So much to catch up on and to reflect on. For your edification and reading pleasure, I offer up a proposed “table of contents:” visiting with Subha; The Marble Palace; The River Ganges/Hooghly; a Bollywood film; teaching Emily Dickinson in India; AND (if there is any writing energy left) some reflection

Visiting with Subha
Subhalakshmi Nandi and I bonded on e-mail long before I even arrived. We are very close in age, temperament and experience—and share a philosophy that goes beyond pedagogy. In her first e-mail to me she joked that she has “strong ESP” that told her that there would be a close friendship between us. Who could resist such an overture? Subha is a magnetic personality.

She is Fulbright Teacher Exchange alum. She visited Flagstaff, Arizona, fall semester 2005. She lives in a four-story house—she and her charming husband, Dhrubajyoti (Dhruba), live on the ground floor. Upstairs, her various in-laws occupy different floors—Dhruba’s parents on one, her brother and sister-in-law and their adorable 3-year-old another, and another brother and his family have only recently moved. She described all of this to me via e-mail, then wrote “let me know of your matters of the heart and mind.”

New friend. Even before I arrived.

So Saturday night she had me over for dinner. Her driver picked me up at the hotel and took me to her house. We had tea and cookies and talked. In fact, we talked for several hours. Our first online inclinations were correct—we have a great deal in common and chatted like old friends for the entire evening. She gave me a tour of her house, so I met her mother- and father-in-law, her sister-in-law and darling little niece. Her dog wasn’t crazy about me. Her cook prepared dinner for us. I ate; she waited for Dhruba.

Her house is comfortable and charming—with wonderful artwork on the walls, and clever little touches everywhere. There is a little courtyard filled with beautiful plants in the center between her living room and her kitchen—although I liked it less when she told me that a snake had dropped off of the enormous tree, planted by Dhruba as a child, that provides generous shade to all four floors of relatives. It landed in the courtyard. She and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law struggled to get it out. It was narrow and had it gotten into one of the rooms, would have been very difficult to track down. Now anyone who knows me (Barb Elliott?) can tell you that I blanch at the mere mention of a snake. (And I was reminded of my son-in-law, Matt’s, grandmother who recently had her own battle with a snake cornered in her bathroom. I believe it was poisonous, right, Matt?). If I remember correctly, she did it in with a broom and some drain-opening chemicals. India—central Pennsylvania—it’s woman vs. nature wherever you go.

I took a few shots of her family, with their permission, but I didn’t take photos of her house. It seemed intrusive. I know I have absolutely never had the urge to allow my life to be a reality TV show, and I’m assuming Subha feels the same.

Dhruba, a former journalist-turned corporate communications executive, works very long hours and did not make it home that night, and I was as eager to meet him as Subha was for us to meet, so they picked me up Saturday for lunch at their club. Their photographer friend, Nilayan Dutta, joined us and on a warm Sunday afternoon we drank beer, ate delicious food and talked culture and politics. It felt like home. The only thing missing in the conversation was Mark. Not a surprise that I would find her husband charming and comfortable to be around, right? One big difference between the two of us—she and Dhruba seem to be very connected. It’s like talking with Frank McCamley—every famous person who comes up, he grew up with or something. She’s worse—everyone she knows seems to be famous. I can’t compete in that category. My circle is very nice—just not famous.

At any rate, it was a wonderful experience.

The Marble Palace; The River Ganges/Hooghly

After lunch, Dhruba took a taxi home and Subha and Nilayan took me to see The Marble Palace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Palace_(Kolkata). It was a sight to behold, and I was so very disappointed to learn that you are not allowed to take photos—not even of the grounds. It’s a photographer’s dream. (A couple of images from google–see links on the side.)

Subha said that any number of movies have been shot here. I know that if I were a filmmaker, I’d be vying for the right to film in this space. Nilayan said he has not been allowed to shoot photos in there. The family still lives there, and there was an event going on while we were there, a memorial of some sort, for a deceased relative. Her picture was on an easel and there were cars filling the circular drive.

