Oh! Calcutta!

May 10 -- 6:08pm

The Hindustan International Hotel is in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). It was the cheapest hotel I could find online that was at least vaguely close to the airport. But it turns out to be uber-swanky. The shower even has hot water. And it stays hot the whole time! It makes me realize just how sunburned my kneecaps really are.

I shuffle out of the hotel at 2pm. It’s hot, but the downpour an hour earlier keeps the temperature at a reasonable level. I walk to a big cafeteria-style veg (vegetarian) restaurant. The food looks good, but each pick-up area has a long line. And of course by “long line,” I mean an unorganized crush of people jammed up against each other. No thank you. I leave and grab a masala dosa and a pineapple juice in a grimy eatery a few blocks down.

I go to the creatively named Indian Museum. It’s the oldest museum in India and you can tell. Looks like little has changed in the 200 years since it opened. The exhibits are old, the placards are dusty -- but at least there’s a lot of stuff. Man, is there a lot of stuff. But so little of it is even remotely interesting. There’s an inverse relationship between the sheer volume of stuff compared to how much you’d actually care to see. Thousands of rocks on tables and spices in jars. Barely-there fossils and mediocre dioramas. A whole room devoted to hundreds of cross sections of different kinds of wood, which all look exactly the same. Not to mention the animal skeletons covered with pen-scrawled graffiti.

The tiny Egypt room is neat though. There’s a cool 4000 year old mummy with a visible skull. And air conditioning.

I walk in The Maidan, a big green park with wide open spaces. Seems similar to Central Park in NYC, only with more garbage on the grass. But still, it’s surprisingly nice.

I must say, I expected Calcutta -- err, Kolkata -- to be depressing. I thought I’d see a lot of poverty, a lot of suffering. Maybe that’s prevalent in other areas, but not so much where I’m at.

Since this is the only Indian city that still allows human-pulled rickshaws (they tried to ban it a few years ago but the rickshaw pullers protested), I wanted to snap a picture of one in action. I personally think it’s an inhumane practice, but it would still make a good shot. Unfortunately I don’t see any, so I have to settle for photographing extraordinarily decrepit buses.

Two young-ish women stride toward me as I cross the street. I know what they’re after. I try to sidestep them, but they block my path and start begging for money. I say no as I keep walking. One follows alongside me. I snap “don’t follow me!” and she stops cold. I immediately feel terrible. I probably wouldn’t have felt so bad if she’d ignored me and continued following.

I don’t regret saying what I said, I just didn’t like the tone I said it with. Entirely too harsh. She was (shockingly) the first person all day to ask for money, and one of only a handful during my weeklong trip. But I guess this had built up after six months of dealing with countless persistent beggars. And while I did have a nasty tone with the woman, I know I’m making too much of it. I have too much empathy. It’s annoying.

I walk to an old planetarium and grab a seat inside for a space show. Before the lights go down, I watch a screaming match between a man sitting near me and a woman by the doorway (husband and wife?). It must take a lot of anger to fight so loudly in a room full of people. After a few minutes, the woman leaves. I have a growing paranoid vision of her coming back in with a gun and shooting the guy. I know it’s unlikely, but I still move to a seat at the other side of the planetarium.

The space show is pretty boring. The live narrator is dry and doesn’t say much of note. At least I don’t think she does. Hard to be sure since she’s speaking Hindi. The next show is in Bengali, and the one after that in English. I’d prefer to actually understand what was being said, but I don’t feel like waiting. My eyes close, I sleep during much of the show. Why do I always fall asleep in dark rooms in public places?

The pavement outside is wet. It had poured while I was in the planetarium, enjoying the dull Hindi space show. I still feel bad about telling off the beggar woman. I decide to set things right and get my karma back (this seems an appropriate place for karmic matters). I decide I should give money to a beggar on the street. I’ve done this every now and then, but I rarely give money to anyone who asks and (as much as it breaks my heart), almost never to children. I just don’t think it teaches the right lesson.

As I walk back to my hotel in the light drizzle, I look for a beggar to give a 500 rupee ($11 U.S.) note. But, for a change, I don’t see any beggars. Finally I spot a barefoot woman with a dirty face leaning sadly against a wall. I offer her the 500 rupee note. She doesn’t take it. Too proud to take my money? Not actually a beggar? Not sure. Perhaps I wasn’t truly meant to give anything away. I resign myself to this.

A couple blocks from my hotel, I see an old man sitting on a step. Clearly a beggar. He doesn’t notice me until I hand him the 500 rupee note, which he takes without hesitation. I continue walking.

pix of beat-up buses and other fun Calcutta stuff: CLICK HERE