This was published 13 years ago
Larger than life
Anthony Dennis learns to expect the unexpected in the complex, confounding city of Kolkata.
Cutthroat business ... a street barber in action.Credit: AFP
In the weeks before my visit to India's second-biggest city, I'd been consumed by a kind of black hole of trepidation. Kolkata is, after all, a city notorious for intractable poverty, overwhelming decrepitude and teeming masses. But, as others have discovered, in India it's essential to expect the unexpected.
Now I'm finally here in Kolkata - formerly and still popularly known as Calcutta - in the middle of the old British colonial district officially known as BBD Bagh. While there is ample evidence of destitution and decay at every turn, the teeming masses, that greatest of Indian platitudes, have decamped.
Puzzlingly, the streets are virtually deserted, except for policemen in starched white uniforms and shiny black shoes brandishing long wooden sticks at loiterers in laneways. It's almost as if we've been given the (rusted) keys to the city, once the architectural pride of the British raj. No wonder the prime minister assassinated in 1991, Rajiv Gandhi, dubbed this place ''the dead city''.
Today, as I learn, is a holiday because of local elections. Alcohol is banned, even for tourists, and people are encouraged to vote in their own neighbourhoods. Considering India's history of political and communal violence and upheaval, this is one measure to help keep the world's biggest democracy intact.
Kolkata was India's capital until the British moved it to Delhi in 1911. Its prestige has been declining ever since. Indeed, the city's image has probably never recovered from the legend of the black hole - a small dungeon where 123 British prisoners of war were jailed by the nawab ruler of Bengal on a suffocatingly hot night in 1756.
A few centuries later, the city became identified with Mother Teresa, the diminutive, indefatigable Albanian nun who drew global fame for her care of Kolkata's destitute and dying, perpetuating the image of Kolkata as a wretched, forbidding place.
I've hired a guide, Ifktekhar ''Ifte'' Ahsan, to help me decipher this complex city. He's funny, frank and passionate about Kolkata, which he calls the ''mad-a-polis''. He also prefers to assign other guides to tourists who wish to visit Mother Teresa's mission. ''She's not on my tour,'' he asserts. ''There's so much more here to see in Kolkata. I'm still not sure how I feel about her.'' It is possible, guide or no guide, to visit the ''Motherhouse'', just off AJC Bose Road, where there's a small museum. Many visitors to Kolkata continue to volunteer to work with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.
I've come to Kolkata, the capital of the state of West Bengal, out of a fascination - despite its fame, it has become India's forgotten city, vastly overshadowed by Mumbai and Delhi. Yet Kolkata is perhaps the proudest of Indian cities, the birthplace of modern Indian literature, art and nationalism. Kolkata is still regarded by Indians as the nation's cultural capital.
It is Kolkata's strange and pervasive gothic quality that most resonates. This is the world's most oversized renovator's dream. The peeled patina of its grandiose facades seems to cling only to the thick film of soot from polluted air.
Neglect, not nurture, has ensured this grittiest of cities has been left with a large and unique architectural legacy. ''People used to say, 'Why should we keep the old British buildings?''' Ahsan says. ''They represent oppression and negativity.'' The British used their grand architecture ''to awe the natives into submission'', he says. Yet there's a growing appreciation of Kolkata's architectural heritage.
As we wander the streets of colonial Kolkata, we can see that at least a few raj-era buildings have been given some attention. These include the opulent 18th-century Raj Bhavan, the former British Government House; the whitewashed, early 19th-century, Indo-gothic St Andrew's Church, with its towering spire; and the Corinthian-style Writers' Building, named after the clerks of the East India Company, who used to work here.
Near the Great Eastern Hotel, once one of Kolkata's grandest lodgings and now undergoing a belated restoration, street barbers trim and shave in front of Bollywood film posters as rickety trams trundle by, with panels dimpled from having dents repeatedly beaten out of them.
Outside the High Court building are elderly notaries equipped with equally old typewriters ready to prepare legal documents for the illiterate. And all over the city are booths that sell the city's favourite fast food, the kathi roll, a chapatti stuffed with spiced chicken, mutton, egg, potato or paneer.
Kolkata used to generate 30 per cent of India's wealth - surrounded by an impressive mass of mostly defunct mercantile buildings, you can sense its pivotal role. It contributes just 3 per cent of the nation's revenue now.
''Kolkata, which was once all about making money, is not really a commercial city any more,'' writes British author Mark Tully in his book India's Unending Journey, ''but a strange amalgam of Marxist influences and the last vestiges of the British raj.''
