Kolkata II: again a set of unrelated impressions….

My second visit to the town was “same same but different”. Again: one train station, trip to the other, ferry and fish curry, tea in a clay pot for 2 Rs, morning rush of the starting a new day city.

It took my bus from Sealdah to Howra a while before it moved from the railway bus pit: sandwiched between the multidirectional flow of people and vehicles, it froze in the flow of thinnest I ever saw men carrying gigantic baskets topped with bananas and pineapples loaded in right here from a small-scale wholesaler.

We passed a shop where a musician from a wedding orchestra was putting on his bright-yellow jacket akin to a funny solder’s attire and on the fence dividing the opposite directions on the road a line of the similar jackets was hanging as a Christmas paper garland made by a schoolboy. I spotted a tiny open window leading to an empty hollow flat in the 3-4 storey building.

The waiting room for ladies at the old railway complex of Howra was deserted: wooden benches and cupboards with big mirrors made it look like a clock room in a female gymnasium. I was so glad to change back to my short-sleeve cotton kurta, cotton pants and plastic flip-flops.. when already walking on the street I felt so great that so few clothes was needed to keep me warm and so close my feet were to the ground . I could not wish any better weather after all…

I headed off to the famous Kolkatian flower market at Jagarnath Ghat to find out a totally different concept of flower selling from the one you find elsewhere in the world. Mostly, flowers here are used for devotional purposes and even when gifted to people – tend to be arranged in the sophisticated compositions. At the wholesale Jagarnath Ghat you can buy long fat snakes of marigold garlands, baskets of roses, piles of huge palm leaves and clearly more.

The bus I stopped on a flyover and a conductor who helped me in the already moving buss grabbing my waist, no sexual harassment this time though ;o)

I realized how much it matters here to be a local: as a foreigner you are in a double disadvantage here – as a non-Indian and as a non-Bengali. If some community can pride themselves on acting smart, it is Bengali. At the market they may quote 5-6 times the price for you (unspeakable in many other however touristic parts of India) and if a local enquires the price from the same chap the latter would make sure he quotes for him in Bengali (while for the rest of the communication they can use mixture of English, Hindi and Bengali, so you can make it) so that you are left wondering.. Another thing is that as a tourist you would never figure out all those run-by-day amazing food stalls unless you bother to walk around, or rather walk to the smell.

Before leaving Sudder Street, this backpackers’ area, I stopped by a lassi shop. I had a small chat with the lassi man while he was making the shake. Among the rest, I told him I was on the way to the train station, he asked when my train would depart and told me I was too early. I said you could never be sure here and it is better to provide for the contingencies. He said indifferently (I am not kidding), “What to do!”- the phrase many of my Indian co-survivors and myself jokingly used when facing peculiarities of the Indian life - and the most astonishing part was he meant it…