Leaving Calcutta...

Calcutta seemed to challenge me. The city has a long tradition of intellectuals, and was the former colonial capital prior to the point that the British decided to uproot and move to Delhi (largely because of the number of intellectuals working towards independence). As a result there is a lot of grand old architecture in the city. Unlike places like Varanasi, or even Delhi, Calcutta really didn't exist until the British started building there. There were always small fishing villages, but the fact is that the city was really built by the economic power of the British East India Company. So what's the deal with the squalor that everyone thinks of when they think of Calcutta? Why did Mother Theresa become so appalled that she felt compelled to start an order of nuns here?

I have to admit that the pverty threw me for a bit of a loop. I arrived late at night, and after a grueling taxi ride (one hour in a taxi whose shocks were hottible, and had a back seat that felt like it was a bit of vinyl stretched over a bard wooden board... come to think of it I'm sure that's what the back seat really was), the first sight to greet me was a street filled with people sleeping. The hotel turned out to be a dive (see my post regarding the Lonely Planet and it's lack of use in India), so I got off to a bad start with the city. My first action in the morning was to move to a more reasonable hotel (which ironically cost me less per night). I then reshowered, prepped for a meeting and headed off. This meeting was terrific, I felt that I connected with the patent people, and most imporantly had a great conversation with the head of trademarks there. His eyes seemed to light up, and the piles of files in his office seemed to lose all importance when I asked him what I should do while in Calcutta to get a real feel for the city. His office manager wasa appalled at what he wanted me to go see. I told her that I didn't want a candy coated version of the city, and that I would happily return to the city another time to see the tourist sights, regardless of what I saw. Before I left their office they had printed a map for me highlighting what I had to do. Then I went back to a lunch they had planned for me in one of their meeting rooms. Now there are still a few Law firms in Canada that keep a kitchen for preparing for entertainment. There are even fewer firms in Canada that feed their employees lunch everyday like this firm does (it has to do it in shifts). But I've never heard of a firm anywhere that brings in a weekly doctor for the employees. One of the Patent Agents referred to him as the local quack... but he was impressed enough that he has started sending his family to see the quack. The doctor apparantly comes by with his own dispensary, so that if he sees you and prescribes something, you'll have it before you go home that night.

After my meeting I went back to the hotel, and fell apart. It was about 4pm before I coud summon the physical strength to get out of bed. I wandered out just long enought to see the area around the hotel (which naturally atracts the destitute to seek alms). By 6pm or so, the sun goes down (really quickly) and I retreated to my hotel room, where I turned on the TV to find that the flooding is starting to subside in Bangalore but is starting in Chennai, my post Banaglore destination. It seems that I may end up getting pelted by water this trip. I slept through a good stretch of the morning (a bad thing, as the heat makes the late morning and afternoons hard to do stuff during) had a delightful Indian breakfast and then crashed until it was almost dark again. I did manage to get out of the hotel, wander through the local shopping aread, up through some street markets and then get back to the hotel as the last glimmers of light were fading. I couldn't figure it out. I'm tired... sure that's to be expected, but I couldn't figure out why my body was shutting down on me. Then as I was drifting off to sleep I realised that the city had left an odd impression in my mind.

Calcutta isn't a fading beauty. My explorations today really clarified that (I got through most of the suggested walking tour and did get to see the a lot of the city). I think that I understand a bit of the Bengali spirit, and a lot of my problems with the city. This is a city whose people are filled with a pride in the intellectual rigor that their city provides India. When I popped into the local Starbucks knock off, Barista, there were the Indian equivalent of my peers having heated discussions about the future of the country. These were the same discussions that were going on at the local road side chai wallah stand, and the street side food stands too. But there seems to be a disconnect in the discussions (or at least the English ones that I overheard and participated in), and the reality of the city. This isn't just a city that is losing part of its grandeur, this is a city whose treasures are rotted out. The architecture of the city is grand, befitting its old role, but the problems are modern, befitting their era. Unlike the other parts of India that I've seen, Calcutta has problems that are largely external to the country. When Partition happenned, Calcutta had poverty (it always did), but many of the poor had jobs in jute and textile mills. The raw material supply got cut off when partition happenned, as the rural parts of Bangal were hived off to form East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and they were the places that grew the raw materials. The result was that the East Pakistani farmers had no place to process their crops and the Calcuttans had no materials to process. One of these two problems can be solved wtihout throwing huge sums of money around. So Calcutta recovered more quickly. As Bangaldesh seceeded from Pakistan with Indian assistance, the Bangladeshis were now able to export jute again, but the calcutta mills already had other supplies, so the economics were different. This made Calcutta seem like the properous big city surrounded by a sea of rural poverty. The city arracted all the disposessed. No city could have handled the influx, and it continues to this day.

All the intellectual banter in the world doesn't fix the problems if no one acts. But anyone who takes action fails (the problem can't be fixed overnight and no one has been able to stick around as long as is needed at high levels). The government of the state has been Communist, so industry isn't really drawn to come into the area, but the problems spiral. Communism's appeal can't be supported if it doesn't have full control of the levers of the economy (and even then there's only one example that shows promise... China). So there's a catch 22. Anyone who takes action is attacked for failing to immediately fix the problem, so no one acts. Everyone talks about solutions but is afraid of acting. The population vote for a government that has immedate appeal, but in the end can't fix the problem. And life goes on.

They're touchy in Calcutta (or Kolkata to be modern about it), about the images that we see. They want people to see more than just the faded memories of the Black Hole of Calcutta, of Mother Theresa's homes for the sick and dying, and the poverty that allows hand pulled rickshaws so survive. They're hurt that the world sees movies like City of Joy (whcih wasn't a half bad film if you ask me), and see nothing but the poverty. I can appreciate that. But were' in a media driven world that wants flashy images and a bunch of intellectually driven people discussing grand cures for the world doesn't feed that.



I need to go back sometime to see more of the city.

I'm now on my way to Mumbai. When I was thining about my last trip I realised that Mumbai was what I really liked more than anything else. Part of it was the freedom of the city. The city has spirit, not just a grand old soul, not just the standard Indian bureacrats. It has drive and a flare that are missing in the rest of the country. I can't wait to see it again. Now all that I have to do is figure out how I'm going to have fun, see my family and do business in just 3 days. I think that I'll do it, I just hope that I don't step on anyone's toes along the way.

This trip is starting to feel fun. But it's also almost half over.