This day was one of absurd contrasts. From the cloister of the Fairlawn we taxied through the incredible streets to the Maidan, a large green park a short distance away and arrived at the Victoria Memorial. It is a white Italian style building, with a reflecting pool near it. It is quite out of place with the Indian city, but within the confines of the pastoral Maidan, is right in its proper place. It contains paintings depicting the history of the Raj (the British rule in India) all calm and tasteful and colorless, like a boiled potato.
This evening, after a sumptuous dinner, I conversed with Dr. Thomas. He was in the final week of a 3 month project with World Health Organization of the UN., advising on smallpox prevention. He had previously spent time in India and two years in Lahore. He was young, grey, serious faced but friendly and witty. He had firm, sound opinions asserted in a doctorly way but without dogmatic certainty. I asked him what he thought could possibly be done for Calcutta short of blowing it up and starting from scratch. He told of the small steps that were being taken: water supply, sewage, housing. But he acknowledged that these things were rudimentary and minimal. The chaos is so large, the impediments so many. We discussed the Asian or Indian mind which rejects planning; the self-satisfied, obstructive bureaucracy. All of India was bad, he said, but Calcutta was, by far, the worst; maybe the worst in the world, perilously brinking on hopelessness.
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| Jain Temple Sithalanatha |
This morning we awoke very early to take a tour of the city. I am letting my mustache and beard grow, poor though that growth is, because I want to look as grubby as possible to cut down on molestation. I won’t shine my shoes or wash my jeans until I leave India. Bea, as expected, has trouble with the heat. I do, too, but my skin, so awful in other respects, protects me with its greasiness. Bea: “You look swarthy.” Her kind way of saying “oily and ugly.” She has a bit of the Trots and a congestive cold so is understandably cranky. As our bus bounced around the sweltering streets, she paled and felt faint a few times. The air does not willingly go into the lungs: you must make a conscious effort to breathe.
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| Blowfish faces |
Our bus wended through sections of slum shanties, the “Bustees,” registered slums. We saw the old section with its government buildings, also in decay, on narrow streets with iron-railed balconies reminiscent of New Orleans. But the tumultuous life in the streets told a greater truth.
Bea found a way of dealing with beggars. As we stopped at each temple, young children appeared with big sad eyes and little hands outstretched. I have begun to notice that most seem well-fed though clearly poor beyond western imagination. To one such group, Bea made her blowfish face by pursing her lips, puffing cheeks and widening her eyes. At once, the surprised grins broke out on their faces and they laughed freely in the way only children can. Soon they were begging, not for “pais” but for more laughs. Time and again the trick made them squeal in glee. They called others who joined in the show. They were children after all.
[On that day we went to the Calcutta Zoo to see the rare white tigers. We stood close to the fence surrounding the enclosure and were watching until I became aware that there was a crowd behind us, watching us rather than the tigers. That alarmed me because I wondered if we were in a forbidden area or something. Then I noticed that they were looking more at Bea than me. A small boy near her was standing very close and looking up at her. He looked like he might have Down’s Syndrome or some other condition that gave him a very strange manner. When he stared at her arm, I realized why she had attracted all the attention. Bea’s hair was very light reddish brown, her skin very pale with brown freckles. She wore a pink scoop neck short sleeve t-shirt like top. It was not exactly revealing by our standards, but compared to the Indian women there who were very dark and wore saris that covered their bodies completely except for a thin band of skin around the midriff, she must have looked quite exotic to the Indians and much more of a rare attraction than the tigers. MB 20 June 2002]
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| Oldest Banyan Tree |
Tonight we spoke to Andre Amchin, a French seafood merchant in India to buy shrimp and frog legs. He was a large man, a youthful and manly forty, with a full beard and a twinkle in his eyes when he smiled. He was charmingly cynical about India. They were hopeless; in business lazy, in culture and religion un-Christian and foolish (“They have a temple for rats!” Arms upraised in Gallic shrug, as if that said it all); in cuisine the worst insult: they are un-French. His conversation was confrontational: America was foolish to destroy Nixon; Watergate was nothing. He told us (rather Bea, who translated for us) that Indian women were lousy lovers—“They lie there like death.” Turkish women were better. But the best was his French mistress—in Villeparisis(!)
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| Lord Shiva Temple Dakshineswar |
David Thomas joined us and the conversation was hostile between the two. Andre called the doctor a foolish idealist; David called the Frenchman a reactionary. I mediated but was annoyed at the Authoritarian sureness of the Frenchman, and, I admit, his attentions and charm poured on Bea. But he did give us some restaurants in Paris.
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