Calcutta to Darjeeling

10/10/78 Finally Calcutta, but at midnight. We bluff our way into the First Class Retiring Room for several hours of much needed sleep on the waiting benches. Rejoining my friends on the train to Sikkim was sadly out of the question as I needed to get a permit for Darjeeling (normally 24 hours, but today was Durga Pujah with a 2 day holiday) and a permit to Sikkim, which has to be got from Delhi, normally takes 6 weeks!

Calcutta, despite its reputation for the most cultural Indian city, is not the most pleasant place in the world to be stuck for 5 days waiting for government offices to open, and permits to be picked up. So I decided to make the best of it. Several things appealed: a YMCA room with a 25 foot ceiling reminded me of an E.M. Forster novel with its banistered wooden staircase to a mezzanine bathroom with decrepit chip water heater, a shower that once worked and a tap with a holey bucket (annoying to discover on soaking laundry) and high in the ceiling above swished a huge two bladed fan, resembling an aeroplane propeller, and most probably was.

The Durga Pujah (a worship festival for the Hindu goddess Durga) is Calcutta's biggest festival - if only half the population of the city were on the streets that night it would have been about 4 million people (or 40 lahk people) and I would believe it. Various groups hire trucks, fill them with chanting happy people supporting their plaster-of-paris image of Durga, multi-armed and surrounded by other deities such as Lakshmi (the goddess of prosperity) and Ganesh (the one with the elephant's head) and to the accompaniment of drums and crashing cymbals make their way to the muddy slippery banks of the Hooghly River (as ugly as it sounds), a tributary of the venerated Ganges; dance joyfully for a while (the women retiring to a respectful distance), then struggle though the curious and joyful crowd to the water's edge, whirling it round and round seven times (presumably to make Durga giddy) then dispose of the lot with a huge splash under the watchful eye of the water police positioned a little way out midst the bobbing flotsam of pieces of previous similarly dispatched images. The goddess has now been returned from whence she came. The earthenware water containers are filled with the putrid sanctified water and the devotees then joyfully make their way home, singing and chanting, passing the next of seemingly endless groups. I was infected with the festive mood, however watching a brutal lathi (baton) charge by mob control police on a group of unarmed citizens is not pleasant to watch, and I resolved never to get into a situation where I would be on the receiving end.

My compassion for my fellow man takes a severe buffeting with the enormous number of beggars in this city, and my reactions to them. As an example: an early morning tram ride over the Howrah Bridge spanning the Hooghly River to witness the homeless people by the thousands, lying pitifully in the filthy streets or on the embankment or wherever they can find shelter from the strengthening sun. One woman was proudly putting on her child's feet some ankle jewellery, yet the child had no other clothes except a leather thong around her loins under her swollen belly. Matted hair, sad eyes, and utter hopelessness - yet somehow a grim acceptance of their miserable lot. The next life will be better. The child beggars are insistent and annoying, particularly those who persist in touching you for attention, whining over and over "master" or "babu" or "sahib". One is just unable to ignore with no reaction, as the majority of the locals seem to do. I had long before decided not to give any money at all to any beggar (I would share food), and was beginning to worry that I was becoming callous and increasingly immune to people's suffering. There are just so many people asking for money - some are organised rackets, some children are slaves of bosses bringing in their earnings or else getting beaten up, most 'earn' in one day more than a person working in a more acceptable job. Yet, of course, many are genuine, and some near death.

So a visit to St. Paul's cathedral with its moving displays and posters and photos of its community work struck a tender chord in my heart and I found myself weeping in a corner of the chapel. How lucky I am to be born in a wealthy country and to be able to enjoy life as I am! How ignorant and greedy and cruel man can be! How insignificant is a large organisation like this big church's efforts in grappling with this monstrous social problem, let alone the efforts of only one individual! Then a rather emotional interview with the splendid lady conducting the flood relief operations and a few hours later I was sealing my 100th plastic bag of dried food destined to be air dropped to flood victims. It was a very strange feeling to be so closely involved in vital relief work that, back home, I'd be hesitant to donate to, because of a fear of funds misappropriation. So much money is needed even to pay for the insufficient work to date. Anti-cholera serum is in short supply and literally hundreds of villagers are known to be dying daily. My respect for the mission workers and volunteer agencies was markedly increased. Before I left the church I noticed some "charred crosses" recovered from Christian churches recently burned in Bangladesh, to remind us yet again of man's inhumanity to man.

I also found this poem A Poor Man's Cry

I want / a home for me / not a beautiful city /
To know, be aware, read and write / not a college for the elite /
I want dignified work to do / not be an unemployment statistic for you /
Food on my plate / not a land reform debate /
I am / educated though illiterate /
Wise though ignorant /
Powerful though without money or status /
Beautiful though socially deformed / and I am /
Your Equal.

Three million people cross the Howrah Bridge daily. One man sadly surveys his human powered rickshaw wheel that's snapped in half, the traffic

A visit to the west Bengal Government Offices, and to witness first hand the incredible mountains of dusty files and desks heaped with official papers for as far as the eye could see, with the dutiful public servants sitting behind their desks almost lost in this cellulose sea, and mildly wondering what to do next.

