Through their eyes.....

Santanu Saraswati
“Take me somewhere green. This city is having very little green and more high-rises.” This is what 24-year-old Aleksandra Derewienko, told her taxi driver just a day after coming to city from Warsaw, Poland, as a trainee under the youth exchange programme. After negotiating several intersections with lots of horn honking, she was surprised to find herself in one of the largest city parks in the world, the Kolkata Maidan, which, at 400 hectres and three kilometres long from north to south, and larger than New York’s Central Park.
Aleksandra, a student from Lubin, had never been to this city before. She and her friends, Patrycja Guba, Katarzyna Graboweika, and Natalia Angelo spent the morning wandering through the Mallick Ghat flower market, snapping photographs out of the window of the old Ambassador taxi, when a movement next to the car caught their eyes. One of the flower sellers had stopped to see what they were doing, so Aleksandra aimed her camera at him and took his photograph. She was rewarded with a grin from ear to ear and soon people wanting their pictures taken surrounded the car.
“I had been warned about camera thieves, especially during the Durga puja season, but it turned out these were flower sellers from surrounding villages just genuinely excited about having their pictures taken. I was amazed knowing that this market supplies more than 70 per cent of flowers for this five-day festival,” said Natalia, a student of environmental engineering from University of Tarapani, Italy.
“The market itself was a photographer's delight. Marigolds in the form of mala (garlands), gladioli, dahlias, roses and sunflowers formed part of a kaleidoscope of colour. Below the Howrah Bridge, one of only two bridges that cross the wide Hooghly River, it's a wholesale market where Kolkata's shopkeepers go each day to stock up on fresh flowers from the countryside! I jostled my way through the crowds, dodged honking trucks and ducked as men balancing large baskets of flowers on their heads pushed past,” Natalia added.
She saw men and women were cutting and arranging colourful blooms while the older workers sat under the shade of faded wooden shacks weaving blossoms into long garlands. They jumped into the taxi and headed straight for the frenetic rush-hour traffic across the bridge. Cars, auto rickshaws, bullock carts, bicycles, buses and pedestrians streamed across the bridge over the Hooghly, which flows through the centre of Kolkata and is Bengal's main tributary for the Ganges.
During her childhood days, Natalia came to know from her mother that in the 15th and 16th centuries the river attracted Dutch, French, Portuguese and British traders. In 1690 English merchant Job Charnock moved the British settlement to Kolkata's current location and was credited with the founding of Kolkata. They visited Charnock’s mausoleum, located in an unruly garden in the backyard of St John's Church.
Her mother frequented this city during her service with the diplomatic office in Rome. She told her daughter that St John's church was one of the first public buildings to be erected by the East India Company after Kolkata became the capital of British India. Like many British churches in India, it is based on James Gibbs's St Martin-in the-Fields, London, and has a stained glass panel of the Last Supper in which the artist gave the 12 disciples the faces of British personalities famous in Kolkata at the time.
From St. John’s Church their next stop was the side streets of Kumartuli, the artisans' quarter where temple statues and wedding finery are made in a warren of tiny workshops. Skilful potters were busy creating idols for the Durga Puja festival. “Really, Durga Puja epitomises Kolkata as the City of Joy, when the worship of the goddess Durga takes place,” she added.
From her mother, who was in this city for two consecutive years, Natalia came to know that each year brightly illuminated makeshift structures, often shaped like famous monuments such as the White House or Taj Mahal, are erected and installed with images of the 10-armed deity. Presents are exchanged and feasts prepared. On the last day of the festival one can follow the crowds and the frantic drumbeats to watch the larger-than-life images being immersed in the river.
In the this 300-year-old city these young students spotted some women riding past the rickety old tram in a hand-pulled rickshaw, a mode of transport that is on the verge of extinction. While trams and rickshaws have been a quintessential part of Kolkata's transport experience for centuries, the city has smartened up with a modern underground metro system. “Frazzled by the noise and mayhem, I sought refuge in the gardens of the Pareshnath Jain temple. The temple is decorated with an elaborate collection of mirrors, coloured stones and glass mosaics. Inside, there is an eternal lamp, which is fuelled with ghee and is never extinguished; outside, it is surrounded by beautiful gardens with statues, plants and fountains. From there, following my unlikely request to my taxi driver for somewhere green, I found myself at the Victoria Memorial end of the Kolkata Maidan,” said Aleksandra.
