Calcutta

Calcutta. It's like New York City turned inside out, a vital metropolis wearing its heart, lungs, guts and bowels on its streets. And yet scraping the coal from its surface shows you the brilliant glimmer of its diamond quality underneath. People heave along its streets - a menagerie of humanity: paan-wallahs, chai wallahs, dosi stalls, juice stands and sweet shops cry out for business under the eaves of faded colonial facades. The passersby are mix of new rich businessmen, proud intelligentsia and the starving, begging masses dressed in rags with everything in-between.

    


Our first day we made a bee line for Queen Victoria. Her imposing statue is a Calcutta icon and local school children swarmed the monument. In some odd appropriation, Calcuttans take great pride and ownership of the image - perhaps commemorating as it does the time when Calcutta was capital of India, the largest of imperial cities and home to the flowering of Indian culture and national identity under men like Tagore and Roy. The Calcutta gallery in the museum  behind VM charts this rise to prominence with all the Positivism of a self assured city that was destined for greatness. It was here that we have found the most eager responses to being British, coupled with a chuckling reminder that India is no longer 'ours'. And yet the move of the capital to Delhi, and commerce to Mumbai, has left Calcutta reliant on its cultural superiority. Not that this claim is without merit - the work of Rabindranath Tagore, the quality of the Calcutta Telegraph, the scope of the Indian museum and the explosion of Durga Puja every October (for which we sadly saw only the earliest of preparations) are a tiny part of a city vibrant with the literary word, quality craftsmanship, and a heavy sense of its enlightened, educated status.

View of Calcutta Gallery from the Maidan, the massive field in the centre of Calcutta. Complete with man collecting grass, and wandering army truck.

Pav Bhaji Man

Our best experiences were with food however. Every street stall sold the freshest and tastiest food of our whole trip so far. I was converted to Pav Bhaji - a lime, spice and lentil fry over hot toasted bread. We repeatedly returned to the sweet shops for sugary samosas.

Best Sweet Shop in Calcutta. Seriously!

Our visit to the recommended Sidishwari Ashram was equally intense. Everything written in Bengali, with virtually no English spoken, we were kindly ushered into the kitchen to point at what we wanted. Small bowls of meat, fish and veg curries bubbled away on a hot plate, ready to be served up. As we pondered our choices, waiters dived in and out throwing curry, daal, rice and breads onto trays to be whisked into the eating hall. Having made our choice, we took a seat crowded with other eaters, mixing and eating their food with their right hand. A feast of food arrived for us, mercifully with forks, and we plowed in. The unctuous, deep flavours of the mutton curry stuck gummily to the insides of my mouth as a peppery heat started to rise with each succulent chew. At some point a waiter had come round and added a raw chilli and a raw red onion to our plates. Getting in the spirit we gamely shred them over our rice and daal. Ten minutes later we finished with bloated happy bellies. And the cost for two with free filtered water? 80 rupees; less than a quid. Our only regret is that with the multitude of Bengali eyes that watched us intently as we ate, we couldn't take any photos...



The rest of our time in Calcutta was spent wandering the streets and taking in the atmosphere. It was here that Mhairi got accosted by the snake charmer. We took a lovely beer (our first in over a month!) at a green garden terrace retreat. A quick tour around Rabindranath Tagore's house and visit to Kalighat temple rounded off our experience, but the real star of Calcutta is the life it plays out on the street everyday.

If you have anything handwritten, this man will TYPE IT UP on his AMAZING machine. You can even post it afterwards, as he is right next to the post box! Email any thing you need typed up...