An Article on Kolkata in New York Times by Somini Sengupta

This is a New York Times article link a friend sent me.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/travel/03calcutta.html?pagewanted=1&ref=travel

Here is what my friend Esha, who is herself a regular contributor to websites and journals, had to say about it:

"It looks like the NY Times article is from a different era. None of the new developments have been mentioned. The clubs and restaurants mentioned are from our grandfathers' times. In the list of hotels - ITC Sonar, Hyatt, HHI and Taj Bengal are missing. From the past, Netaji has been misrepresented and Ray not even given a mention. The photographs are misleading to say the least. What else can you expect when she visited brothels and post offices instead of Science City or South City?

There many many more things in the article which irked me but I don't think my comment or the comments of like-minded people made any difference. Maybe you know people in the Indian media who can set this wrong right or something."

I dont know anyone in the media but if anyone who is reading this does, then its up to you to take that step. Here is my take. This article was published on 3rd May of 2009. Reading through it I had to come back and recheck the date, or the year, for it seems to be written ten years back. When did Ms Sengupta last set foot in Kolkata? Probably then. Hand pulled rickshaws, beggars on Kalighat streets, abject and acute poverty, Black-White-Grey areas, people who dont order in restaurants, Coffee House waiters who complain and stay glum, are these not so last century? Not having two square meals in Kolkata?? I agree poverty is still a pressing problem, especially in the outskirts and villages in West Bengal, but really???

The hammer and sickle is also so last generation now Ms Sengupta. Now you will see DIDI's face screaming at you from posters everywhere. This is a city now where the hammer and sickle is somehow trying to keep its handle-hold. If it will succeed is still to be seen, after the 13th May elections. And streets are marked all right. You just need to keep your eyes open. The streets are as marked as any other city in India. We are not comparing to New York again, are we?

Just in the last few years so much change has happened in this city, it is still weird that people are stuck to the college street- kalighat temple- tram ride mode. My friends and colleagues visited in 2007. Yes there were the tram rides and college street, coffee house, my alma mater, Presidency College, these are fixtures. But we also went to the bustling energy of New Market, the tram ride to Gariahat to see one of the cheapest and largest street markets of the world probably. (BTW I had been a regular at Coffee House at one time, and the waiters are not GLUM, they are just OLD and SLOW. They have been used to generations of revolutionaries, thinkers and gossipers spending hour after lazy hour in the establishment. They LIKE that!!! And also, the same building houses Rupa publishers, Chakravarty and Chatterjee publishers, for books at great discounts, and some pretty amazing finds, like the old old man who used to live in a room full of type writers and papers. Oh, and Coffee House has been revamped just last month into a new and improved...)

We went to the Ghats. As a tourist in Kolkata how can you not. You have to take a launch ride or at least convince a boatman for an hours trip on the river. Its the loveliest thing I have done in the city. The mighty Ganges, the two massive (and worlds busiest) bridges on both sides of you... Kolkata and stuck in time??? A future time maybe.

Sengupta claims women were kept in purdah and her grandmother studied till the age of 13. My grandmother is a double MA (Hindi and English), her sister is a PhD in Sanskrit. My grandma is 82. There are two sides to every coin. Doctors, lawyers, even pilots, women in Bengal have been more progressive than her counterparts in the rest of the country. Every girl (and every boy, for that matter) is trained in one form of art at least. You will find singers and dancers and artists in every home here. Education is given a level of importance which is sometimes irritating, in the way parents will goad their children for studying. But even here attitudes are changing. You do not have to be an engineer or a doctor any more. You could be a fashion designer or an actor... Sabyasachi, the Kolkata designer making waves around the world today, is the apple of every Bong mothers eye.

The piece on Netaji by Sengupta, I am reproducing here:

Calcutta has another guerrilla hero: Subhas Chandra Bose, who broke away from Gandhi’s nonviolent movement to raise an army against the British. The central narrative of his erstwhile family mansion on Elgin Road, now a museum of Bose memorabilia, is his “great escape” from house arrest. Red footsteps on the balcony mark how he tiptoed out on a January night in 1941. The gray Wanderer in which he was driven away sits in the driveway. In one gallery is an extraordinary collection of photographs, including Netaji — “respected leader” as he is known — shaking hands with Hitler in 1942; apparently, he took help where he could get it.