She knows as the capital of Britain's Indian empire from 1772 to 1912, Kolkata has many British buildings and monuments. Victoria Memorial was built in honour of Queen Victoria using white marble from the same source used to build the Taj Mahal. There's a large outdoor statue of her and a museum with 24 galleries that hold a collection of Raj memorabilia, including the piano Queen Victoria played as a child. “As the sun began to set over Victoria Memorial, I wandered through the gardens soaking in the greenery. Well-dressed couples were walking through the gardens hand in hand, enjoying a quiet respite from the city's hectic pace. I have seen families resting on park benches in front of the lake, while others were lying on the grassy lawn watching the squirrels. Probably its one of the place where Kolkatans get respite from their busy daily schedule. I love frequenting this place and during puja days, too, I will be visiting this park,” Aleksandra said.
Both Aleksandra, Natalia, Patrycja and Katarzyna, now know that Durga puja festival in Kolkata is the occasion for the whole family to get together during four or five days - so there were even more people than usual staying in the house. These young foreigners, too, like many other Bengali girls of their age, went for Durga puja shopping at Gariahaat and Dakshinapan Shopping Complex.
Few days ago, they went sari shopping for the first time, to look alike Bengalis. After having eaten a couple of Chinese chicken rolls both had trouble with the sweet Bengali daal and nasty rice served at local restaurant at Gariahaat Road. They sat in a sari shop and had a certain number of saris unfolded for them- until the moment when Patrycja looked at the pile aside of Natalia and decided they absolutely had to stop buying. Patrycja got a ready-made blouse and a petticoat to be able to wear the more expensive sari she had bought from Gariahaat for the evening gathering on astami. “ I loved it! I wore it once with the help of my landlady and my friends told me that I was look great! I will have a complete new look,” Patrycja said.
They tasted the joys of travelling by taxi, going sari shopping. For them, which means usually staring mouth-open at very expensive and very beautiful saris, in most cases without buying them and ‘parading’ about draped in pretty cloth. One day as they went out, a flooded junction stopped them. The rainy season was not yet quite finished in Kolkata. “We went as far as we could without dipping our dresses in the muddy-coloured, knee-deep water and finally hired a man-pulled rickshaw, the only ‘vehicle’ available. If I am not mistaken, this city is one of the only places where they still exist. Here, rickshaws are made for two people. Aleksandra and I could barely squeeze in and we managed to balance ourselves on our knees. Of course, when we got off about fifty metres later, the rickshawallah asked us for Rs. 300, a bit sheepishly, though. We gave him Rs. 60, which I now believe was, too, not the correct price,” Katarzyna said.
Through net surfing, Patrycja came only to know that Calcutta, or Kolkata as it is now called, is seen as the land of the intellectuals. Communist in ideology and very politically aware, Kolkata was the capital of British India before Delhi assumed this position. She, before coming all way down from Olzstyn, a city few kilometres away from Poland’s capital, Warsaw, came to know that Kolkata developed from a fishermen village to become one of the largest cities in the world. The city symbolizes creativity and vibrancies with all the modern amenities available. Kolkata has adapted to the modern trends and techniques of the world but has not shed the leisurely life style and the calm of its hey days.
But after staying in this 300-year-old city for the past three months, Patrycja came to know that Kolkata has the country's first Metro railway and some of its buildings are more than a hundred years old. While Kolkata is a city of enduring charm, it is also a city that evokes extreme emotions. So be ready to give in to it or hate it completely. “A city with strong cultural, literary and religious flavours, Kolkata acts as the gateway to the Northeast,” she said. For this 24-year-old student of International Relations, in Collegium Civitus in Warsaw, Patrycja felt that in Kolkata, shops spring up everywhere selling everything from sarees to sweets, kebab rolls to kitchen fittings. Shopping and eating are pursued with great gusto. “We have plans to have the tastes of sorshe ilish, chingri and obviously biriyani at Shiraj during the pujas,” she observed.
One of their friend, who is in this city and experienced last year’s Durga puja told that the evening crowds, at ever pandals, are entranced by the sinuous convolutions of aarti dancers, smoke and incense, clash of cymbals, the tinkling bells and deep roll of drums. Shops spring up everywhere selling everything from sarees to sweets, kebab rolls to kitchen fittings. Shopping and eating are pursued with great gusto. “This city is really a living theatre. Let entertainment industry professionals put it in some order, with galleries for spectators, al fresco gastronomy, song, dance, variety entertainment and even voluntary participation for enterprising tourists during an exotic gala week,” Natalia observed.
They are told that even special limousines follow the immersion processions and comfortable launches take visitors out for a mid-river view of the final ceremonies on dashami. There is scope for the kind of inspired commentary that passengers on New York's Staten Island ferry find so absorbing. “It's something that the Indian Tourism Development Corporation could sell abroad if it had a mind to,” she added.
