kolkata

Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) has turned out to be a pleasant surprise, with much to see and do and something interesting happening on every street corner. It was once the main base of the British in India, and so - as you might expect - the city centre is well equipped with elegant, fading, old colonial buildings dwelling along streets and roads which have a slightly British feeling in terms of layout.

When I arrived four days ago I decided that I would not spend too much time in the museums and sites laid out in my guide book, and that I would try to tackle the city a little differently. So on each of my four days here I've spent the mornings just wandering around the city streets, the afternoons at the cinema watching Hindi films, and the evenings in my hotel room reading the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi (my current book).

My wanderings have included some interesting places. I've walked all the way round the Maidan (the central park here). I've been to the Howrah Bridge which spans the river that divides Kolkata down the middle - it's similar in size to Sydney Harbour Bridge and supports a stream of 100 000 vehicles a day apparently making it the busiest road bridge in the world. I've had a look around the Park Street Cemetery, full of colonial graves and flamboyant (Gothic?) tombs for those who came in service of the British Empire but never returned. I noted how young most of the occupants were when they died, many of them younger than me. Most interesting though has been my walk to the Mission of Mother Teresa and the morning I spent there, visiting her grave, and reading about her life. Whilst I admire the selfless devotion she put into caring for the poor, I couldn't help but feel she would have been yet more productive if she had looked at tackling the causes of poverty in Kolkata rather than just allowing the unfortunate to be dependent on her and her Mission. Sat by her grave I was brought to mind of a passage I had read earlier in the Gandhi book and couldn't help but make comparison. He says, words to the effect, that whenever he is about to undertake a task on behalf of someone else he asks himself first: will my action help this person to increase their self-governance and self-reliance? If the answer was yes he should go ahead. If the answer is no he should decline. As I walked the surrounding streets of the Mission it was plain to me that little seems to have changed for the poor here. They're still here, in great numbers, still poor, dependent, and struggling to support themselves, no less self-reliant and with no more self-governance. Two streets away I saw three children bathing a toddler in a drain, no adult about as far as I could see. It was an unsettling image and clarified for me that despite Mother Teresa's best efforts poverty is still overwhelming in this part of the city.

On a lighter note, I've seen three more Hindi films thanks to my afternoon cinema visits, all of them at Inox, a shopping mall complex. It's funny how everyone outside the mall is dressed in fairly traditional Indian clothing, but inside everyone is in jeans and t-shirts. I even saw two Indian women in khaki mini-skirts and wearing enough make-up to sell out a Boots cosmetics counter. The cinema at Inox is air-conditioned which has provided me with a good secondary reason for going along there each afternoon. The films I watched are: 'Life in a Metro,' 'Cheeni Kum,' and 'Shootout at Lokhandwala.' The first of these stars England's very own Shilpa Shetty and the second two star Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan. I thought all three were good films, well made, and with interesting plot lines. 'Cheeni Kum' was interesting because it is set in an Indian restaurant in Chelsea in London, and is filmed around the area I used to work. I'm pleased I've finally seen Amitabh Bachchan on screen. He's so hyped in India. My verdict: he's got great screen presence, there's a stern gravity about him. He's clearly a very talented actor. He's good in 'Shootout' where he has a fairly minor role. That film has some serious violence in it. Anyway, that brings my Hindi film count up to six.

Two nights ago it started to rain hard for about an hour. 'The monsoon will be coming soon,' said the old fellow sheltering beside me in a doorway, and indeed it will. I also saw in a newspaper yesterday the headline 'monsoon hits Kerala sooner than expected.' So a new weather system is beginning to hit India and will be my next challenge and experience. It can't really be worse than all this heat and humidity so I'm happy for it rain down even if that will create restrictions for me.

This evening I catch a night train south to Puri, an Indian seaside resort which looks out into the Bay of Bengal. It will be my first time by the coast in India. I'll probably stay there for about two days (Thursday and Friday) and will then move on to nearby Konark to see the famous Sun Temple. I'm having the rest of today off although later I do intend to wander down for another peak at the Victoria Memorial, which is on the south side of the Maidan. It was built by the British in colonial days, and is perhaps the finest building they constructed in India. It looks like a cross between the Taj Mahal and St Paul's Cathedral.