Outside the temple of Kali, after a nice $25 fleecing by a tout.
Kolkata: Kali, Mother Theresa, exposed wires, and kati rolls
Kolkata is hot. In the city, exhaust from millions of idling cars fills the air and forms an oppressive choking cloud that makes you really wonder how people adapt to life like this.
This has always been one of the more beautiful things about India — it’s full of a resilient, determined populace who aren’t discouraged by lack of clean water, soil, or breathable air. They’re tough.
We, the pathetic and clammy Americans, however, found it difficult. Kolkata embodies the urban chaos of India that we’ve grown accustomed to. Its highways were a bedlam of insanity, the usual mix of cows and humans, dogs and goats, mopeds and buses teetering with ten young men dangling off the luggage rack and four more hopping in the door as the bus slows down, but it doesn’t ever completely stop to let them on — instead rolling off with limbs sticking out in all directions.
We came to Kolkata knowing that we wanted to see a few things. The temple dedicated to Kali, some colonial buildings (from when the city was Calcutta — although most Indians I spoke to still call Kolkata “Calcutta” and Mumbai “Bombay”), and the Mother House, where Mother Theresa worked her miracles.
When we arrived, we were faced with that all too familiar conundrum at Indian airports, you’re a long way outside the city and it’s a long way in. On a shoestring budget, we chose poorly. We didn’t spring for the A/C taxi. And we ended up with a greenhorn.
“You sure you know where this is?” I asked, holding the slip from the radio taxi stand, pointing very clearly to the address of our hotel.
“No problem,” he said with the customary shake of his head. It was a problem. Our hotel no longer existed. It was a BIG problem. Furthermore, it was impossible for him to find the hotel, and would have been even if it existed. He had no idea how to find his own foot. After a godawful taxi ride (2 hours in the chokingly polluted traffic, windows open breathing away our future lung capacity) and a quick detour to a school which our driver insisted was our hotel –we finally found the hotel at the site of where our hotel should be. But, it turned out that our hotel had been discontinued.
So large was our problem, that we spent another two and a half hours on a relay call between Hotels.com help and the staff at an imaginary hotel. Well, nothing sucks as much as wasting precious travel time you can never recover. However, we did get an upgrade, of sorts to a new “fancy” hotel.
We couldn’t do much that night, so we resolved to make our remaining time worth it. That evening, we instead just enjoyed the most kick-ass kati rolls ever created. Despite my recent (and relatively ongoing) food-borne illness, the mutton kati still hit the spot at Kusum Rolls. Don’t be put off of eating standing up down a crowded alley way, 50 cents has never been so fresh and delicious.
The next day we checked in our friend Kali, the beautiful (and, at times, vengeful) Goddess ,who is worshipped by many as the Divine Mother. For us Westerners, we know her as some dark and perhaps demonic consort of those villainous dudes from the Temple of Doom. Well, pop culture does that a lot. Instead, she is a very important deity worshipped across India. One of her most notable temples, however, is here in Calcutta.
Our temple visit, as with most tourist sites, was a damn racket. But it was still fun.
A tout greeted us as we tried to wander in, pegging us as easy money.
“You must have a guide to enter. I am a registered guide, you must come with me.” His logic was undeniable… But, sometimes, we find it’s easier to just give them the money and laugh it off. What’s being swindled out of another 5 or 10 thousand rupees.
Of course, by the time we had seen the spot they sacrifice the goats (you know, standard stuff) and stuck third eye dots on our foreheads to mark us as the ultimate tourists, and our guide literally pushed us through the Kali body temple (where we basically got our pockets double-checked for spare change and got to rub up against 400 sweaty pilgrims, then we got to look at a shrine that resembled an empty birdcage.
“Tell me the name of your mother.” The tout asked.”Father? Brothers?” I answered.
