Of course our flight was delayed, again and again. When a flight is delayed in India, just add about 1.5 hours to the new departure time and you’ll get the earliest possible actual departure time. This is no big deal, unless you’re in an airport like Delhi’s which is cramped with no air-conditioning. Here we discovered how incredibly adaptive human thermoregulation is - locals were sitting in this oven of an airport wearing sweaters, suits, even wool hats while we were half-naked and still sweating. We arrived in Kolkata around midnight, and the 45-minute drive to our hotel provided us with an unpleasant first impression of this forsaken city. The air blowing in through the windows had an odor alternating between smog and sewage. The visual was no reprieve either as a scene of decently modern and maintained storefronts near the airport gradually gave way to decaying concrete structures and dark littered streets in the city center.
Our hotel was described as a decent mid-range joint in the Lonely Planet, but it turned out to be a real dump tucked away on a dark eerily quiet street. The rooms we reserved had water-damaged walls with a stench of mold, dirty linen, rock-hard mattresses, stained linoleum-type floors with cockroaches, and the general ambience of shittiness that accompanies such places. We asked for a room change but our new room was only marginally better. Madh and I felt so guilty that we dragged Vikram along on this shoestring journey through his own country and landed him in a place like this – we were cursing the Lonely Planet, which we usually hold in high esteem. So it was now almost 2AM, the manager and assistants had gone to sleep, and we were standing outside with our bags debating whether to tough it out till the morning or just bail and look for another hotel immediately.
While we were outside thinking about it, Madhavi looked down and saw a gigantic rat (a mutant species, we think) running around her feet and that made the decision for us. We woke up an assistant, who was sleeping on the ground outside, and told him we had to leave. He and the manager implored us to stay and promised everything would be OK and that leaving at that hour was unsafe blah blah blah. We relented. We tiptoed into our room, scanning every corner, not letting our feet touch the floor or our skin touch the bed (kept full clothes on all night, closed all our bags airtight) though our heads had to touch the damp and dirty pillows. Our revulsion was a bit extreme and seems silly in retrospect but at the time it felt justified, even though that night we acknowledged and sympathized with the fact that millions of people live in worse conditions every night. Somehow we slept OK and the picture to the left shows Madh and me calling other hotels first thing in the morning. 
Our two days in Kolkata were actually pretty fun. The city looks better in the right places and during daylight, and it’s a place of immense importance - within India it is unmatched in its modern political and literary history. It was the seat of the British Empire in India for over 150 years, and this was where much of the resistance movement was born. On our first day we walked through a great park for some relaxation and saw a famous giant banyan tree, which has one of the largest canopies in the world. I had never seen such a tree, which in this case had thousands of aerial roots created by branches diving into the earth at mechanically strategic points.
The next day we visited a colonial cemetery, which was quite beautiful and whose loving tombstone inscriptions reminded me of how eloquent writing was in days gone by. Later we went to a museum dedicated to Subas Chandra Bose, a Bengali Indian freedom fighter who broke away from the Ghandian non-violence movement in 1939, and while exiled in Germany and then Southeast Asia he created India’s first army, one whose fighting chant is still used in India’s military today. This army alongside the Japanese actually defeated the British in parts of India before their ultimate defeat. He is a hero for Vikram, who strongly believes that India would have won independence decades earlier if it weren’t for Ghandi (there were other armed revolutionaries around 1920 whom Ghandi refused to support). We debated whether or not a violent revolution, though perhaps serving justice, would have led to as successful a democracy as now exists in India. I think not, and to me that was a major part of the genius of Ghandi’s way.
We had lunch at a quaint restaurant in a former living room which served authentic Bengali food, including fish with a mustard curry. We then realized we had only a couple hours to see the Tagore museum (Tagore is India’s most famous writer, another Bengali and a Nobel laureate ~ 1912) and Victoria Memorial. We hopped onto the sultry subway (India’s first but not its best - Delhi’s subway is fantastic) and traveled halfway up the city then walked a kilometer before being told that the Tagore museum was closed. So we hopped into a cab and got to Victoria Memorial, which is the finest architectural contribution of the British to India. Inside was a great exhibit describing life in Calcutta under the British. One section describes the unbelievable divide between the colonialists along with elite Indians and the masses of poor. A typical East India Company higher-up had dozens of servants in the home, and one caption describes his typical day which starts with him rolling out of bed, being bathed, and then standing “like a statue” while the servants dress every part of his body – ridiculous!
We thought our experience in Kolkata would counterbalance our preconception of a devastatingly poor megalopolis, but it only did so partly. The culture and history of this city were compelling, as were the Bengalis themselves. They are very warm and openly helpful people. If we looked lost, people would routinely stop us and ask where we were trying to go with nothing expected in return. In the chaotic cities of India, this is not common. They also seem to possess a distinct humor and good-natured charisma – Vikram reminded me that’s it’s not called the “city of joy” for nothing. Nevertheless, the dire poverty, pollution, and occasional filth of the city can be difficult to bear, and unfortunately these latter qualities left a lasting impression.
This is a city that was overwhelmed by a massive influx of millions of people in just a few years around the time of independence due to famine and then partition with East Pakistan. It still hasn’t recovered, but apparently it’s improving, and we hope so for the nice people who inhabit it.
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