INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (5) - 20 Apr 2007

This was posted by me on a/o as Msg# 19522 on 20 April 2007 as `A Himalayan Odyssey - 1`:
 

For a couple of days after our return, I kept on waking up in the middle of the night momentarily at a loss to know where I was, trying to find the light switch and to remember the way to the bathroom! All because we had been so much on the move within a fairly short time - of just under a fortnight - from Kolkata to Darjeeling to Gangtok to Pelling to Kalimpong (oh such romantic names, evocative of magical places) and back to Kolkata for a day before flying back. This was a thoroughly wonderful trip, satisfying in every respect, where nothing went wrong and which yielded more than we had expected or dared to hope.

The Kolkata we saw was not the `City of Joy` with its implicit message of despair and dire need of the downtrodden, but rather a thriving modern Indian metropolis, with the poor and the well-to-do jostling side by side, yes, and jarring notes of incongruity reflecting such mixture, but nothing like the image portrayed in Dominique Lapierre`s book or the film based on it. True, there were still a few human rickshaw-wallahs, but we were told that they are being phased out; and the three-wheelers are banished to the outer suburbs, as in most other major Indian cities. Most remarkable was the absence of plastic bags and other forms of non-degradable rubbish - they are banned by law and shopkeepers assiduously abide by it. That was also noticeable in the rest of West Bengal as we travelled through the state. Most people in the West believe that they are the true champions of environmental concerns, but all through our trip in the parts that we visited, we found there was a consciousness about ecological issues and that despite its massive problems of social inequality, economic disparities and vast areas of underdevelopment, the Indians, at least at the governmental and entrepreneural levels, are doing their bit to save humanity from misuse of the earth`s dwindling resources. Whether this is true generally across India may be debatable; West Bengal however is of course a special case. If culture permeates Kolkata, its reach also extends beyond, into the region. People are less aggressive and more considerate; one only has to observe how they interact with each other. They have an inner confidence - an equanimity of temper - and even beggars do not press their hands unduly. 

We visited the Victoria Memorial - with permanent exhibitions of artefacts of the British era, including inevitably those related to the independence struggle, and witnessed a magnificent sunset by a peaceful Ganges. In fact, through all the different sightings of the great river that we saw, one thing that struck us was the absence of any pollution and much river traffic - of course this is quite different from up the stream at Allahabad and Varnasi, where the picture is entirely different due to the sheer weight and excesses of Hindu humanity! We also visited the expansive Botanical Gardens which houses, among other things, the 200 year old banyan tree which covers an area of nearly 400 metres in circumference. And we visited the Dakshineswar Kali Temple, the only Hindu temple that we saw on this trip, in a tranquil setting by another section of the Ganges upriver. Our hotel, the 4*Park, on Park Street in the Chowringhree district, was only 200 metres from the `maidan`. We were truly astonished at its size - such a huge expanse of green land at the edge of the urban sprawl of the main business area of the city. Books are available a-plenty around there and I was able to buy some, including Kiran Desai`s `Inheritance of Loss`, partly set in the very foothills of the great Himalays that we were to see and traverse.

Next stop: Darjeeling!

 
RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England