now that I'm back in the States. So I am resorting to re-runs.

This blog originally appeared as a Lonely Planet "Don't Forget to Write" entry in December, 2003. It was one of several entries I wrote about Calcutta, so don't flip on me if I left something out.


India has a genius for complicating things, and I'm not exactly straightforward and clutter-free myself to begin with.

Your faithful correspondent came North to Calcutta see the Kali Pujas (Oct 25-28, 2003), decided to stay a few days to volunteer at Mother Theresa's homes, and, as though in reward for this altruistic decision, promptly got deathly ill - a very nasty 6-day bout with diarrhea, cramps, indigestion, nausea, etc., and had to resort to a short round of antibiotics.

To further complicate things, when I became well enough to stagger past the ever-present gauntlet of Calcutta's professional beggars down to the local net joint, I found there was a SNAFU with my usually trusty email account.

Mother Teresa's home for mentally handicapped kids (Shishu Bhavan) was pretty amazing and unexpectedly fun, if you can ignore the smell of antiseptic floor wash (barely masking that of urine and feces). You should see the way these kids, many of whom are autistic or worse, light up when you just strum a few chords on a beat up old guitar and sing "Old MacDonald."

Calcutta - (India's second largest city, which in terms of sheer numbers, is quite a statement) is simultaneously the most medieval and most modern place I've yet visited here. Where else in the world can you take a foot rickshaw (yes, with huge wooden spoke wheels and a snowy-bearded barefoot man trundling you along the street) - a foot rickshaw, past limbless beggars and snarling street dogs, to the gleaming, punctual, immaculate, safe, uncrowded, *air-conditioned*(!) Metro station?!

In the Indian tradition of religious assimilation, Mother Teresa has been added to the local pantheon of saints and deities. The ferocious Kali Ma stares you down from nearly every street-corner shrine, alternating with Durga, who smiles benignly while spearing a demon. Amidst what must have seemed pagan idolatry to her, Therese's wrinkled walnut of a face has earned an enduring place of honour.

The city has been awash with activity honoring her recent beatification; everything from a Mother Teresa film festival (mostly documentaries and one docudrama starring Geraldine Chaplin), a ceremony for the first official veneration of her relics (including a few drops of blood - don't even want to know how they acquired that), and various cultural ceremonies, mostly featuring acoustic guitar renditions of "Amazing Grace" sung in Bengali.

Park Street - the hip, happening yuppie street with all the bars, trendy shops and nightclubs - has officially, and not quite appropriately, been dubbed Mother Therese Avenue. Calcutta municipal corporation seems to have a real sense of humour in this area; in the midst of a somewhat perverse PC renaming orgy, they also rechristened Calcutta's most commercial thoroughfare "Lenin Street." The US and British consulates both reside on what's now called "Ho Chi Minh Avenue." (I'm not sure what significance, if any, to read into the fact that these names appear only on maps and signs, but never in the local parlance.)

The post-colonial purport behind this nomme-nouveau frenzy (which seems to have primarily benefited the sign-painters and map printers) strangely didn't stop several streets from being renamed with, of all things, British names. Thus the former Theatre Road, rather than being named after a worthy Bengali playwright, of which there are many, became "Shakespeare Sarani." Another street, albeit a small one, swapped the decidedly British "Middleton Row" for the equally Limey "Sir William Jones Sarani." And one can only wonder what nationalist purpose was served by giving the name "James Hickey Sarani" to the former Dacres Lane.

I've found it surprisingly difficult to leave Calcutta, described by...well, some old writer whose name escapes me as being composed of "new mud, old mud and more mud." Repetitive, but accurate. Weather here, which was monsoon marsh and dripping humidity upon my arrival, has greatly improved, as has my health.

Give Calcutta a chance to first entrap you with its bewildering network of former cowpaths impersonating actual streets, or prevent your plane from departing due to poor visibility, and you'll find it eventually ensnares you with its unique charm - a sort of "creme de la grime." It ranks with Rome as an eternal, infernal city.

Recommended in Calcutta:
Kolkata Film Festival
Victoria Memorial including the Calcutta History Museum
Dakshineswar Kali Temple
Park Street British Cemetery
Howrah Bridge at dusk
Asiatic Society Museum (no admission for foreigners without passport)
Indian Museum on Chowringhee (Nehru) Street

Songs the Lord Taught Us

Googling the Giti
Kathmandu

It's such a struggle to get on line, half the time I can't remember what I came here for. Oh, that's right, I was going to post something about the Manjushree Charya dance.

In answer to your question, yes, this IS my idea of how to spend a Friday night. (Manjushree is pictured below.)

Obviously, to learn a dance one must know the music intimately. Charya Giti has some uncommon rhythms, even for someone accustomed to the many and varied talas of south Asia.

A quick Google of Charya Giti (the songs accompanying the dance) doesn't reveal much in the way of sources. Evidently there are some old (ancient) Bengali texts, some still found in Bangladesh, that are called Charya Giti.

Also, from the Google front-page there appears to be something in Oriya (Orissa state) with the same name. This would make sense, as Odissi is the "major" classical dance Charya most resembles, and Bengal as well as Assam and Orissa had Tantric Buddhist and Hindu practices at one time (and in some form, still do).

One of the only references to Charya Giti is from Bangladesh. Encylopedia of Modern Asia says in its Bangladesh - Music section:

Twelfth-century Buddhist poems called charya-giti (religious observance songs) and the thirteenth-century Gitagovinda (Songs of the Cowherder), a cycle of songs by the poet Jayadeva, bear the names of the specific melodic modes assigned to each song. Hindu and Buddhist kings in Bengal commissioned poets to compose raso, epic poems, in their honor, which were chanted by the poet-composers themselves.