The guards at the gate needed a few rupees, as did the “tour guide.” You must obtain a pass from West Bengal Tourist Office 24 hrs in advance in order to see the museum, but not if you are Subha and Nilayan, armed with a couple of rupees. The mansion—Subha thought it looked like Tara from Gone with the Wind—looked like something out of a vampire film—neoclassic style, crumbling, romantic, still occupied! (Of course anything vaguely gothic makes me think of Dark Shadows. I am a child of the ‘70s you know.) The drive was rutted and uneven, the grass overgrown, the paint peeling, the stone crumbling, but it was beautiful, ghostly, huge. You should check out the pictures on Google images. Google “The Marble Palace Kolkata.” There are other Marble Palaces in the world.
Inside there were men lounging around—one of them became or “tour guide.” We passed a group of people who must have been the family. The art collection is absolutely amazing. I bet it would put many official museum collections to shame. There was an original Rubens and, I suspect other masterpieces, alongside many primitive items, and some of what I suspect are crude imitations. It was a bit disconcerting to see a bust of Christ right alongside busts of classical philosophers. There was western art, eastern art, even American landscapes and statues. It would be an art historian’s dream, and all of the works, save a couple that were inexplicably under glass, clearly needed cleaning. In fact the entire place needed cleaning—desperately. The scope and quality of the art collection were truly breathtaking. Well worth the rupees and the weirdness.

Then we took the ferry up the Howrah River—the sacred & polluted River Ganges/Hooghly River (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooghly_River).

The water looks muddy, as it always does, but certainly during monsoon season. Subha says that growing awareness is helping the river become less polluted. Fewer people come to the sacred river to die, fewer people wash dead bodies directly in the river. Flowers float by; children swim dangerously close to the ferry. In the U.S. we would have a fit about the endangerment of these children. They are clearly strong swimmers doing this for sport. The banks are lined with warehouses and crematoriums. One the way up, a crematorium lies quiet; not fifteen minutes later as we pass by on our return trip, a group is gathered in a circle in the water in front of the crematorium. Boats pass by—one looks like a Chinese junk:

A smaller boat with a canopy over the middle is propelled by a man using his feet:

It looks rougher on the Howrah side of the Howrah Bridge:

as we pass under the bridge into Kolkata,

office buildings and high-rises make it look newer and more city-like.

Howrah Station, one of the four intercity train stations serving Howrah and Kolkata, looks beautiful from the ferry.

Like most things in the heart of Kolkata, the ferry and the ferry station look old and weathered.

The New Yorker summer fiction issue has a story by Jeffrey Eugenides set in Calcutta in 1983. His protagonist has come to work with Mother Teresa. The narrator describes the city:

The sooty bus that arrived was even more crowded than usual. Mitchell had to climb up the back bumper with a squad of young men and hang on for dear life. A few minutes later, when the bus paused in traffic, he clambered up to the luggage rack. The passengers there, also young, smiled at him, amused to see a foreigner riding on the roof. As the bus rumbled toward the central district, Mitchell surveyed the city passing by below. Street urchins were begging on the sidewalks. Stray dogs, with ugly snouts, picked over garbage or slept on their sides in the midday sun. In the outlying districts, the storefronts and habitations were humble, but as the bus neared the center of town the buildings grew grander. Their plaster facades were flaking off, the iron grilles on the balconies broken or missing.

It is a city of extremes. Lots of people, noise, dirt, beauty, history, culture, joy, poverty—you name it, Kolkata has it. It just might need a little dusting off.

A Bollywood Film

I had to “add” Bollywood to the spell-check list. Really? Spell-check doesn’t know Bollywood? Microsoft needs some help!

A visit to India would certainly not be complete without the Bollywood experience. Several fo the group had gone early in our sojourn here, to see Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (Won’t Get Life Back Again) starring cutie-pie, Hrithik Roshan (check out the trailer. You’ll know which one he is—the one with the open shirt, flowing locks, and flaring nostrils.) The larger group went to an earlier show soon after the movie opened, and sitting in the theater was, for them, a cultural experience. Apparently the audience is much more interactive than the typical American multi-plex audience. We went this week to a late show, so we didn’t have quite the crowd that the rest of the group did. We did, though, have Sumeet, our very gracious companion/interpreter, a friend of Mari’s who accompanied us and translated key plot points for us.

The movie is advertised as “the bachelor trip of the year,” so I expected an Indian version of The Hangover, with Hrithik in the part of Bradley Cooper. I was wrong. The hangover is far too crude for this culture. Hrithik is more along the lines of Patrick Dempsey, and the movie was sort of like a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road movie. It had the innocence and joy of an American movie from an earlier era. They sang, they danced, they dawdled. The movie was 2-1/2 hours long, and they took their time. There were extended segments in the car, on the beach, driving alongside stallions (Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer, anyone? Elizabeth? Barb?). They went deep-sea diving, sky-diving (they were in free fall for so long that I was getting nervous), played in the tomato festival (it’s for real—La Tomatina in Buñol, Spain, http://www.latomatinatours.com/), and running with the bulls in Pamplona. It was unabashedly didactic (re the title) and fun. I wanted more dancing. Olivia would love it. Liv–we will most definitely have to watch it with subtitles when I get home!

The rest to come…Teaching Emily Dickinson and a visit to Kumartuli, the potter’s town where idols are made for the puja festival in September.