Just the sound of this city name stirred me. As soon as I said the name ‘Calcutta’ or even thought about it, I could see my grandpa in my mind’s eye. I was back at their bungalow as a child, where each room had signs of India, the India connection. Beautiful carved standard lamps, tables, chairs. Rugs and carpets of the deepest blue or red, woven by hand in the most intricate of patterns. And words, words which we took for granted but were linked to Bengali or Hindi - we would place the laundry in the ‘Dhobi box’, and grandpa would say ‘A cup of Chai Mother Dear’ to granny. The name ‘Calcutta’. So long I have heard of it, and here I was, on a journey which has been waiting for me, for the longest time.
We were taking a flight from Mumbai to Kolkata (as it is now called, but please forgive me when I slip back to Calcutta), with a meagre 15kg luggage allowance. This was us to be away from our home Base of Mumbai for 8 weeks - with only 15 kg luggage. ~Well, I decided to welcome the challenge of being ‘light’. ‘Light of mind, light of heart, light of goods and chattels’. We could manage. And we did - although I will here’by declare we purchased an extra 5 kg of allowance! Still, not bad!.
An uneventful uber to the airport, an uneventful check in - where we were told we had exceeded our additional 5kg of luggage by a further 3.5kg. Maybe my crumpling face of despair, or maybe she was just the kindest person, ‘move some of it to your hand luggage and I will let it through’. So I opened up the case, displaying my wardrobe and contents to a group of 4 men travellers who enjoyed the show as they stood in the queue behind us. Our constant juggle of luggage which you all know so well!!
As with check in, the flight was uneventful but as we started to approach and then descend into Kolkata, my anticipation, excitement and nostalgia for the city grew. Nostalgia for a city I had never set foot in. I was finally going to walk the pavements of Calcutta, exactly where my grandpa had walked many a time. Well, I hoped I was going to. At this stage I really did not know if I was going to be successful in this journey. Would we find any of the places he talked of in 30 years of diaries? I almost felt a fear, a fear that I would not get ‘the feeling’. The fear that I would not be able to place myself in the exact same roads and pavements he frequented with my granny and my mum. Would I feel their presence?
As we touch down I remember a story of mum coming alone to Calcutta, and I wonder if this is the airport she came into to. I later come to recognise that this is not the airport she came to because it was not in existence then, and secondly, I have found Kathleen’s journey in grandpa’s diary of 1954 where it is noted she flew to Dum Dum airport, and not the airport we were approaching. Her journey will be captured at some point in www.mywildsimplelife.com
And now it is happening - Calcutta, and an immediate need for me to get out my woollens! Calcutta is still in winter! Getting a taxi was not as easy as Delhi or Mumbai, and it was an early sign to me that Calcutta was going to be different from anywhere else I had been to in India.
Oh Calcutta! You perplex me. You confuse me! You are cultured, yet chaotic. You show depravation, along with refinement. Old, crumbling, yet vibrant and teeming to capacity and beyond with life.
Calcutta is a huge city. It takes us a couple of weeks to fathom out the neighbourhood and where we are in this metropolis. Long wide roads with flying traffic, teeming with traffic - I note that in every city we go to locals proudly proclaim ‘our traffic is the worst’. Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai all vie for the ‘craziest traffic’. I may just be about to give 'The Crown of Chaotic Traffic’ to Calcutta - trams, cars, scooters, mopeds, angry buses, yellow taxis, white taxis, cycle rickshaws, motor rickshaws, helpless ambulances, bullying police cars, relentlessly transport 15 million Bengalis (including those from the suburbs) across the city to their destinations, and they seriously do not seem to consider the pedestrian at all. There is little ‘lull’ and red lights and pedestrian crossings give a fleeting respite!
Despite the crowds of people everywhere, Calcutta still has a sense of ‘big’ and so is the size of her buildings. I cannot believe the size of the the structure and of all of the places that we have been to across our travels I have never seen such size. I cannot think of a word that can describe the scale of these gigantic, huge, ginormous, behemoth buildings. All built in the British times and I guess represent the mindset of Imperial times - grand, towering, powerful, and not to be messed with.
In the west I think Calcutta is synonymous with desperation, poverty , despair, and home to some of the world’s most desolate people. Yet it is also called ‘The City of Joy’ - she is wildly enthusiastic for her culture, traditions, literature history, food, and more. How can this be? Why does a ‘City of Joy’ need a Mother Theresa?
This I can not answer, but for me, it was home to my grandparents and mother and I will seek the happiness they found in their lives here, because already, I am starting to see a people with unstoppable spirit, culture and vivid lives.
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