Quite a week

Even by Delhi’s standards this has been quite a week. A bomb blast on Wednesday and an earthquake the evening of that same day, then today I left my apartment to discover that my colony looked like a scene out of Waterworld. It seems the monsoon rains had been holding back in order to dump several days’ worth of rain in the space of two hours.

I’m sure people will have read about the bomb blast so I won’t go into details here but thankfully none of my friends or colleagues in Delhi were caught up in it at the time. The earthquake was a strange experience. It was my first earthquake, at least the first I was awake for as I managed to sleep through the last one when it happened a few months back(!), and quite a strong one. It was 11.30pm and I was sat out on my rooftop reading when suddenly the whole building started to shake and continued to do so for about 6 seconds. I was confused for the first 2 seconds, then so shocked when I realised what it was and heard other people running out from their houses onto the street that I just remained rooted to the spot. By the time I thought perhaps I ought to try and leave the building the rumbling had stopped. I’m probably not the ‘quick thinker’ you want to be stood near in a natural disaster situation.

This morning’s monsoon rains provided more light hearted entertainment than serious cause for concern. I started off my walk to work with water swilling around my legs at ankle height then by the time I reached half way it had reached calf height and I stopped to take cover by a shop and roll my leggings up a little further. I had a chat in broken Hindi with the man in the shop who I think thought I was slightly crazy to even be attempting to walk any further. As I walked on I lurched between patches of high ground and occasionally one of my legs would disappear down into a pot hole. I was too focused on ploughing forwards to pay much attention but I must have been a pretty ridiculous sight. By the time I reached the Sikh temple, about five minutes from my office, the cycle rickshaws and cars were almost floating through the water. At this point I’d abandoned all hope of any part of me staying dry and was more concerned about the unidentifiable slimy objects I could feel sliding past my legs. I passed one poor lady whose cycle rickshaw driver had abandoned her in the middle of a river of rushing water, deciding that he’d rather risk her wrath (she was screaming across at him whilst he stood under a shelter and looked sheepish) than push his rickshaw through the water. Another eventful morning.

The high of this week has been the number of offers I’ve received from Indian acquaintances to come and eat with their families, join in their religious festivals, accompany them in visits to their home States or join their Buddhist chanting group. It’s unusual for a week to go by without getting these kind of offers but I suppose this week it particularly highlighted to me one of the things I love about Delhi and India in general, that is the way people are so quick to accept you as part of their extended family. Sometimes it’s out of concern (none of my Indian friends really understand how I manage to survive living on my own. I think they think I spend 16 hours rocking quietly in a corner until it’s time to go back to work) but mostly it’s because they genuinely see you as just another part of their own extended family network. The offer to join the Buddhist chanting group (at least that’s what I call them, the name given was much more interesting but I can’t remember it) came from my landlord.  I went to pay my rent and electricity to him the other evening and he passed me a pamphlet about their group which generally promotes world peace and is affiliated with the general Buddhist label? (spot the atheist!) I had to laugh as when I went up to my flat and opened the pamphlet the first page was about working towards, ‘A world free of nuclear weapons.’ Not in itself at all funny, and a principle I wholeheartedly agree with, but what made me laugh was how I’ve gone from having a landlady who I’m quite sure, were she given the chance, would rent out her basement for the purpose of nuclear armament and probably offer to light the fuse, to a landlord that is campaigning for nuclear disarmament and world peace. Perhaps my ending up here is what’s meant by karma.

Kolkata. A football match, a polar bear and cake.

Although I’m not the biggest football fan and can count the number of live matches I’ve attended on three fingers, I was sold on the idea of attending a ‘never been seen before’ event in India (two South American teams playing on Indian soil) and the chance to return to Kolkata, a city that I first visited in April this year and fell in love with.

The football match was an interesting experience. It was less about the two teams playing (Argentina vs. Venezuela) and more about one man, Lionel Messi, “Considered the best football player of his generation and increasingly one of the best players of all-time,” – Wikipedia (luckily I wasn’t quizzed about him at the time otherwise it would have been another Sachin Tendulkar moment). The whole stadium was gripped with Messi mania so much so that the only time people cheered was when Messi had the ball. They’d handily stuck him in a pair of luminous yellow trainers making him easier to identify, not that you could really miss him. The strangest moment was just before the game started when, instead of standing up to cheer, everyone sat down and if you didn’t conform you promptly had a boiled sweet thrown at your head from someone in the rows behind. I was glad that I went as although the game was a little slow (apparently no one wants to get injured at a friendly which is why it’s a bit more like a gentle kick about) it was definitely an experience to witness and I can now add Messi to my ‘sports people that I know something about’ list of about seven people. Oh, and Argentina won 1-0.

