I have always wanted to visit Calcutta. At some point I had gotten it in my mind that Calcutta is the “real” India – that it would be gritty and full of all the destitute images that are regularly associated with India. What I found upon actually visiting Calcutta is a modern Indian city that has its traffic and dirt issues but was really quite modern. The Calcutta of my mind was not the reality I experienced – and yet the days spent in Calcutta were really great.
One of the things that I was really excited to see in Calcutta was the Kali temple at Kali ghat, which is said to be Calcutta’s holiest spot. Kali is the ominous evil-destroying aspect of Lord Shiva and is normally depicted in black, dripping blood and with a necklace of skulls around her neck. The temple engages in regular ritual sacrifice of goats to satisfy Kali’s “appetite.” The sacrificed goats are then cooked up and distributed to feed the poor. While I was looking forward to this visit it turned into an Indian fiasco. Upon entering the temple a “priest” began to move us through the crowd and we were whisked by the Kali statue in the middle of the temple in a matter of mere seconds before being moved along to the purifying bathing area to pray to Shiva. After prayers to Shiva this Hindu “priest” extorted us for a huge donation. Normally, I am keen to these situations and protest before getting to the donation portion of the program but it happen so fast. Now as I look back I can laugh, but as it was actually happening it did not seem funny in the least and triggered one of my India moments where the country infuriates me.
The best part of that day in Calcutta was wandering the streets of alleyways that surround the temple and meeting the local people and taking pictures. One of the Mother Teresa projects, Nirmal Hriday, is also in the area. This facility is the home for the dying and Lew and I visited briefly and viewed the nuns attending to the patients. While there is a Christian community in Indian the images of Jesus always strike me as out of place here. While in Bombay during my first trip in India the local bus I took every morning would pass Christian monuments on the roadside and many of the riders on the bus would cross themselves and it always struck me as strange. Seeing things that are familiar from our culture within a land that appears so foreign tends to catch my attention.
The most delightful surprise in Calcutta were the Jain temples. These temples were covered in colorful glass mosaic and glittered and danced in the sun with quiet, serene parks around them. The Jain temples I have been to in the past were monochromatic – they were nice but had struck me as nothing special. These Jain temples were the complete opposite. They were a feast for the eyes and I was drawn in by their magical quality. Jainism came about in India as a reaction to the caste system and its restraints on the people that pervaded Hinduism. Jainism was started by Mahavira and is founded on the idea of purifying the soul through fasting and meditation to attain an enlightened state and remaining non-violent in thoughts and actions. The most orthodox Jain monks sweep the path in front of them before each step as to avoid stepping on any living creature. When in Calcutta these Jain temples should not be missed.
When the Hindu faithful arrive at their temples to pray they very often bring rings of flowers as an offering to the god of the temple. In order to satisfy the immense need for these flowers in urban Calcutta there is an enormous flower market each morning under the Howrah Bridge in central Calcutta. After many a misadventure trying to locate the Mullik Ghat Flower Market, Lew and I finally came upon it and were happy that we had persisted in our search for this morning activity. The lanes were piled high with bright orange and yellow marigolds with sprays of pink and purple popping everywhere. People were snakes through the piles of flowers as vendors hawked their wares. It was a morning of color upon color followed by meeting the children that live in the area. This ended up being a fantastic time getting to be a small part of Calcutta daily life.
Stay tuned for tales of Indian tigers and Orissan tribe life…
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