A large number of the British who came to this far-flung corner of the empire paid the ultimate price, succumbing to a host of exotic diseases and misadventures. Many of those who died here are buried in grandiose tombs in the haunting South Park Street Cemetery, inscribed with florid tributes and explanations of the cause of death. The cemetery opened in 1767 and was closed by 1790: house full.
Next morning, as we turn a corner in our yellow Ambassador Classic taxi, we swerve to miss a flock of sheep on a roundabout, each painted with a red stripe and herded by barefoot shepherds in turbans. It's not something you'd expect to see in a city of nearly 15 million, but it's no ordinary city.
We're heading to Burrabazar, Kolkata's chaotic yet captivating marketplace. In contrast to our arrival yesterday, the masses are well and truly teeming. It's here that a melange of nationalities and religions lives and works in and above its laneways.
While BBD Bagh reeks of the raj, Burrabazar is quintessentially Indian. You can buy anything here, from saris to spices - even, as a saying goes, the ''eye of a tiger'' for the right price.
Walls are daubed with hammer-and-sickle symbols in support of the still-ruling communist party of the state of West Bengal and the streets are littered with the shards of clay cups. Lassi, the popular yoghurt drink, is served in these cups, which are then smashed when finished.
Ahsan calls this tour the ''confluence of cultures'' - Kolkata being one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Asia.
The majority of the population is Hindu, with significant communities of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, as well as Jains and Buddhists. We spy a mosque and a synagogue and stop to see a gleaming white Armenian church.
In Kolkata's Chinatown we drop in to see Ahsan's friend, Stella Chen Kwei Lin, a Sino-Indian whose family has run a provisions shop here since 1957. ''People around the world, they don't think much of Kolkata,'' she laments.
There are about 10,000 Chinese remaining in the city; many have drifted off to Canada, the US and Australia.
By lunchtime it's too hot to be outside so we head back to my hotel, the Taj Bengal.
On the way we pass the 400-hectare Maidan, Kolkata's city park and one of the world's largest. Here I spot the same flock of sheep, now grazing against the backdrop of a hazy skyline.
The next day, a heavy, fully buttoned cloak of humidity descends on the city and the best place seems to be on board a cruise boat on the expansive Hooghly River, a tributary of the Ganges. Our destination is the pleasantly leafy campus of Belur Math. Its Hindu temple is a mix of Islamic, Christian and Hindu architectural influences and is a popular stop for pleasure seekers such as me.
We pass under the Howrah Bridge, one of the world's biggest cantilever structures, which is said to carry two million pedestrians each day. Many of them are travelling to and from the vast Howrah railway station on the other side of the Hooghly, where I'll take an overnight train to Varanasi.
The foot traffic is taking its toll, though not in the way you might expect. Kolkata's Telegraph newspaper reported last year that the protective metal casings on struts that support the girders of the bridge are being corroded by half-chewed betel nuts spat out by millions of pedestrians. (Thankfully we're safe inside the boat as we pass beneath the bridge.)
Further along the Hooghly, we pass close to a series of ghats, broad stepped areas that lead into the river and serve as sites for bathing and cremations. Piles of long bamboo poles, used as scaffolding for buildings and Hindu funeral pyres, are stacked tidily on the river bank.
Kolkata appears to be crumbling before my eyes but I've been swept along, like the steady current of the Hooghly, by its perverse charm. That black hole of trepidation is long gone.
Anthony Dennis travelled courtesy of Singapore Airlines and Taj Hotels.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Singapore Airlines has a fare to Kolkata for about $1275, flying to Singapore (about 8hr), then to Kolkata (4hr). This fare, which is low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne, allows you to fly into Kolkata and out of another Indian city. Australians require a visa for a stay of up to six months.
Staying there
The 228-room Taj Bengal is one of Kolkata's most luxurious hotels, with an outstanding restaurant, Sonargaon, specialising in Bengal and Punjab cuisine. Rooms cost from 10,875 rupees ($238). At 34B Belvedere Road, Alipore, Kolkata. See tajhotels.com.
Touring there
The guided tour company, Calcutta Walks, runs a range of specialised architectural and historical walks around the city; see calcuttawalks.com.
Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity Mother House is open daily except Thursday, 8am-noon and 3-6pm. At 54A AJC Bose Road, phone +91 33 2217 2277, see motherteresa.org.
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