Good she wrote this in a New York paper. :))

Where to eat: I have not been to as many eateries in my city as I would like to but limiting the list to 3 is downright insulting. :) Even I could do better than that. One of my posts would be dedicated to eateries in Kolkata, promise. Send me your fav food place list to payal@spearhead.co.in.

SENGUPTA, the author of the discussed article is The New York Times bureau chief in India.

Kolkata is a mixture of Kalighat temple and Sector V. It is a combination of Metro Railway and rickety buses whose tyre-bursts kill people. There is a Science City and there are the tanneries. There is a bye pass road, and there are the narrow gullies of North Kolkata. There is Pizza Hut and Anadir Cabin Mughlai Paratha.

Honey, I could just go on and on. But whats the use. For people like me, it is nostalgia which paints the city in rainbow hues. For an outsider, Netaji and Tagore and sandesh with "truffle-like injection of palm syrup", is all there is to the city maybe. Like all outsiders of yore, they still revel in the pictures of ragpickers and Howrah Bridge, and refuse to see the living breathing city, like any other city and yet so unlike, where millions go to work (as rickshaw pullers as well as software engineers) in the morning and get back to homes and families to join the table at dinner.

Crime Rate, Books, Kolkata and Amartya Sen

... not necessarily in that order.

Background- The London Bookfair 2009, where the market focus this year is India. Speakers have included Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, Sunil Gangyopadhyay, Anita Nair, Dalrymple, Prasoon Joshi, among a host of other Indian writers in English and vernacular languages.






Amartya Sen who took the podium on the first day, 20th April went on to link crime rate and love for books. He commented that Kolkata has "the lowest crime rates in the world due to the civilising effect of books", reported The Telegraph.



Excerpts from his speech:

• “Does the culture of books influence the life of the city in any profound way?”
• “To consider one remarkable feature, Calcutta has, by a long margin, the lowest crime rate in the world, including the incidence of homicide and murder. While the number of murders per hundred thousand people per year varies between 2 and 10 per year in many cities in Europe and America, and between 15 and 50 per year in many cities in Africa and Latin America, the homicide rate in impoverished Calcutta is only 0.3 per cent — a fraction of the rate in any other city in the world.”
• “Indian cities generally have low murder rates, around 2.7 on the average (rather like London but much lower than American cities like New York or Chicago), but Calcutta in particular beats them all — even the famously peaceful towns of Singapore and Hong Kong — in terms of the lowness of homicide rates.”
• “Does the peculiar love of books and culture, and here I would add Calcutta’s fondness for theatre, too (often produced at very low cost), have a role here? I don’t really know, and there is no rigorous work on this that has properly tested any of the possible hypotheses.”
• “It is abundantly clear that the standard explanation of crime in terms only of economic poverty does not tell us much about the incidence and causation of violent crime, including homicide. There is certainly some research to be done here.”

Like all Kolkatans he also has his heart strings tied with College Street and said that these stalls teeming with books have influenced many a brilliant mind including Satyajit Ray and even himself.

• “It was in one of the College Street bookshops, called Dasgupta’s, that my friend Sukhamoy Chakravarty found at the end of 1951 a copy of a recent book by a brilliant economist Kenneth Arrow, which would radically influence my direction of work. I often wondered whether my life would have gone very differently had my friend, Sukhamoy, not been such a book hound.”
  
  

Kolkata is going the New York way

Yeah right...

I only mean with the city wide black out. April 19, Sunday evening will go down in history as the hottest April 19th ever... 41 degrees, was 5 above normal- reported one daily, 13 above- reported another. And just when Kolkatans were snuggling into their comfy air conditioned 24 degree living rooms to watch a bit of IPL on TV, BOOM... yeah, literally, BOOM went the lights, fans, AC-s, TV-s all over the city... and well, the street lights and traffic signals and hospitals and metro railway and airports... you name it.
Pic from The Telegraph of Park Street during the black out.

