Travels: Thailand/India 1997

Travel Letter #3

Calcutta

The Indian experience started even before entering India. For my Norwegian readers, the following email from Anne Anite outlines the happenings before, during and after the flight KB106 with Druk Air from Bangkok to Calcutta, April 8th. It can only be expressed in few words as the closest I have felt beeing part of a Tintin story. After arrival we checked in at the Fairlawn Hotel, a parody of an English hotel run in colonial style, also described in Annes letter.

So, where do I start? Well, I can pick up the thread about MacIndia and Tokyo Freaks. On the surface level, the opening up of the country for foreign investment is definitely changing economy, culture and attitudes. Not so visible in Calcutta, maybe, since the city is run by a communist council, but still: Coca Cola, Barbie, Marlboro and all the other great advances in human development originating in the land of mass consumption is changing India. But much, much slower than any other place I can imagine. Maybe even too slow for the multinational companies to endure a longer presence here. Last time in India, it still looked very much like the 40's, and without many traces of a world outside this vast country. Now, Indians can't pretend they are not a part of the world anymore, as far as imported goods are concerned, and there are discussions on the subject of "canned culture" as back home. Most of this change is not visible though, since the influx of satelite TV and the impact it has on peoples mind constitues the most dramatic cultural change.

Tokyo Freaks, what is going on back in Japan? Only six years ago, I hardly met any Japanese travellers in the whole of India. Now, at least in Calcutta, more than half of the travellers there are Japanese. And not any kind of Japanese. No, long-haired, tattoed, hash-smoking freaks, dressed in Indian clothes as soon as they land on Indian soil, brilliant in English for Japanese to be, even learning the local language, playing the sitar or picking up the philosophy of some obscure guru. This is just like Flower Power gone Kanji - 25 years after! I have read about Japanese youth looking for something else than beeing own by a company for their whole life, maybe this is a part of a self-searching identity crisis in the land of the rising sun?

It's quite strange to return to a place that has haunted my dreams so much over the last few years. With the fresh image of Bangkok on my mind, the first impressions on the slow journey from the airport was how small everything is. This is mainly because of the small Bengali people, the narrow and curved roads and the small houses. Small and at the same time incredible crowded. The next experience is a kind of time-warp experience. On a personal level, initially the last visit feels so long ago, almost like in a previous life. But after having exchanged some "achya" and "namaste"s, stared back into those constantly staring dark eyes, bend the head lightly foreward to navigate through garbage, stray dogs, beggers, holes and mudpits in the pathway 1-2 meters infront of me, had a meal of rice, dhal, and chapaties, and after one of these eminent shaves at a street barber, the perception of time turns the opposite way around, and it feels like I haven't been anywhere else since the first landing in Delhi.

On a cultural level, the time-warp experience after a few days makes you believe there isn't anything like linear, evolving time concept. Riding on trains build in the 20's through rice fields and straw-hutted villages looking the same as 2000 years ago, entering temples 1500 years old still worshipped with the same old pujas, along with the signs of modern technology mentioned earlier - it's not so difficult to see the consistency of the Hindu concept of circular ages where everything happens "same-same, but different" (a favourite Thai expression), over and over again. Now is the yuga=age of Kali, the female fury godess, where things happen with constantly accelarating speed, and goodwill and mercy is gradually diminishing.

Time is out for me to explore our movements in Calcutta in great details. The big Indian Museum took us two days, the colonial attempt to copy Taj Mahal as Victoria Memorial one day, the area and temples dedicated to the great Hindu guru and mystic Ramakrishna and his famous disciple Swami Vivekananda another day. We had the fortune of joining an evening prayer together with Mother Theresa in the headquarter of Missionaries of Charity (MoC). The Grand Old Lady looked in better spirit than when I saw her in the same room six years ago, leading the prayer by clasping her hand on the wheelchair when it was time to move on. Maybe she is relieved to have passed the leadership over to younger nuns. We also visited the first MoC house in KaliGhat with destitute people waiting for their close death, next to the most horrible temple of greed and chaos I've ever been to. The old Kali-temple still performs animal-sacrifice (of goats), which we watched together with a Brahmin guide who afterwards expected a donation of at least 1000 rupees from us.

Next letter will hopefully center on our experiences in the Himalaya region of Darjeeling and Sikkim, and the holy city of Varanasi along the river Ganges. For so long, letters from back home are still very much welcomed!