So, why do I like Kolkata so much? Its population is even denser than Delhi’s, there are twice as many traffic accidents (the yellow taxis, autos and motorbikes drive at lightning speed and although there is a one way system, at certain times of day it changes so the traffic has to suddenly switch and go in the opposite direction) and it has some of the most ingenious use of space I’ve ever seen. On this visit we went into a jewellery shop that was the size of a broom cupboard and could just about accommodate the small grey haired man that ran it and one other person. He looked pretty bewildered that we’d stumbled upon the place and even more confused when we purchased stuff. It’s possible we had accidentally walked into his cupboard.

High population density, traffic accidents and shops the size of cupboards, my criteria for a ‘great’ city. Guess that’s what living in Delhi does to you. There’s more to it though as Kolkata has certain things that Delhi doesn’t; Peter Cat and Flurys for example – Peter Cat serves the most amazing Bengali fish, meat and veggie dishes and their Kabuli naan is possibly one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. I went into Flurys for the first time this visit and would have probably stayed there and not returned to Delhi if I didn’t have a job I needed to get back for. They serve the best coffee I’ve tasted in eight months and cakes that are so good I felt a sense of loss and sadness when I’d finished the last bite, mind you I do have a strong emotional attachment to most baked goods. There are also certain things I notice in Kolkata that you wouldn’t generally see in Delhi; couples holding hands in public view (hand holding between men and women is a clandestine activity usually reserved for the parks in Delhi), you see more women on the street in groups together or performing roles that are usually reserved for men in Delhi (running small shops and darbars – street food stalls), and most people don’t bat an eyelid at foreigners walking down the street, unless you are visiting one of the public attractions in which case you become more interesting than the attractions and will most likely be approached for the usual family photo calls (to be in them, not take them).

Kolkata also has some of my favourite sights. This was my second visit to Park Street Cemetery, opened in 1767 and where British Captains, Earls, Shipmasters, Viceroys and their family members who worked and lived in Kolkata during the British Raj were buried. Some of the graves and memorials are engraved with the most beautifully written and heartfelt dedications to deceased wives, husbands and family members and others are interesting markers of the past, including those which document some of the more cringe-worthy colonising ‘achievements’ of the deceased. The cemetery was originally built on marshland and at this particular time of year the rains had caused a layer of bright green moss to grow over the memorials creating the atmosphere of a jungle graveyard in the middle of the city. When you visit you are asked to sign the visitors’ book by the two caretakers that look after the cemetery. They always seem delighted to see visitors (it’s mostly only interested foreign visitors that go there now) and are keen to tell you about the cemetery’s history and past visitors.

Although I didn’t visit it this time round, the first time I visited Kolkata I went to the Indian Museum. Possibly one of my favourite museums yet, controversially because of the fact it looks as though it has been completely untouched since the Victorian era. Huge dusty glass cases containing a giant walrus, the brownest polar bear I’ve ever seen, large lumps of asbestos (I’ve never walked so quickly past an exhibit), wale bones and other more unsavoury specimens. Not for everyone I admit, but being a museum geek I found it sort of fascinating to see a museum that has become a museum piece in itself.

Kolkata was the capital of India during the British Empire’s reign over India and the centre of the East India Trading Company until the capital was moved from Calcutta/Kolkata to Delhi in 1911. Hence the existence of sights like the Park Street Cemetery, St Paul’s Cathedral and Kolkata’s centrepiece, the Victoria Monument, an impressive white marble building surrounded by neatly cut lawns, lakes and flowerbeds and a large sombre statue of Queen Victoria heading up the entrance. Apparently many of the other colonial monuments in Kolkata have since been destroyed or renamed and Victoria Monument is one of the few that has remained and kept its name. I have to admit that my attachment to Kolkata is tinged with a slight sense of guilt, as part of the reason for my attachment is possibly because there are aspects of the city that remind me of home and of my country's own history. This on its own wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it weren’t a point in our history when the British were entering cities like Kolkata, milking the country’s resources and enforcing their politics, legislation, language, architecture and own cultural ‘norms.’ And those are the milder details. Not exactly our finest moment. However, it’s a point in history all the same and one that shouldn’t be forgotten, if only so that we never repeat the same mistakes and I’m grateful that these particular monuments and reminders still remain.

When I returned to Delhi I was comparing notes with my colleague who had been in Kolkata just a few days before me. When he found out that I had not tried a single Bengali sweet on either visit I was greeted with the now all too familiar perplexed look and sad shaking of the head which signifies, “have we taught this British girl nothing during her eight months in India?” The same shaking of the head which I received the time I did not know keeping an onion in your pocket was the secret of staying cool or the time I did not know that raw egg was “obviously” the cure for hair loss, or that the reason I kept getting sick was because I’d not been taking my daily dose of curd (natural yoghurt).

So if you go to Kolkata, don’t forget to try the Bengali sweets.