Of course, Kolkata Knight Riders lost their inaugaral match. But thank god no one was watching TV to see our Hero (seen here in action yesterday) make 1 run. Take his captaincy away, and the Expert Boria Mazumder, (who was my senior in Presidency btw, who knew one day I would be quoting him), knows something about the stinking (pun not intended) atmosphere of the dressing room in lovely South Africa.

Anyway, unable to stay in the house we decided to take to the streets in my comfy ac car, it has a music system also, godbless. Seems like every one had the same bright idea. We were bored sick of South City Mall, that being 5 minutes drive from home, so we decided to make a picnic of it and drove all the way to Mani Square. And God, was that a bad idea. Their parking is not well equipped to hadle a sudden surge of cars, it was mayhem right at the entrance. Inside, the mall kept plunging into darkness every fifteen minutes, which lasted 5 seconds in the shopping area but in the over crowded food court, we were at one time sitting in near pitch darkness for 15 minutes or more.

The food court itself was in the throes of the worst kind of chaos. No one knew the meaning of a queue. Once you manage your coupon, its a mad rush of loudest-shout-first-serve. Or longest-arm-first-serve. Im just five feet two, my arms arent that long, but hell, my voice is pretty darn loud, is what I found out yesterday!!!

One word of caution for people carrying babies or toddlers. Unlike South City, this mall is not todddler friendly. The drops are not totally covered. There is half a foot gap between floor edge an the glass railing, any tiny foot could get stuck there. If you are parking on the upper floors and you want to take a pram through the fourth floor entrance, then its a hassle with a largish step over which you have to carry your baby's pram by hand.

Kolkata safe for women drivers???

Time: 10.30 am
Place: Salt Lake Sector 3, near Stadium
Bus No: WB 02 Y 1928

The road is itself bad, horrendous. Anyone travelling that route will know your car is at a risk if you dont go at 20 kmph. I was coming from byepass road toward Salt Lake, travelling to office near PNB. The bus was one of those private buses ferrying people to office in Sector 5. As I was negotiating the potholes, I was at the extreme right of the road, almost touching the divider but for a few inches. I saw the bus hurtling down from behind me, and slowly inching right, directly towards my car. I honked with all my might, braked, stopped. the bus simply came and hit my passenger door.

Of course I was not at fault. And hence, of course, I had to do something about it. My passenger door was anyway quashed. But I wanted to take the driver to the police. I drove right in front of the bus, in the middle of the road, the bus was trying to swerve and flee... and stopped. There was enough space on both sides for traffic to cross, I had made sure of that. I got down and approached the driver. Even then I could see men hanging their heads out of the window shouting at me to move. Then it started.

The men ranged from my age- early 30-s to late 50-s. They surrounded me, first 5 then 10 then slowly maybe 25... surrounded me and started shouting, abusing, just short of touching. I said call the police, I want this sloved. The moment I said police, they started banging on my car. I was inside the car then having taken down the number of the bus. They started hitting my car on all sides, screaming at me to move. They started pushing my car. A mob of grown educated working men... they were getting late for work.

I made one mistake. I did not take photos. My camera phone was there. I wish I had taken the photos of the screaming mob and posted them everywhere so that employers would see them, families would see them. Men, employees, surrounding a lone woman in a car and abusing her, trying to intimidate her into moving away. This is what men in Kolkata do. Nincompoos, good for nothing backboneless savious of society. All rise.

Shishu Sadan, Thakurpukur

Priyanka is a student of Class 9. She writes- poems and short stories. Her poems are well thought out protests against social ills, against smoking, or a call to youngsters to rise and serve their country. Her stories are memorable, full of ghosts and villains and innocent girls. She is bright for her age. She sings a little, dances a little. She could have a bright future, maybe graduate with honours if she tried, and study further and have a good career of her choice. She has a career of choice. She wants to be a nurse. She will complete her 10th and go for nurse's training. Why, you ask? Priyanka is an inmate of Shishu Sadan, an orphanage, that she was sent to when she was 5, by her mother. Her mother is the only earning member of a family of four and could not afford to keep her at home.