He then proceeded to bless each of my family members, the family dog, my dentist, and my third cousins (just kidding), but for Sophie, the fee was higher (because she has five siblings). This was one of those times where I wish I was quicker and could have answered: “I’m an orphan!” and escaped, paying just $10 or so. Instead, stupidly, I listed off all my family members, and they’ve since been blessed by Kali. (Ahem… forgot to mention that, guys… She sees you when you’re sleeping, etc.)
Well, we eventually escaped with minimal damage and headed on over to the Victoria Memorial. We walked through a political uprising, quick to leave and found ourselves in a very random piece of empty grassland, next to a gigantic racetrack. Well, apparently someone let the horses out, and so we wandered by and tipped our hats.
Completely lost, and relying on a map with cartoon versions of everything drawn not to scale (NEVER GO TO INDIA WITHOUT A DATA PLAN… stupid stupid stupid), we panicked and grabbed a taxi.
Despite repeated attempts by Sophie to communicate with the driver, I realized that the taxi driver was handicapped — he was unable to hear at the frequency women speak. So, I had to translate for Sophie into ‘man talk’.
“Hey punk (a respectful term in man speak), can you take us to the royal thing?”
He nodded the customary, “no problem” nod.
A memorial to Victoria, a character from a Netflix show… Apparently, she’s really big in India.
Victoria Memorial. It’s a memorial for Victoria. The rest is FAR too boring to relay here. The building itself…very impressive…as buildings go. Worth a visit, but mainly for the park area behind the memorial and the other historical buildings in that end of town.
From there, we meandered over to the Hooghly River and set off along the river walkway with small refreshment stands, tour boat opportunities, dead parade floats, and druggy animal trash cans.
We emerged from the path a mile or so uptown, where the path intersects with a railway and a shantytown. We were surprised to find that, all of a sudden, we’d crossed into colonial Calcutta, with dozens of British government buildings, mansions, and churches. Behind the St. John’s Church we found a memorial to the Black Hole of Calcutta which was terribly grim.
There was one more site Sophie wanted to see before we could recuperate in the coolness of our hotel room. Our visit to the Mother House — Mother Teresa’s home — was, to my surprise, not at all a tourist trap. This peaceful compound is still today an active home for the Sisters who carry on Mother Teresa’s work, as well as temporary volunteers. Here you can see her room, pray by her tomb, and learn about her life through a small museum display. Not to minimize the important work Mother Teresa accomplished, but we were surprised to see a picture of her when she was young, before she was Mother Teresa, and she was movie star pretty. She could have had anything in life, and still she dedicated herself to those in need.
We found ourselves in this weird, empty field. Who let the horses out? Who? Probably those guys standing under the tree. Why? They were hungry. Horse dosa.
For our final evening in Kolkata, Sophie dragged me to a mall under the guise of something cultural that I can’t remember now. While we were in briefly in Chennai the day before, we went to a very non-Western mall that was like an Indian marketplace just with escalators, rather than winding alleyways. Surprisingly fun as malls go. This, however, was an upscale mall much like only the nicest malls in the US and, as such, it was dreadfully boring. But we did get to shop in a grocery store that had tea flavored mouthwash and chili flavored toothpaste, so that was pretty cool.
Though our hotel was nearby, we didn’t want to drag our newly purchased suitcase for knickknacks through the inevitable street sludge, so we hailed a taxi. We showed the driver the address but he shook his head and shrugged, indicating that he did not recognize the street name (truly less than five minutes away). A tuk-tuk driver convinced us that he knew where we needed to go, but he grabbed the address (actually Sophie’s phone displaying the address) and ran over to another driver to ask where the hell it was. While we were sitting in that tuk-tuk waiting, another driver came over to us and asked, “Need tuk-tuk?”
“No!” We both responded, “we’re in a freaking tuk-tuk.”
A moment later our driver returned (with Sophie’s phone, fortunately) and we were off. Paused at a traffic light, a third driver rode up to us and asked, “Need tuk-tuk?”
idaknowwheretogo (I don't know where to go!) 