Kolkata Missive 1

  Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, India
Friday, November 16, 2007

Kolkata Journal    Missive 1

I arrived to the sauna of Kolkata on October 11th.  The itensity of the heat at this time of year was shocking.  I am still adjusting...must always be under a fan or I immediately start dripping over 100% of my body. 

Today its 93 degrees and too humid to imagine. I am safely ensconced in a lovely colonial private golf club hotel (The Tolly), as the guest of my hostess, Mitra Ghose, while my daughter Lisa is here in Kolkata for a day.  Lisa is on her way to the Andaman Islands to start writing up her screenplay after all of her "golden" research in the Himalayas, meeting countless unforgetable characters that she will weave into her story.  (Mitra is a member of the Tolly Club, though she never comes here and lives a very simple life.)  The grounds are lovely, a green oasis of calm and singing birds amid the dank and all-too-often crumbling gray buildlings and bare, trash littered, muddy ground of Kolkata.

Night on Narrow "Old Calcutta" Street

The whole city is shut down today and tomorrow with a strike.  Mitra has put the fear of god in me about venturing out on a strike day.  Apparently the city becomes paralyzed.  But Lisa, having traveled for 6 weeks in the war zone of DR Congo, is intrepid and has gone out nonetheless to meet a photo journalist friend whom she met while trekking.  They will go to the India Museum, and then to have lunch.  He was in the Gaza strip for 6 weeks and is equally hale and hardy, having had bombs going off all around him in Gaza.  So between them, a strike in Kolkata seems pretty infantile in terms of its threat level.   I'll settle for getting a haircut at the Tolly and finally getting this long overdue travelogue off to you.

When I arrived on Oct. 11th from Delhi, the city was teaming with preparations for Durga Puja, a huge religious celebration.  Almost 13 million people on the streets doing their last minute shopping during the daytime.  Durga Puja is equivalent to our Christmas, a family holiday when all the children return home, with lots of gift-giving to everyone you know and love. 

The best metaphor I can come up with for Kolkata traffic that it is all like rush hour trying to get into the Holland Tunnel to Manhattan.  Lane lines, if they exist at all, are utterly disregarded.  In two wide lanes, you have cars, taxis, auto rickshaws, trucks, toxic fume belching buses, motorscooters, bicycle rickshaws, crammed abreast, weaving in and out, crowds of people walking next to and on the street, utterly calm, crossing the street randomly (even highways), and everyone, everyone blowing their horn constantly. It is like bloodcells crowded randomly at an artery junction, with no space between teeming life forms nudging and pushing their way forward to where the want and need to go.

Kolkata Traffic Jam

Mandirs are constructed all over the city.  They are temporary temples, made of bamboo, and covered with cloth.  I walked by the one in our apartment complex's courtyard for 3 days before I realized it was cloth over bamboo, not concrete construction.  Each mandir has an elaborate altar with huge figures of Mother Goddess Durga and other mythological figures (see my welcome photo of our mandir's Durga).  Durga Puja goes on for 4-5 days, with lots of elaborate drumming that starts at about 6:30 a.m., and ritual fires and offerings to Durga with ancient sanskrit chants that invoke her living presence to take up residene in the idols and bless the devotees.

Durga Puja Mandir in our Courtyard

I love the Sanskrit chanting.  It is haunting and beautiful.  It is as if I can hear the richness of centuries of devotion of hundreds of millions of people saturating them.  The length and duration of the chanting and rituals builds each day.   On the 3rd night, when visiting the mandir, the I thought I could see a glimmer of life in the eyes of Durga.  On the 4th or 5th day, the day of Immersion, the chanting goes on all day with a jubilant intensity that culminates when the altar figures are taken to the Ganges and immersed there amid crushing crowds that I would not attempt. 

There is a lot of controversy about the pollution to the Ganges, since metal paints are often used on the altar figures. 

I am staying in a large apartment complex of 10 highrise buildlings with lovely grounds and a beautiful swimming pool and clubhouse.  It never occurred to me to bring a swmming suit!  I have neve seen anyone in the pool.  That may be due to the festival season, though. 

My hostess, Mitra Ghose, is 68 years old, a devotee of Baba's.  Baba, Maa, and Maa's mother live 3 buildings away.  It is a short 5 minute walk, but even that can be a lot in this sweltering heat and humidity.  Mitra is very maternal toward me, taking care of my every need.  We are much alike in many, many ways, and have had many similar life experiences.  We are both high strung, easily worry.  Her husband died 5 years ago of cancer, mine 3 years ago.  She has 2 daughters, as do I, 1 granddaughter, age 12 (mine is 14).  One of her daughters is a single mom, so we share that as well.   So I am in very good, if overly protective hands.

Every meal I eat is prasad, blessed food that has been prepared in ritual prayer as a divine offering to Baba Lokenath.  It is delicious and totally satisfying, though primarily just rice and curried vegetables with little to no oil.  I am overwhelmed that Baba is providing me with blessed food for every meal. 