In Thakurpukur, near the Cancer hospital, tucked away is this home for needy girls. With an inmate count presently of about 100 girls, between 5 and 18 years of age, it gives shelter to girls who have lost either or both parents, or are too poor to be sustained by their family.

The girls go to school in nearby areas, education is in Bengali board. They are sent here by relatives or aquaintances and probably get the childhood here that they would have otherwise lost. They study, play, sing and dance, cook and do some gardening too.

The orphanage is not in very pristine condition though. The main rooms are fine, though like very old homes without maintainance, they have paint peeling off the walls showing plaster, furniture a mix of metal, wood and plastic. There is a 'teacher in charge', a lady in her 50-s who, the girls told me, takes good care of them, much like a mother. The caretaker is a man of 45-ish, and seemed to me to be kind and simple, with the wellbeing of the girls as his primary concern. Apart from that I did not get the necessity of the presence of the couple of men that I saw, one with half open shirt and bad manners, the other most probably the account keeper.

The living area of the girls have no separate gate or boundary but can be walked to easily from the reception rooms. The bedroom consisted of 2 attached sheds, with open asbestos covers. It would be open to climate influences, both in winter and summer. The bedroom seemed at that time to be quite unkempt and unmanaged, beds all falling on each other, floor unswept, untidy to my somewhat finicky eyes. Maybe I was expecting something unrealistic.

But the girls looked happy. They study and learn to sing and dance and some art, when they get some volunteer teachers, the orphanage cant afford to get paid teachers. They have a cook who they help in teams to prepare all meals. That is how they learn to cook. They have to leave when they complete their 10th standard. Some of them become nurses, others go back home and I never really got to know what happens to them. I did not hear of even one girl continuing studies. They are too poor to afford it.

It is a great thing that these girls are getting a chance at life. They are not spending their childhood working i people homes as maids, getting abused, or cooking in tiny rooms with a dozen siblings to take care of. They are normal, leading normal childhoods. I just wish something could be done that they have a normal adolescence and normal adulthood, continue studies till a level, and work in respectable professions which gives them financial independence. Only that could pull them and their whole families out of the muck that is Indian poverty.

Pujo is round the corner 2

Roads are blocked already. The parallel lanes and shortcuts to Southern Avenue have become a traffic trap. You run into half blocked roads if you dont know what to avoid. By lanes leave only one car width space and during peak hours when all roads are busy, it becomes horrific. Gariahat is buzzing. The usual throng has swollen to 4 times its size. Pandals are being built. Last minute shoppers are in their usual frenzy. Its mayhem out here. And we are lovin it.

Pujo is round the corner

Pujo time is here... as of today 25 days to go... and nothing remids you of those 5 days than white clouds on blue skies. E M Byepass is usually a pain to cross in office hours. A 10 minute drive on empty road takes up almost an hour. But nowadays this is what I have for company.

This was taken standing in a jam at the Ruby crossing. But the best views are just before you get on the Chingrighata flyover. The horizon is so wide you can see the curve of the earth here. Green fields, blue sky... it almost makes me cry on some days. This is what I will miss of my city most when I leave.
Btw they are widening the roads at both the Ruby and Science city crossing circles. Finally!!!

New Bookstore- Odyssey

Odyssey is the newest chain to start operations in Kolkata. They have set up shop on Anwar Shah Road, opposite Navina Cinema Hall. The ground floor of this swanky structure has the book shop, the first floor has stationery and childrens section while to second floor has music, perfumes, watches and home decoration. A cafe is set to start serving soon.

The staff is very courteous, to the point of embarassing me into buying something... but they should have a pat on the back for their politeness and helpfulness. I went with a baby and had very little problem, with all of them coming forward to babysit while I browsed.

The collection is not bad, though I still think it does not better Crossword. But it can give a shop like Starmark a run for its money.

