Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws

by Laura Pedersen

  Is it safe for the adventurous Westerner to swim in the Ganges? No, it is not. Honestly, aside from the many cows that love to go skinny-dipping in the Ganges, nobody should be in the river in its current polluted state, which features industrial chemicals, partially cremated bodies, and untreated sewage that can quickly result in hepatitis, cholera, dysentery, and other serious maladies. But the locals seem to have a much higher tolerance for their own environment, along with the proper immunities, much like I was able to frolic in contaminated Lake Erie during the 1970s while a Varanasi Hindu might have instantly sunk to the bottom. In July 2010, a twenty-year-old British tourist swam in the Ganges and died several days later, ill with diarrhea. The amount of fecal coliform bacteria alone is way above what the surgeon general recommends for bathing.

  To help clean up the water, a special breed of scavenger turtle that feasts on wayward rotting flesh was introduced into the Ganges during the 1990s. Things looked promising at the beginning, as people arrived at the shore with dead bodies in bags, and marauding gangs of tissue-hungry turtles charged ashore and attempted to haul away the corpses. But these primordial beasts turned out to be no match for the mighty river and soon disappeared from sight, presumed to have become corpses themselves. However, you can still find the piranhas, crocodiles, and bull sharks that have been known to attack bathers in the Ganges. Otherwise, the current is strong, and many people drown. If you feel the need for a ritual, then dip your hand in the water and sprinkle some on your head, or better yet, light a candle and set it afloat.

  On the positive side, there’s a plan in place to bring the Ganges back from the dead. The Indian government recently committed $4 billion for the purpose of cleaning up the river, which includes prohibiting industrial effluents and providing backup power for enough sewage-treatment plants to meet Varanasi’s estimated needs through 2030. The government is also financing a pilot project for a series of treatment ponds that use bacteria to digest waste and can be run with minimal power.

  Easy side trips from Varanasi are to the city Sarnath, where Buddha gave his first sermon, and Allahabad, where the Hindu god Brahma is supposed to have made his first sacrifice after creating the world. Allahabad is the meeting place of India’s two holiest rivers, the Ganges and the Yamuna, and also, according to Hindu legend, the ancient Sarasvati, which supposedly dried up in the Thar Desert. Allahabad is also one of the four sites where, every twelve years, the Purna Kumbh Mela festival attracts millions of people for some ritual bathing and is usually good for a CBS News Sunday Morning segment. Wandering among the many seekers, tourists, and TV producers are naked spiritual men known as naga sadhus. (It’s not such a shock to see a colorfully painted, long-haired naked man standing in the midst of a large group of revelers so much as it is to see a naked man talking on a cell phone—where does that get stored?) In 2001, more than 60 million people showed up, making it the world’s largest human gathering in recorded history. The next Purna Kumbh Mela is in 2013. Obviously, these celebrations are not for the claustrophobic pilgrim. Furthermore, if you were raised by a hygiene-crusading nurse convinced that every highway rest stop was a breeding ground for flesh-eating bacteria, as I was, you are wondering how millions of people go to the bathroom in a place where toilets are in short supply to begin with. About eighty thousand corrugated tin squat-holes are set up around the grounds, but if you recall simple division from elementary school, the odds of using one aren’t great, so think camping.

  My last night in Varanasi, slightly curried out and ready to mix things up a bit, I stumbled upon the only Chinese restaurant in town. After some American-style chow mein, I enjoyed the hot, sweet, syrup-covered Indian dessert known as lavang latika, which is similar to Greek baklava or a Mexican sopapilla with pistachio nuts. While sipping a woodsy, earthy oolong tea, I read the message in my fortune cookie, “First find out who everybody else is. You are what is left over.” To discover the meaning of life, I’d had to go to the exact spot where East meets East.

  Oh! Kolkata!

  Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, lies 430 miles to the southeast of Varanasi and is the capital of the state of West Bengal. Like Buffalo, New York, which got a bad rap for blizzards, Rust Belt remorse, and the blue-collar blues, Calcutta became famous for human blight after the huge migrations that followed Partition in 1947 and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Adding insult to injury, Mother Teresa’s good works seemed only to enhance its image as a hellhole.

  What about the Black Hole of Calcutta? Calcutta was established by the East India Company (a joint-stock venture formed by the British) in 1690 to serve as a trading post. In 1756, the British settlement at Calcutta was overrun by the army of the Muslim ruler Sirāj-ud-Dawlah, also called the nabob of Bengal. Angered by the muckety-muck airs and independent attitude of the English-speaking community, Sirāj-ud-Dawlah ransacked and destroyed the outpost. At Fort William, a group of British captives were imprisoned in an airless guard room measuring fourteen by eighteen feet—the Black Hole of Calcutta. Some reports say that as many as 146 British were made captive, of whom only twenty-three survived until the next day. Others say that only sixty-four people were held, and twenty-one lived to tell the tale. Modern historians question whether the atrocity happened at all and theorize that it was used as propaganda against Sirāj-ud-Dawlah to demonstrate the barbarity of the natives. Either way, the following year the British recaptured the city, expanded their sphere of influence, and decided to rule India as a colony.

