First Day of Real Travel in Calcutta

I began the adventure with a search for India's largest museum. I walked alone, taking advantage of the sidewalks that I miss walking on in Jalandhar. With only people, animals, and street shops to navigate around, I noticed a few buildings along the street. Large, and well-maintained/preserved, the buildings' looks suggested European artistic and architectural influence. Each ground floor housed a bank, which deflated my enthusiasm for the buildings' beauty. They reminded me of how easily I am coerced to prefer things made by wealth. I felt disappointed that I did not naturally appreciate visions of the purer India which surrounded me: paper advertisements plastered on every inch of black-stained concrete buildings up to six feet high, food stalls which appear dark, dingy, unclean, and splashes of unusual color combinations from clothing and accessory shops, ladies' clothing and painted signs: hot-pink, red, and blue, or aquamarine, brown, chartreuse, plus every conceivable shade of these colors and all the other colors of the rainbow. This experience of the Indian streets parallels, in terms of my aesthetic response, my experiences with modern art museums. The dull, grimy colors of dirt, dust that infiltrate every sign and surface, and caked on layers of oiled food debris on old wares juxtaposed with the kaleidoscope of bright, clashing colors overwhelmed my visual senses, and, I often felt repelled from looking further, unable to extract salient, pleasing aesthetic qualities from these scenes. My visual mind cannot easily, if at all, make sense of it. A large, clean, maintained building appears then as a familiar visual friend.

Since I arrived in India, I have rarely went out by myself. So on this day, walking around like this for an hour seemed like an intriguing adventure to me. I felt useful too, performing a reconnaissance of the area, spotting places like Birla Planetarium, St. Paul's Cathedral, Nehru Children's Museum, and the Asiatic Society, all listed as 'places to see' in our guidebook. A phone call from Navjot reminded me that our tour bus leaves at 1, so I returned to the Hotel Hindustan International, still short of finding the Indian Museum, but knowing that the excursion was worthwhile.

The early afternoon heat and humidity greeted us briefly as we walked out of the hotel, into the parking area, and onto the AC tour bus. I was relieved to have the comfort: the seats had a plush texture, and thick curtains covered the windows, blocking out the intense sun.

Our tour guide spoke through a microphone, and the initial scene on the bus unfolded much as it would on a TV show or movie: an amplified voice barking a generic summary of Calcutta's history in heavily accented English, which most of the group tuned out, wearing a glazed look on their faces, or closing their eyes.

Over the next few hours, our tour group allowed some of the guide's grating narrative in, a phrase here, a location there, and gradually the harsh sounds softened through our growing understanding of his English. By the time our bus circled the Writer's Building, a complex of large, red buildings completed in 1780 and the current seat of the West Bengal government, many more of us had sat up and looked out of our windows, alert and attentive.

Our first stop was the Victoria Memorial, a marble-made structure built during the British Raj. The photo at the bottom of the blog shows the Memorial and its gardens. Indoors the Memorial is a museum, where I learned that one of India's most celebrated writers, Rabindranath Tagore, renounced the knighthood bestowed upon him by Britain, after they massacred Jalianwalabog, Punjab. The museum displayed the letter, addressed to a Lord Chelmsford, and in the letter Tagore very eloquently protested the massacre, and his words of loyalty and caring towards those in Jalianwalabog were quite moving.

On our way to our next stop, we witnessed the busy and densely populated street life. Usually, I prefer to explore a city on my own, but here I was relieved to have shelter from the throngs of people in the humid heat. A few of the photos of the streets on the slideshow were taken from inside the bus.

The next tour destination was the Tagore family residence, once home to Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and the memorable personality I enjoyed reading about in the Victoria Memorial an hour earlier. Given the sheer enormity of this home, and from my readings of the Tagore biographies at the Victoria Memorial, I concluded that the Tagore family are/were to India as the Kennedys are to USA. Actually, Navjot, the Ellistons, and I read one of Tagore's books, "Gora" a few years ago; we really enjoyed the characters; they had depth and integrity, and the story conveyed a very positive regard for India, yet it also revealed the complexities of "sharing" India with the British and their culture. This day, then, we thought of Steve as we enjoyed this spacious, yet modest place where art and integrity were valued. I feel Steve would have been very happy and excited about our opportunity to learn much more about this great Indian artist.

Our tour ended at dusk with a drive-by of the Howrah Bridge. It is famous as the world's third largest cantilever bridge, which uses trusses built from structural steel, according to wikipedia, which gives the bridge a more chunky, blocky, lego-like look than the suspension bridge.

And, finally, 3 weeks after the fact, I conclude with my first real day of travel in Calcutta.