Kolkata-- My Home

I was very excited when Payal floated the idea of a blog entirely and exclusively dedicated to Kolkata. KOLKATA-- my home, the place where I was born and brought up, to express my feelings better I borrow Spivak’s words “Well, you know, I have a mother and that’s Calcutta…” (In an interview/discussion, ‘Postmarked Calcutta, India,’ [1990], Spivak stated to Angela Ingram). I wanted to say so many things about Kolkata and I felt this was the right place to do so. But ever since I have not been able to write anything.
Every time I thought of writing, I would start asking myself what do I write about--- the city herself, the educational places I went to—my school, my college, my universities, or the places I visited/visit with my parents or the places where I hanged out with my friends at various stages of my life spent in Kolkata or about new things that are happening to the city? In the middle of it, I would feel too overwhelmed and just drop it.
I was born in Kolkata and grew up there. All my education till masters has been there. I left Kolkata in 2002. I keep going back because emotionally Kolkata is my home but also practically because my parents and other family are there. But every time I go back home I find there is some change—a new bridge has popped up, a road has been turned one-way only, few more portholes in the roads, the people are little more ruder and hassled, the city a lot more dirtier, more old houses demolished to be replaced by fragile looking multistory buildings, latest shiny mall just next to a slum, another crazy government scheme being tried out, one more useless, destructive bandh around the corner…the list goes on. I stare at amazement and let my friends and cousins guide me through the maze of new developments. Walking on the roads I try and identify the old landmarks—some beautiful old house, maybe a tree, an old favourite shop… ninety nine percent of the time I find these old symbols gone—a Mac Donald’s or a CCD has taken its place. People rush past me but I hesitate, I feel this structure was here only last time I came, so maybe it is still there somewhere…only I cannot find it.
Every time I am there in Kolkata I remember the eternal lines from Salman Rushdie’s about how it feels to be away from home i.e. India and in my context-- Kolkata. Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. (1991), tries to recapture his lost home through his imagination “…physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind.”
While reading Rushdie I realized this is what I actually do. When I am stuck in Delhi, trying to survive in its rude world I keep thinking about Kolkata and how my life would be so much easier there. I remember the small things like how people are friendlier, how you do not have to fight with the taxi driver unlike Delhi autowallahs (auto rickshaw drivers) so on and so forth. I remember the first six months all I did in Delhi was compare it to Kolkata and needless to say every time Kolkata won hands down.
But like every other person away from home I eulogize home a bit too much. When I am away from Kolkata, she is perfection itself—a utopia of my mind. Even slightest criticism about her gets me all defensive and ready to fight. But when I visit Kolkata suddenly the rosy picture that I created in my mind gets a little dimmed, reality takes over. The city is not all of joy; it looks shabby, downtrodden and extremely badly maintained to my critical eyes.
Lately my sense of disillusionment is tremendous with my city—all I see around me is fake development—a few malls which is taking away business from small and medium scale shopkeepers and where middle class Bengalis go to confirm their status or some such silly stuff, a few more cineplexs which have made cinema watching a very prohibitive and expensive affair, some fancy restaurant opened, one more designer/ brand opening a show room in the city and some more multistoried buildings. Funny thing is Kolkatans are seem really proud of this. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against all of this but these are being done at what cost? Who actually gains from these-- an emerging group of nouveau riche with black money to spend rashly? But what about all those middle and lower middle class people trying to survive in the city? Isn’t the city becoming more and more prohibitive for them? What about maintaining the Bengali culture? Isn’t it getting lost somewhere in the tussle between the pseudo Bangla speaking communists and the mad rush for globalization? I remember reading an editorial in Anandabazar Patrika a few kalipujos back where Sharmila Bose had bemoaned the fact that diwali has so taken over kalipujo and her sense of disillusionment and loss when she comes home from London to celebrate kalipujo only to find Kolkata does celebrate diwali.
What about some resilience building like some solid infrastructure most importantly some really good roads, cleaning the city up (the corporation alone cannot do it, if the citizens do not grow their civic sense ASAP), get the drainage system into shape so that every time there is a heavy downpour people are not stuck in their houses for 2/3 days, maintain its heritage (stop demolishing old houses to build these monstrous multistoried buildings—every other city like Delhi, Mumbai—they all have put a ceiling on these horrible buildings, but Kolkata goes on merrily) planting some trees (look at Delhi, some judicial tree planting has dealt with the pollution problem to a large extent and also as the Congress government is claiming helps in making the weather a bit better), reopening some of the locked out mills and factories so that people can get back their jobs, deciding not be do another bandh like maybe for ever, what about maintaining some wholesome “bengalines” (there seems to be no middle way—either it is those who refuse to speak in anything other than bangla and who see great central treachery in everything or there are those who cant understand bangla staying in Kolkata) and last but my most favourite daydream stone the garbage spewing, lying, conniving, corrupt and idiotic politicians to death!
I know reading so far you may get confused and feel but then every city in India is going through this transition. Yes they all are, but I can say about Delhi that here all this transition is balanced with growth, new roads, over bridges, new suburbs, new buses—these things do keep coming up to supplement the other part. Sadly I don’t see that in Kolkata—there it is all lopsided. And I fear if it continues to go like this one day this city of joy would crumble and then no amount of crying can save it.