  Calcutta was the capital of all India (and what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh) until 1911, when the British transferred the government to New Delhi, much the way ours was moved from Manhattan to Washington, DC, after a pit stop in Philly. But, like New York City, Calcutta has always been the arts and intellectual capital of the country, and, like New York, it will be a fantastic city once they finally finish it. Calcutta is home to more literary magazines, movie houses, concert halls, and theater companies than any other metropolis in Asia. Poetry readings regularly attract hundreds of listeners. (Meantime, American poet Thomas Lynch says that he considers a successful event one where poetry readers don’t outnumber audience members.) And cinemas have Full House signs from afternoon until evening (although young people use movies as intimacy opportunities).

  The city has been home to India’s three Nobel laureates, including the famous Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. It was Tagore who gave Mohandas Gandhi the honorific Mahatma, meaning “great soul.” Although Tagore was later dismayed when Gandhi claimed the great earthquake that rocked Bihar in 1934 and killed at least seven thousand people was punishment for discrimination against untouchables. (Other accounts put the death toll upward of thirty thousand, but most Indian disasters seem to have a footnote after the death toll saying “plus or minus twenty-five thousand,” the same way that Western pharmaceutical companies add three pages of fine print warning that there’s a good chance their drugs will kill you.) The prophetlike Tagore was a playwright, philosopher, poet, actor, author, artist, musician, educational reformer, and women’s libber who is infinitely quotable, but some standouts include “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough,” “Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time,” and “The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.” Still left with time on his hands, Tagore penned the Indian national anthem “Jana-Gana-Mana” and the Bangladeshi national anthem “Amar Shonar Bangla.” Talk about an overachiever. In Los Angeles, it’s considered multitasking to be a singing waiter with a screenplay in your back pocket.

  There’s Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy, Western medicine and Eastern medicine, and while there’s Western dentistry, Eastern dentistry still appears to be a question mark, based on the look of some of the street stalls offering low-cost oral treatments. No one is asking you to bite down on a bullet or swig whiskey, but let’s just say that between patients I didn’t see any hand washing,
and Shiva only knows what that large flathead screwdriver is for.

  Bengalis are food aficionados who take great pride in their native cuisine, which is famous for its mixture of subtle and fiery flavors. The big dish to try out is macher jhol, a fish curry spiced with mustard, which literally translates as “fish in gravy” and can be prepared without the fish for vegetarians. The region is also famous for its desserts, mostly made of sweetened and finely ground cottage cheese. The names in and of themselves are mouthwatering—shondesh, roshogolla, laddu, pantua, and chomchom. Cakes, yogurts, and custards are likewise popular treats.

  On the must-see list is the Calcutta flower market, with its glorious profusion of color and activity. Flowers are an enormous part of Indian culture and are used every day for festivals, weddings, funerals, and entertaining. Workers dash pell-mell while balancing enormous piles of garlands on their heads, and vendors hawk their vibrant wares from booths and mats on the ground as overloaded bullock carts push their way through what appears to be mass floral confusion. As a tourist, you aren’t the intended buyer for these wholesalers and will find yourself largely left in peace to enjoy the sight of bright orange and yellow marigolds, cape lilies, hibiscus, white freesia, long-stem red roses, blue barleria, and wild water plum, so long as you watch where you’re going or else risk being run over by a donkey in the name of capitalism.

  The flower market is located next to the stately eight-lane Howrah Bridge, one of the largest cantilevered structures in the world. This landmark bridge across the Hugli River is currently under siege by, of all things, spit. Having weathered monsoons, survived being struck by a barge, and endured the wear and tear of the sixty thousand vehicles and fifty thousand pedestrians that cross each day, the key struts that support the bridge’s girders are corroding from saliva.

  Roadside stands that appear to be selling hundreds of varieties of individually wrapped condoms are actually trading in packs of paan (betel leaf with areca nut and slaked lime mixed with various flavors), a mild stimulant similar to our chewing tobacco. The result is that a large number of men with permanently stained teeth continuously spew millions of mouthfuls of paan in all directions. Almost every wall and sidewalk in Calcutta is covered with telltale vivid red splotches that make it look as if Elmer Fudd went on a varmint-shooting rampage. Studies have been designed to assess spit damage to public structures, and if the Howrah Bridge continues to collect loogies at the current rate, it will soon have to be closed for repairs.

  Crackdowns on paan-spitting are under way all across the country. In Mumbai, commuters caught expectorating on trains might be surrounded by spit activists armed with mops, pails, and bad attitudes who force offenders to join bucket brigades. In Delhi, where large amounts of public funds are spent on scrubbing paan stains from walls and pavement, authorities have started a public awareness campaign to drive down the practice and thrown public urination into the mix, which is also playing a role in corroding buildings and landmarks. If you opt for total immersion and decide to experiment with paan, be careful that you don’t break a tooth on the woody betel nut and end up in an open-air dentist’s chair on a Calcutta side street at midnight.

