Diary of a Long Weekend in Kolkata

("Impressionistic" still seems to fit for describing a 4-day whirlwind tour of Kolkata.)

Thursday:
Arrive from Dubai in the evening, proceed through passport control so slowly that it seems not so much due to the famed Indian bureaucracy but maybe that it's his first time doing this? Luggage takes forever to arrive, amid the many boxes and home-wrapped misshapen packages that workers from Emirates apparently take home. (Aside from the fact that Tajiks don't go to and fro UAE so much for work per se, the arrival experience in Dushanbe and Calcutta via Dubai is surprisingly similar in this regard... Also striking that both airports seem a bit forgotten and long in need of a renovation.)
Mosquitoes begin to nibble even as we await the bags, and of course the one with the repellent is last to appear!
Met by L and driver outside, and then head into the city and gather our first impressions of India in the dim light of evening.

Friday:
D takes the day off to show us around. We begin at Mullik Ghat flower market and plunge into the human mass and sensory overload that is Calcutta. Flowers, flowers, garlands, and more flowers. The brown, soupy river and people actually bathing in it -- somehow it's a shock, even though I was aware of it already.
Zip up to North Calcutta and take a stroll through some back streets lined with vegetable and food sellers. Stop into old Tagore home. Circle back to Flury's on Park Street for lunch. Our introduction to fresh lime soda (salty or sweet?). Anya enjoys watching some stripey fishies in the aquarium before we head out again: Asiatic Society. We get a personal tour for the manuscript section, with its interesting old Persian and other texts. And the original wing of the AS, with its airy vaulted ceiling.
Home for a rest/nap and our exploration of the city continues in our conversations with our hosts.

Saturday:
Morning starts out again in the human crush: Kalighat and Kali temple. First a stroll through a nearby neighborhood to admire some old Art Deco buildings. We end up at the temple dedicated to the deity that some say gave Calcutta its name: the fierce goddess Kali. Saturday and Tuesday are the special worship days, the height of crowds. People line our approach -- sellers of various devotional items, priests or guides eager to lead us in for a fee, pilgrims from near and far. A quick stop in Mother Teresa's Missionaries hospice and then into the temple territory.
Take our shoes off as we enter and give them to a shopkeeper for safekeeping. It's striking how much my sensibility balks at walking barefoot in the courtyard, swarming as it is with people, animals, all manner of being. But there's barely time to reflect; it's almost all just instant reaction to the throng and noise around us. We linger for a while by the altar for goat sacrifice (Anya and Dan wait nearby out of eye shot). The little black kids are led bleating to the pair of plinths (which people have been leaning over and in between in a symbolic show of prostration before Kali), and the large blade comes down quickly to behead each animal. They're then dragged back to the butchering area (leaving a squishy bright red trail and big droplets of blood in its path, right through where we entered and will exit, of course).
After a bit more looking we retrieve our shoes and leave. We pass a train of shaven-headed pilgrims from Andhra Pradesh, who peer at us with smudged yellow faces (marigold? saffron??), before we make it back to the car.
From the masses to the few: Tollygunge Club and the dip in the "swimming cool," as Anya continues to call it. Fried prawns and a lassi.
From "Tolly" to Fabindia for fabrics and gifts.
Home for our daily rest.

Sunday:
A tour of colonial Calcutta. Begin at St. John's and Job Charnock's tomb, in a sleepy little grassy pocket of downtown. Then to Dalhousie Square (BBD Bagh) and the big, red brick Writer's building: the home of bureaucracy.
A walk around the center, picking our way through the people simply living on these streets and sidewalks, going about their Sunday business, washing pots, clothes, even giving themselves a splash amid all the old neoclassical bank facades.
Anya continues to draw smiles (one of the biggest differences from our usual, post-Soviet surroundings is this culture of smiling!). A lunch back on Park Street at what seems to be another old grey lady: Kwality. Fresh lime sodas: Ah! Papadums, pickle, tandoor chicken, dal, palak paneer, and pineapple raita. Naan. (Indian 'non'!)
More subdued quiet and shady lanes at Park Street cemetery, where the preponderance of early 19th century deaths in their 20s and 30s makes me want to read more about the health situation in colonial Calcutta.
A stop at St. Paul's Cathedral and the famous Burne-Jones stained-glass window (but which window is it?). More colonial deaths memorialized in marble plaques as we contemplate what the century between 1756 and 1857 meant for the British and for Indians and for India.
A very quick look at the Toria Moria (Victoria Memorial) as the sun lowers in the mid-afternoon sky.
A respite while Anya naps and then out to sample famed Indian Chinese food (whose distinction from "regular" Chinese food I sheepishly admit I didn't quite grasp...). Veggie drumsticks and hot-hot stir-fried crab and chicken in plum sauce.

Monday:
After Dan's mid-morning departure, Anya and I continue to take it easy and play at home. (The last morning with the beloved music box! The plink-plink tune of "Me and My Girl" is so deeply lodged in my brain that it makes a comic resurfacing later on our late-night Dubai airport wait amid shalwar-kameezed and henna-bearded passengers bound (I assume) for Karachi and Kabul.)
A trip out with L. to provision for the journey home. Then the surprisingly salty-sweet explosion of a raj kachori.
A trip to Oxford children's books for some plane diversions and home for a nap.
A relaxing last evening with our hosts, a short night's sleep, and an early morning departure in the misty-smoky, greenish-grey light of a Kolkata morning.

A Day of Surprises, Small and Large (Pre-India Edition)

Morning:
Sunny, after another day and night of rain. A walk down the crooked street to the big and busy street where we catch the marshrutka. Some running, some walking ("Anya's running!" "Want mommy to run!"). Some observations: "Dere's dat kitty cat!" "Lo'a wa'er! (A lot of water!)" "Anya's almost to the store." Some matted grey fur on the side of the road -- someone's coat? The slow realization that I shouldn't have looked more closely to identify it: a sheep's carcass, eyes clouded over. Yuck. A heeby-jeeby feeling that doesn't quite fade until after I arrive with Anya at sadik.

Mid-Day:
Still sunny, breezy, as I leave a cafe lunch. A speedy 25 that circles down past the Circus, up past the Avtovokzal, and over to the Barqi Tojik electric company (how do they show their administrative faces this time of year? Aren't they ashamed?). The Barqi Tojik bus stop, and a curious, squinty gander up at oncoming traffic on Somoni. An 8! Flag it, ask whether they are really continuing on for the length of the forbidden avenue, up to the embassy. Assurances that they are. Slide into the remaining seat in the back, wedged in the middle of the 3-person bench. A chance to look at my surroundings: a surprisingly dapper marshrutka! Plastic green garlands woven along the seats and up above the dashboard. The song on the radio proclaims "Segodnia my kaifuem! (Today we're high on life!)"

Late afternoon:
A panicked call from Dan informs me that, although we thought to check and make arrangements for Emirates, Nepal, and Kazakhstan, we remain, stupidly, visaless for India. A few more calls, passports at the ready. The race is on: gallop down Kuprina to Karamova, scan for taxis while continuing at a fast clip toward the cabs that accumulate near Rudaki. Hail one, speed towards Bukhara Street for a sheepish visit and ultimately, thanks only to help from others, success. Literally ten minutes to collect our things (and Anya) at home and head to the airport.