Monday: Oh Kolkata !

Calcutta is now officially named Kolkata, with the emphasis on the first syllable. Most people here still use the former colonial form, however, so I'll follow suit.

The train is running late. I have my shoes cleaned (Rs. 10), breakfast on hard boiled egg and buttered bread called "toast", and watch the West Bengal landscape unfold. It is flat and fertile, a patchwork of little fields demarcated by low grassy ridges. Harvest is in full swing, and knots of people are working along the lines of paddy with hand sickles, laying it in sheaves to dry. Some are propped into stooks, and there are tall square straw stacks under a clump of trees. I spot a modern red tractor pulling a cultivator and several cream oxen ploughing in pairs. Incongruously, a trackside shelter carries a hand-painted advert for Jon vests and Big Boss Premier Underwear.

Howrah Station is possibly, after Grand Central, the world's most famous train station. It's certainly one of the biggest and looks like a castle - the British built stations so they could be defended if need be. 2.5 m. people pass through here every day. Howrah is also said to be home to up to 3000 glue-sniffing feral children who live on or under the platforms and trucks in the sidings. Allegedly they pounce on every newly-arrived train, and watch out for rich pickings from lost-looking westen tourists. So I engage a porter (they enter the carriage looking for custom before we even stop) who monstrously overcharges me but leads me to the pre-paid taxi booth, my suitcace on his head. 

Howrah Station, southern end. It disappears off the picture to the right

In fact, the station concourse at 11.30 am is clean, orderly and much less crowded than Delhi. But the queue for the taxis is long and slow, despite lines of waiting taxis. Blame the petty bureaucrats. First I buy a taxi ticket, copied in triplicate (me, driver and officialdum). Then I wait for the taxi-finder, who must sign off all three copies, identify a taxi, and write down its number and mine in his ledger before pointing me towards the hapless driver. Though the ticket is clearly marked "Royd Street", with apropriate fee of Rs. 90 paid, he hasn't a clue where to go. We cross the famous Howrah Bridge and head south. Eventually he pulls up. "Here," he says. "Where?" I ask. This is going nowhere, and nor am I. I show him the ticket and stab at the name Royd with my finger, but he can't read it (it's in English, not Bengali). It's obvious we are nowhere near Royd Street and he doesn't even recognise the name, which he pronounces "Loyder" as he attempts to ask the way. Calcutta cabbies clearly don't do "the knowledge". He wants me to get out, but I refuse and dig out my street map. I show Driver the map, but he doesn't understand that either, and tuts loudly. We move on, then repeat the charade, but this time I spot a landmark and am able to guide Driver pointing left and right until we get hopelessly caught in a one-way system not shown on the map...

Enough. We end up finding the place, not a moment too soon. It is, you may say, satisfactory. Actually, I'm feeling quite bolshie by now and insist on a choice of rooms, then complain that the sheets are grey - well, off white - and get them to change the pillowcases. The Sunflower Guesthouse is a slightly decayed example of 1930s exuberance with a magnificent staircase and a clanky lift like the one in Guy and Smith's Grimsby store which crushed my fingers as a child. It isn't quite what it is cracked up to be, but you can't expect too much for £12 a night, even in Calcutta. Successive generations of electricians have added to the wiring, and my little room has seventeen switches. But the location is excellent, a shortish walk from Sudder Street (Calcutta's backpackerland) but just off the tourist trail. And there are no beggars. I'm sorry if this sounds callous, but the begging fraternity (tightly controlled by their gang-masters) congregate almost exclusively on the city's most tourist-trodden streets, and I have already run out of Rs. 10 notes.

Later, I walk round a few blocks. It seems so clean after Varanasi! I cross to the Maidan, the long park that runs through the city centre from north to south, where roped-off freshly watered cricket pitches and practice nets remind me of school. I sit on a lawn roller outside the Income Tax Sports and Recreation Club and enjoy some solitude.

This evening I eat at the nearest place that serves beer (and an excellent mild fish curry too). Mark from Hamburg engages me in conversation from the next table. He's a maths teacher having a sabattical to develop his skills as an artist and already has a well-filled sketchbook. He's been in India for two months, mostly in Calcutta, which he loves, though he spent a week or so in Puri (my final destination) where he stayed at the same hotel I have booked. Mark is incredibly tall, so tall that he bumps his head on the restaurant ceiling and has to stoop (Bengalis are low people). He has a thing about insects, especially mosquitoes, which he pronounces "moss kwee toes". He drinks a lot of tonic water for the quinine. We discuss nets (which are not generally used here). Taking no chances, Mark has brought an efficient German moss kwee toe net with him. He claims that it protected him against bed bugs in his first guesthouse, but some got into his clothing, he says. The blighters infected him with something nasty from which he's only just recovered. Poor Mark.