The Dictionary of Indian Literature says:

Charya Giti aka Charya Pad: 1050-1200...earliest available relics of old Bangla discovered in a manuscript in Nepal in 1916 by Hariprasad Shastri....

Another fascinating section details how the Charya poets, at least in India, wrote under pseudonyms because their work was "much hated by the Brahmins and the elite," and how Charya giti were translated into Tibetan.

Calcutta Calling

3 Days in the Haze? - Viewer mail
Leh, Ladakh

Harry from Pune writes:

Got your email address from BootsnAll Travel Forums.

I am traveling for the first time to Calcutta (currently live in Pune India about 100 miles south of Mumbai) next month and hope to spend 3 days there on my way to Bhutan and Nepal. Can you advise what are the places to be seen in Kolkatta in 3 days.

Thanks and awaiting your answer.

Dear Harry: Namaskaram and Jullay from Ladakh!:

If you were coming from any other city, I would say, "prepare yourself for air pollution." However, Pune just might be the one city even more polluted than Calcutta. You should feel right at home in that regard. ;-)

Definitely, there is much to see in Calcutta in 3 days. I highly recommend the Victoria Memorial and Calcutta History Museum there, which are walking distance from Sudder St., the "usual" tourist guest-house spot. (It is full of hassles, like all Indian tourist spots. But, you will meet interesting people who are doing volunteer work there.)

The India Museum, also just round the corner on Chowringhee from Sudder, is a must-see. Allow several hours for this museum, which includes a transplanted and reconstructed Buddhist stupa-torana from Sanchi, MP, and one of the most frightening Tibetan wrathful-goddess statues I've ever seen.

The Aurobindo Birthplace is (I think) on Shakespeare Sarani, also walking distance from Sudder. You can see the Rabindranath Tagore home which is now part of Rabindra Bharathi in a different section of town. The former home of Swami Vivekananda is also open now, but I did not personally visit there.

Park Street is the chic, hang-out and shopping street. The Barista coffee bar is there, as well as Oxford Books and several upscale restaurants. Last I heard they were thinking of renaming it after Mother Theresa. Doesn't seem like an appropriate choice to be named for an austere nun.

I feel no trip to Calcutta is complete without a visit to its spiritual heart, the Dakshineswar Kali Mandir in northern Calcutta, better known as Sri Ramakrishna's temple. (stock photo at left.) The best thing to do is go for evening arati and stay at one of the guest houses there - Holy Nest Guest House is very nice. You can take the Metro to the next-to-last stop, but then you must take a taxi to Dakshineswar (for some reason, pronounced DakINeswar without the H).

Then in the morning, go to morning arati or fire-puja at 5am, (very moving with bhajan-singing); check out the rooms in which Sri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi used to live. Later take the boat ride (in a traditional distinctive Bengali-style boat) across the Hooghly River, to Belur Math. Belur Math, the ashram and HQ of the Ramakrishna monastic order, is a fantastically atmospheric place, not to mention the wonderful architecture of warm, brown African sandstone. The 5-year-old Ramakrishna/Vivekandanda/Sarada Devi museum there is great and very worth seeing, containing things like the famous brown robe you see in every photo of Vivekananda! Swami Vivekananda's memorial is also at Belur Math.

Getting around Calcutta: you have more choices than any other Indian city. Walking, cycle rickshaw, foot rickshaw, Metro, local commuter above-ground train, local bus, Ambassador taxi and in some areas, autorickshaw. The trick is that each has their limitations. Autoricks are only allowed in certain zones, for instance, as are foot ricks.

As much as possible, try to take the Calcutta Metro. It is a world away from the rest of Cal - modern, clean and timely. Even air conditioned! Calcutta is perhaps the last place in the world you can take a wooden, hand-pulled rickshaw to the gleaming, modern subway.


As a foreigner and history buff, I found the colonial graveyards very intriguing, with their elaborate Victorian headstones all overgrown with greenery. There are also several historic churches - the Armenian church, one of the last remnants of the formerly flourishing Armenian community of Calcutta, and St Paul's Cathedral, at the end of the Maidan near Victoria Memorial, which has fantastic stained-glass windows by the famous PreRaphaelite artist, Sir Edmund Burne Jones.

The Mother House, the HQ of Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity, includes Mother Theresa's tomb. This is walking distance from Sudder Street.

Some of my favourite Calcutta moments came at very non-tourist places. To stand on the Howrah Bridge, for instance, at sunset, and feel the bridge groan under the relentless weight of commuters (two, four legged and wheeled) as the dark comes and the air turns purple with dusk, is to feel part of the immensity of humanity. (If you don't like that cliche, use another. You get the idea.)

The famous Kalighat temple is the polar opposite of Dakshineswar - more bloody and less "spiritual." Expect "priests" to hit you up for "donation" or "puja" money even before you reach the actual temple gates. Be prepared to smell and perhaps see goat sacrifices.

Mother Theresa's famous Home for the Dying Destitute is very nearby Kalighat temple, but I did not personally visit there. However, half the foreign people on Sudder Street (you can detect them by the idealistic gleam in their eyes) are volunteering there, if you want to share a ride. Or, you can take spotless, silvery the Metro directly to the Kalighat area. It's a good opportunity to reflect on the simultaneously medieval, colonial, and modern worlds that still co-exist in Calcutta.

Photo of Hooghly at dusk by Paul Wagner.
Photo of temple from Calcutta Tourism site.