Park Street- Stay safe if alone

Not yet midnight and Park Street is flowing with drinks and the PYT-s clad in little somethings. Im in a salwar suit, for godsakes... coming out from a late night formal meet with husband in tow. Just crossing The Park in front of the paan shop is a group of fatso-s, average height 5'3''. I hurry towards the car, traffic is usually a mess at this time of night on weekends. "EY HEROINE. CHALTI KYA" comes the comment from the dwarf group behind me. On auto mode suddenly I swing around and walk toward the group. Immediately they start looking like trapped animals, guineapigs. My husband (thankfully, a 6 foot 160 pound-er) is just approaching the paan shop. As he sees me he realises something's wrong and catches up. The tallest in the group of 6, about 5'6'', is left to do the negotiating with my husband, who takes charge, while I stand fuming... well, because Im not being able to create the scene... and tapping my sandal on the kerb. "We are all family men, saar... Jaane dijiye". Yeah, right!!! Anyway, the paan shop seemed a better bet at spending time and energy, so we veered that way and munched our way back to our parked car near Flury's.

BTW, The Park's renovation does not seem to end. Its a mess with people and cars using the same narrow path in, with guards literally running after bikes which are not allowed inside. More so at night when most of the crowd is half drunk.

Kolkata Shining

A drive along Rajarhat road yesterday gave me a shock. I havent been on that road in a couple of months and the amount of work that is happening is mind blowing. Couple of swanky new buildings have come up, reflective glass and all. Trucks and tractors everywhere. Seems like in a couple of years the skyline of this part of the city is going to change forever.
The work-in-progress buildings came in stark contrast with verdant greenery which still exists along the road. Cranes (the bird category) still can be seen here. A couple of men were even farming their tiny plots of land. This was more toward the airport side than Salt Lake. But these are all bound to go. When you see the 'International COnvention Center' proudly proclaim itself, you tend to forget the greenery. You think, yeah Kolkata! Finally!!
Price of progress? Can we begin to identify what exactly we are losing? Do we care?

Kolkata featured in the April issue of National Geographic magazine. Take a dekko.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/04/kolkata-rickshaws/calvin-trillin-text.html

Tram Tracks

Unending story?
This time its Tollygunj. The stretch from Tolly Golf Club area to Anwar Shah Road has been dug up for some weeks now, closing many exit points, reducing traffic flow to two lanes each and making it a nightmare during office hours .
This morning, hope shines, new tracks have already been laid. Still a long way to go, but hopefully once it is done the road will be drivable once again.
But once that stretch is done they are surely going to dig up the Anwar Shah crossing. Thats where the tram tracks are worst. The car literally dives down a cliff face and drives up another, hitting the bumper if one is not very careful.
And its dangerous, because no one is sure what the traffic lights signify... or even, why they are there. No one follows signals at the crossing, and I have never seen a policeman anywhere nearby.
PS- thats supposedly a highly accident prone zone. (Years back, I had lost a friend to a trucks rash driving at that very crossing, bang in front of the mutton shop)