Crores of rupees are spent on the pujas and related activities, and younger people who raise funds through the methods already described do much of the spending. Some puja committees do, indeed, help schools and hospitals, but not as many as one would like. Pandals are becoming more and more innovative. Images of pith and paper have replaced traditional clay. Aluminium, coconut fibre, bamboo reed, areca nut membrane, sand sculpture and even handloom fabrics are some of today's imaginative materials. Replications of the Red Fort and Victoria Memorial have given way to all the architectural wonders of the world, ancient and modern, as well as soaring space age structures and recreated villages. Many pujas evoke a particular theme, historical or cultural, Katarzyna observed.
Aleksandra, Natalia, Katarzyna and Patrycja came to know that experts from the lighting industry in Chandernagore have gone to Dubai where expatriates celebrate Navaratri with great gusto, and London where Bengalis are honouring Durga on the Thames.
A gang of young toughs, one day invaded their flat in Chanditolla Lane, turned up their collective nose at the proffered donation and demanded advertisements for a souvenir brochure. It was their ‘post diamond jubilee’ Durga puja -- whatever that might mean-- and the cheapest half-page ad cost Rs 3,500. “For Rs 25,000 you'd get the back cover. “Another gang, smaller and less tough, argued that its puja deserved funding because it was ‘on the way’—Durga alone knows from where to where!” Patrycja said smiling.
No wonder many foreigners denounce the frenzy as a waste of time, energy and resources. People decry a shallow faith that commercialises religion, and cite worthy causes like flood relief or rural medicine that could do with money. It is easier still to deplore the man hours lost as work piles up in offices throughout West Bengal during that week of merriment, Patrycja observed.
Profitable showcasing of this showbiz extravaganza would be some compensation for the hassles they think they have to suffer. Though the puja is still two weeks away, the traffic is beginning to congeal at the end of their road where the skeletal pandal straddles a small park and one of the two roads round it so that up and down traffic is squeezed into the other narrow lane.
The jams now are nothing compared to what lies in the future when these four young girls in their early Twenties along with Bengalis in their thousands will swarm the pandals, gazing, eating, shopping and gossiping. Two of them are learning classical Indian dance from Manjula Ghosh. She would take them for pandal hopping on the Navami. From one corner to another, these four young beautiful butterflies will fly from Behala Youngmen’s Association in S N Ray Road to Simla Byam Samiti, from Deshapriya Park Barowari Puja Committee to Muhammad Ali Park all four in colourful dresses they purchased from Dakshinapan Shopping Complex and Gariahaat this month after few hours of hectic exercise through the maddening crowd.
The landlady of their three-room apartment in Tollygunj has already confirmed their Astami puja programme. Starting from offering anjalis to Goddess of Power—Ma Durga to enjoying sumptuous kichhuri bhog along with the neighbours and in the evening pandal hopping again…. just like any other adolescent Bengali girl.
“My stay in Calcutta has not much of a story to it. Nothing really ‘happened’ there. It was more a case of catching a little of the flavour of everyday life in a context I am not used to, as well as getting to know three people (Patrycja, Katarzyna and Aleksandra) who were going to play an important part in my “Kolkata adventure”, although I did not suspect it then. We ate piles of Bengali sweets. I must have put on weight, even if the family diet didn't seem to encourage that. We also lived on Britannia Digestive biscuits and Cadbury's Picnics. I bought a bunch of those one day, and they turned out to be inhabited by little six-legged beasts - luckily I had been greedy and the problem was discovered before we left the shop,” said Natalia.
While sari shopping, Natalia encountered the ‘first customer’ syndrome a couple of times. For most shopkeepers, it is inauspicious if the first person to enter the shop leaves without buying anything, so the lucky ‘first customer’ is provided a fair amount of pressure by the sales staff. “One morning, we were ‘first customer’ in one shop after the other, and as we were not in a buying mood, we left a row of angry shopkeepers behind us (we were quite irritated too, and decided to put the shopping on hold to give others a chance to be ‘first customers’ in the next shops) in Gariahaat,” Natalia reiterated.
Another irritating phenomenon these four friends encountered when sari shopping is the concept of “same” in the average Indian mind. “Ask for the same sari but a different colour, or the same colour with a different pattern, and see what you get. I was simply amazed that people could point at two things so blatantly different and say ‘Same, Madam, same’. I almost went nuts,” Katarzyna says.
But any way Kolkata is the cultural capital of the country. “We have been to Varanasi, Sikkim, Puri and even spent few days in Darjeeling. Kolkata will always remain in our hearts as the City of Joy. This city is so warm, so hospitable, and so own…. that we would carry this memory to our country. And if any body speaks bad about Kolkata, we four, irrespective of where we stay in future, we protest from the heart. We will be looking forward to any chance of coming back to this city again in future,” Patrycja said while her eyes were sparkling with few drops of water. But these drops are surely not cry. They obviously are a sign of the happiness and fulfilment. Patrycja wave her hands—“God bless you, Santanu…”
EOM
santanu_saraswati@hotmail.com