Calcutta on Foot - a short account of a long walk

Writers Building & Scottish church across BBD Bagh

Today I finally "break in" the legs with a long, long tramp around old Calcutta. My guide is Walking Calcutta: on foot through the City's backstreets and byways by Keith Humphrey from Ipswich. I follow his first walk, which is so precisely described that I only once get lost, and resort to my pocket compass (which he recommends as a backstop). By hand-rickshaw and metro to the starting point near BBD Bagh, formerly Dalhousie Square, with its scenic tank/pond/lake. Lots of Calcutta streets are formerly something or other (including the inevitable Lenin Sarani, formerly Dharmatala Street), though frequently both names are still used. This is confusing, especially when name boards with addresses can refer to locations round the corner, and numbering is not sequential. (I remember that from Dar es Salaam days - must have been a colonial thing to confuse the natives.)

The route takes me round the heart of the one-time European quarter, and very splendid it is/was - the imperial capital (until transferred to Delhi in 1911) second only to  London in importance and known as a "city of palaces". Some remain "restored to their former glory" (as they say), while others are crumbling relics. There seems to be no consistent restoration plan, so within the same street glorious and gleaming mansions rub shoulders with total wrecks. Thinks - time someone did a complete visual and historical survey. Later I find it in print in the Oxford Bookshop.

St. John's Church

Near here is St. John's, known as the Stone Church, which was built in the 1780s and (like others here) loosely based on London's St. Martin in the Fields. To enter the grounds I part with Rs. 20, which I suspect goes into the pocket of the  chowkidar (gatekeeper) as he omits to issue a ticket. I photograph his colleague soundly asleep on a bench. It's a stately church, well cared for in lush gardens, and it houses a large and important Last Supper painting by Zoffany, recently restored by the Goethe Institute. Apparently the artist based the apostles' faces on local bigwigs of the day, only to be taken to court by the City Auctioneer who resented being immortalised as Judas. The church's monuments and hatchments read like a roll-call of the British aristocracy of the day. In the grounds is the mausoleum of Job Charnock, d. 1692, who is said to have founded the city on behalf of the British East India Company. There's also an obelisk to the victims of the Black Hole (1756), but that's a long and controversial story.

My lunch stop

I'm learning never to be surprised by anything much. Take for instance the line of letter-writers on Lal Bazaar Road, sitting on stools in the street tapping out letters (or form filling) on ancient Remington typewriters. This is a service they provide for illiterate people who are struggling with Indian bureaucracy. (I encounter the latter a little later when, to gain admission to the Armenian Church. I must first fill out a ledger with name, address, nationality, date of birth and religion. I am then closely followed round by three guards; a bit creepy). Or the street bathers, like the man stripped to his smalls, lathering himself and showering under the gushing water of a standpipe. (Which reminds that I am at last able to purchase a pair of Big Boss pants on a stall outside the Old Mission Church (1770). And there's the pavement food, cooked over a blazing charcoal stove, washed down with tea from little clays pots which are then thrown and smashed in the street. It's lunchtime, and I enjoy a meal of parathas (a sort of crispy pancake) with a delicious vegetable stew followed by slices of papaya sprinkled with salt and eaten off a leaf. Total Rs. 20 (22p.)

Rabindra Street; note Calcutta-style hand rickshaw

From BBG I head north, pausing to take a surreptitious close-up photo of the famous Writers Building, where thousands of lowly English clerks once toiled for the Raj. Photographing this iconic government building is illegal, and even "loitering" can result in arrest. From here, I continue through the packed Chinese Bazaar (though most of the Chinese fled in 1962) and on as far as the Howrah Bridge before forcing my way through the crowds back towards the Metro via Rabindra Street. I'm the only non-Indian, though nobody pays me any attention. At one point I take a short cut through alleys of butchers' shops. Not for the squeamish. I've never before seen rows of little domed animal brains lined up on a slab. There are tethered goats and chickens in cages, who seem so blithely unaware of their imminent fate that I feel I should warn them, but they are probably too brainless.

Evening visit to the internet cafe, a small and rather intimate cubby hole not designed for privacy. So I can't help noticing that the young man at the next computer is checking out a gay dating site peppered with pictures of other young men in pants. He tries 'phoning a couple of them on his mobile, but without any obvious success. Nearby, I collect my laundry and pay र्100 (£1.10). It is beautifully pressed, interleaved with newspaper, and smells freshly of washing powder. For dinner I choose the fish option, and, for a treat, finish with a Honey Bee Indian Brandy, deliciously smooth and with no sting in its tail.