  Bidis are small, foul-smelling hand-rolled Indian cigarettes made with cheap tobacco and smoked by more than 100 million people, mostly the poor and illiterate, resulting in at least two hundred thousand tuberculosis deaths per year. The most popular form of tobacco product in India, bidis also cause lung cancer and mouth cancer along with heart and lung disease. Children, especially tribal and street children, often start smoking these highly addictive cigarettes as early as age eight. Workers who roll bidis and the farmers who handle the tobacco crop also suffer from severe health problems.

  Another top Calcutta sightseeing stop is the white marble Victoria Memorial Hall, complete with museum, art gallery, and well-tended park—the British response to the Taj Mahal. It was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s 1901 diamond jubilee, celebrating sixty years on the throne, though the Empress of India never deigned to visit the jewel in her crown. Locals obviously have mixed feelings about a shrine to a former colonial ruler who was occasionally given actual Indian people as gifts, but they allow it, as the monument is attractive and good for tourism.

  India is replete with complexities and contradictions, and Mother Teresa is one of those. She helped thousands of Calcutta’s destitute, orphaned, helpless, sick, and dying through her Order of the Missionaries of Charity and is currently shortlisted by the Vatican for sainthood. It’s possible to visit the Calcutta Motherhouse, the room where Mother Teresa worked and slept, and also her tomb. For anyone wanting to serve as a short-term volunteer, there are no preliminary requirements—just attend one of the briefings given three times a week. It’s not necessary to be Catholic, and most participants find the experience to be exceptionally gratifying.

  As Mother Teresa expanded her organization around the globe, questions were raised about accepting funds from third world dictators and Mafia dons, the use of donations, and also the condition of her facilities. With regard to the standard of care, if you were at the Calcutta location, it was because you had nowhere else to go, as Mother Teresa’s order specifically served “the poorest of the poor,” and the alternative was dying alone in the streets, the fate of many, so complaining about the cleanliness of the towels and lack of morphine is somewhat counterintuitive, in my opinion. Critics also wondered why, when Mother Teresa experienced heart problems and age-related illnesses, she sought treatment at an upscale hospital in California and other high-end clinics. Otherwise, her position against contraception was very much at odds with India’s population crisis in the latter half of the twentieth century.

  Not far away is the Kali Temple, Hinduism’s holiest pilgrimage center in Calcutta, which is dedicated to the multitalented goddess associated with time, change, destruction, liberation, and eternal energy. It features a vibrant botanical-and-peacock decoration scheme, complete with rainbow highlights that make an Italian living room look plain by comparison and an image of the goddess Kali with a long, protruding tongue fashioned out of gold. Beware of wandering priests who attempt to move you toward the donation altar. And know that they’ve probably cooked the books so that the ledger of contributions most certainly lists fake entries of one thousand rupees (about twenty-five dollars) and higher. With my fair hair and skin (sunbathing for a Pedersen is akin to putting a silver serving spoon in the microwave), I was a standout for being ushered to the front of long lines, given blessings, offered special tours, and asked to donate accordingly. My advice, especially if you’re a vegetarian, would be to get out before the ritual goat beheading. On the plus side, over the past few centuries, they’ve substituted goats for humans.

  As the third largest city in a newly industrialized developing country, Calcutta faces the socioeconomic challenges one might expect. A legal red-light district, known as Sonagachi, is home to hundreds of multistory brothels and more than ten thousand sex workers. The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee operates the Sonagachi Project, along with several others in the state, to legalize prostitution, protect sex workers from harassment, provide medical attention for the women and their children, run literacy and vocational programs, and offer financial counseling. Still, the existence of the area is controversial. While certain local, national, and international organizations want all prostitution legalized and regulated, others want it completely outlawed. Some observers insist that claims by Sonagachi’s administrators to have drastically reduced the rate of HIV and their intolerance of prostitution by minors or those who’ve been sold into slavery are overblown.

  Unfortunately, Calcutta is known as a hub for traffickers who sell girls as young as ten from Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar into its brothels. Many are then resold to work in Mumbai, the Middle East, and Africa. It’s estimated that 1.8 million children per year enter the commercial sex trade. As a matter of interest, the Oscar-winning documentary Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids follows the li
ves of children born to prostitutes in Sonagachi, while Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the acclaimed book by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, has been made into a TV special for the PBS series Independent Lens.

  Calcutta is known for having strong unions (including one for sex workers) and therefore bandhs (strikes) occur regularly, shuttering stores and halting all transportation, including trains and taxis. However, citizens are tiring of these demonstrations of power by local politicians, which end up costing citizens their earnings and cause countless aggravations to an already difficult daily life. And tourists forced to rent cars aren’t exactly thrilled either. Recall that in India they drive on the left while the steering wheel is on the right and the cows are in the middle.

  Calcutta is still plagued by the heartrending poverty and dire living conditions that result from an oversubscribed and thereby inadequate government safety net. Leprosy, a disease that has been eradicated in most parts of the world, continues to run rampant here, and you can see its victims begging along the roadside, propelling themselves atop jerry-built skids. The government does offer medical attention and a place to live for lepers, but the rules they must follow are strict, and many opt out the way some people in the United States prefer street life over city-run shelters and hospitalization.