Plates of plastic fruit for sale - well that's OK - but plates of plastic biscuits and plastic cakes? Vendors of cigarettes, peanuts, and acrobatic clowns on tightropes, fruit, betel, cloth, shoe shines, water, books, photo albums, sweets, underpants, toy snakes, smuggled radios and watches, fortunes, stuffed rabbits, string, flutes ... cunningly choose their position on the already overcrowded footpath, to cause the maximum inconvenience to the pedestrian. And the ancient, hopelessly overloaded, dusty buses roar pass only a few feet away, spewing their evil fumes over the freshly peeled pineapple and pawpaw, which in another environment would be so tantalising. The "rag-pickers" cause most of Calcutta's garbage to be recycled - yet young coconut shells (about 15 cents for drinking), apparently cause the city's biggest waste disposal headache, as well as human waste and the overloaded storm water drains. Even grass clippings get spun into twine. And the city streets are surprisingly clean.

The "special" steam train to Darjeeling with no reservations. I begin to pride myself on the tricks for rail travel survival. Impossibly crowded, twelve people share a sleeping compartment designed for six. The lights don't work. Dawn creeps over the silent and still floodwaters around islands of crops and villages, before the first sight of the Himalayan foothills. At the frequent stops, one becomes expert at grabbing food like samosa and vine leaf wrapped around potato curry, or earthenware cups of dubious tea (fun to smash afterwards), or having a quick wash under the platform tap, all the while positioning oneself "up-train" to leap on with dozens of others as the train moves off. Some mottoes on the signs on the platforms get a little ludicrous, such as "Work Is Worship" with a pile of porters snoozing underneath.
But before we leave Calcutta, let me explain why people back home are indeed fortunate to receive any mail from me at all.

The Calcutta Post Office although beautiful architecturally, is a monstrous building, falling to pieces, thousands of jostling people, endless queues, hundreds of signs in different languages, extolling the incredibly complex rules and regulations, and dour face attendants behind the grotty windows. To post a letter, you need to join no less than seven queues:

• enquiry as to which queue to first join;
• weigh the letter;
• determine the rate (back at the enquiry queue);
• buy the stamps (only the correct change);
• join the glue queue (no pre-glued stamps here);
• frank the stamp (otherwise it will get stolen and recycled);
• join the queue to actually post the letter (which happens to be the enquiry queue, and the post slit is directly below the enquiry officer, for some inexplicable reason).

Realise that an Indian queue is very different to what we would know. The idea is to use all your energy to attract the officer's attention. Three or four people may well push in and carry out their own transaction before you've finished yours. Only the strong survive. A friend who went to the Poste Restante to eagerly collect his mail was puzzled to be given none. So he assertively insisted on searching through every pile under every pigeon-hole alphabetical letter (it took him several hours), and he found his precious mail scattered through the whole alphabet: under "c" for c/- Post Restante, or perhaps Calcutta; "e" for "Esquire" that a friend always addressed him as; etc. Moral? If using Poste Restante, use a small city, get your friends to use block letters, and underline the SURNAME.

15/10/78 From the hot, humid, dusty plains and dirty little town of Siliguri, it seems incomprehensible to see far in the distance, a solid white beckoning peak, rising through the smog. The cheap hotel room that night was unbearable - with a fan not working, mosquitoes, sweat and the cacophony of unceasing traffic noises: blaps hoinks squeeps cling-clings mees hooods clarks etc. And so you may well have seen me as I scurried down the hall to the more expensive room away from the main street, to a mosquito net, fan, shower, and comparative quiet. Watching the dawn though a brickhole in the windowless bathroom, the dusty, smoky town awakening, the distant rosy, hazy mountains more urgently beckoning.

The toy train chuffs and puffs "I think I can, I think I can" up a narrow gauge zig zag track, stopping frequently for water from tanks fed from gushing springs high overhead, and at the several stations along the way with tearooms serving toast. The rail twists and turns, crossing and recrossing the narrow road the buses use, on occasions circling over the top of itself, the ancient locomotive reversing directions. Then passing through beautiful jungle and tea plantations, the air getting cooler, and along the main streets of the villages - you could almost touch the shops if you leaned out of the carriage, on both sides. The passengers snatch the marigolds and daisies and chrysanthemums growing seemingly wild on the banks. And the air continues to get crisper.

Ten hours from Siliguri the tiny train rounds a bend to reveal a magnificent snow-capped range, and old Darjeeling, snugly settled on the steep ridge with a grandstand view of the world’s third highest mountain, Kanchanjunga (28,200’). The weather is now perfect - a week before there was nothing but rain and mist and the mountains were hidden. The sight of the mountains there, apparently so close, never lost that initial appeal and when just walking around Darjeeling in the days to come, if I caught sight of them, I’d do a double take and simply stare at such majestic beauty. One can easily understand why the British chose this place to be their “hill station” or summer retreat.

That first night was a full moon, and the range was doubly beautiful with the lights of the town stretched out below with the ethereal glow of the increasingly familiar snow capped shapes above. A sleeping bag type perfect night spent at the Youth Hostel (75 cents a night) and waking at first light to watch with awe one of the most beautiful things in this world - the highest peaks in the world being gradually painted first a rose pink, red, gold, and finally white under an azure sky. A fellow hosteller standing in his sleeping bag sleepily remarks: “I wish there was some air pollution or something I could relate to …”.

Darjeeling is very British, with frequent English films: Chinatown, Blazing Saddles, Taxi Driver, Towering Inferno etc. smart fashions, and a fabulous posh restaurant called Glenary’s, for fine Victorian service. During one lunch, sorry, luncheon, I watch the upper class mums and dads, dining conversation-less with their respectful, well groomed, well mannered, hair-slicked blazered boys, on day leave from the boarding house of the grand old traditional St Paul’s College, Darjeeling. The small paned windows reveal surely the most beautiful view for any restaurant in the world.