Back to the festival.

After the puja each evening, there is an unbelievably loud entertainment program held in the large open courtyard that is encircled by the highrise buildings.  Plays and singing blare from 9 to 11 p.m. One night every song was horribly off-key.  I couldn't imagine where they found such horrible singers or what it would be like to sit down there next to those speakers, which were deafening from my considerable distance away.  Mitra later told me that the entertainment was a game, not intended to be real singing.  Game or not, it was painful to listen to for me.

The festival season actually extends through November 9th.  After one day of quiet, Lakshmi Puja is held.  Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and peace and contentment in the family.  She is dressed in a brillant red  & gold or hot pink sari, her eyes are sweet, gold cascades from her palms symbolically out to the devotees.  The puja is done in the home.  Her feet are drawn on the floors to symbolize her coming to give her blessings to the family. 

Traffic Jam Amid Diwali Light Displays

Then Diwali, the Festival of Lights begins.  We are into that now.  I have bought some dried nuts to give to Mitra and Baba for Diwali.  Baba assures me that after Kali Puja, on whatever date it is held from September through November, winter comes the very next day.  He has never seen it fail.  I believe him, since Mitra told me that the insects come on Diwali.  And the very first day of Diwali, there was a sudden infestation of little biting bugs.  It was a little bit like an attack from the movie "Birds".  They were everywhere.  Unpleasant little critters.   I had to close the windows and turn the lights off in my room, then turn lights on in the other rooms of the house to draw them out of my room.  Then I was very careful to shut my door befoe starting to work on my computer again.


Baba and Maa's flat is simple, but nice, about 1300-1400 square feet  Furnishinigs are extremely simple and sparse.  Shanti-Ma, Maa's mother, is a quiet, precious soul.  She stares wordlessly into your eyes with fathomless love and humility, with her hand on her heart.   She lives here with Baba and Maa.  Baba and Maa are on the 12th floor, so you get a clear unimpeded view of the always hazy skies of Kolkata and of the sunset.  Yesterday it was just a red ball in a thick gray haze that had no capacity to reflect color.  It was a strange sight.  Baba has some photos of lovely sunsets though, taken from their western balcony. 

My day is simple, quite routine.  I wake up between 6 and 7, have tea & crackers, shower, handwash laundry, meditate, have breakfast, edit.  I go to Baba's every day from 11-12:30.   Lunch is around 1.  Nap, reading, journaling, editing, meditation from 1:30-4.  Then Mitra and I go to Baba's from 5-7.  She does things for them, while Baba visits with devotees who have come for advice and his blessings.  We eat dinner late, usually around nine. 

I sleep under a mosquito net at Baba's insistence.  Apparently there is a strain of deadly malaria in Kolkata.  The problemmatic mosquitos attack late into the night, so Baba assures me I will be asolutely safe if I use the mosquito net, which is a huge hassle.  Baba says to think of it as a good friend who is keeping me healthy.  So I have begrudgingly surrendered to the inconvenience. Mitra's son-in-law was in ICU in the hospital for the past week with Dengue fever, so these mosquitos are nothing to mess around with.

On one of my first nights in Kolkata, Baba and I went to dance competition put on by SO-HAM School for Special Children.  The SO-HAM school is a Mission project. It is the only school in Kolkata offering vocational training to mentally and physically challenged children (rather than just remedial education to about the 6th or 8th grade, which is what other schools do).  I cried through most of the performances. 

The children were so beautiful, doing such elaborately complex choreographed traditional dances.  They were dressed and made up with all of the lavish elegance and vibrant colors that Indian culture can dazzle the eye and heart with.  They were breathtaking in their red and gold saris, gold bracelets, earrings and forehead jewelry, necklaces, headdresses, with flowers cascading in their hair, and their fingertips and hands painted red.   They were all so proud of themselves -- each as radiantly beautiful as any movie star you have ever seen.  Every little girl was a jubilant goddess.  (Sorry, my photos came out hopelessly unfocused!)

Children Dancing in Traditional Regalia

One particularly memborable little girl appeared to be about 7 years old.  She had white flowers cascading in her hair, and made every turn and movement literally bursting with joy.  I have never seen such joy on a face in my life, such uncontainible radiance.  Some would falteringly look to their neighbor to be sure they knew where they were in their dance sequence of swan like movements. 

All of the movements were about reaching, reaching, reaching, opening, celebrating, being the radiant wonder of life that they were at that moment.  It was such a privilege to watch them work so hard, with such concentration and skill and precision, so utterly precious in their imprecision that it only made the wonder of their achievement all the greater.  It was an evening of poignant triumph. 

All I could think about was where else would these children ever have the opportunity to be dressed in all the dazzling finery and regalia of their Indian spiritual tradition?  Where else would they ever have experienced themselves becoming the living incarnation of the gods and goddesses that they were embodying before our privileged eyes?  It was too much of a treasure for the heart to hold. One I will never forget.

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