Sunday Sightseeing

No Sleep
My sleep Saturday night was the worst I have had here in India. I tossed and turned. I could not clear my mind – thinking of everything and nothing all at once. I tried counting backwards from 100 but when I got all the way to zero (that never happens to me) I started over from 1000. That only frustrated me more. Then my stomach started aching...

Earlier Saturday I started having some mild digestion problems but Saturday night it felt much worse. I don’t know if it was caused by the Indian food from Friday or the rich food here in the hotel. In any case I was feeling very bad and couldn’t sleep. I think it must have been 4 or 5 am before i finally fell asleep. This was also frustruating because I had plans to go out today to see some of the sites and do some shopping.

Morning Dribble...
So after a very hard night I woke up before my alarm went off – about 7:30 am. This is not uncommon for me when I am thinking about doing something or going some place but it is frustrating when I am so tired. When I got up my stomach felt even worse than the night before. I thought about not going out today but decided not to sacrifice this little bit of free time. I showered, shaved, packed my camera and headed down to the restaurant for a little breakfast. Since I was feeling poorly I decided to just have some toast and tea. This felt okay in stomach. The very nice waiter’s in the hotel restaurant (there must be 4 of them that serve you all at one time) wouldn’t allow me to pay for such a small breakfast. I thought this was very kind.

Afterward I went to the hotel lobby to exchange some of my money for rupees. For my $100 I received rs 4500. I just wanted to have some cash on hand in case we did some shopping.

It’s Picture Time!
Our first stop was the Victoria Memorial. This was built about by the British in the tradition of the Taj Mahal but with British Architecture.

The outside of this “palace” is quite majestic. Built all in marble with 4 towers on each of the corners and statues all around. On the inside (no photos allowed) it is a museum of history and art. I find it very hard to retain all of this history because there is so much compared to the United States. Here 250 years only goes back to the time when the British started colonization of India. Before that there is 6000 years of history here. One thing I learned is that Tamil (The language from Sathian’s state) is the oldest “living” language. According to Wikipedia...

“Tamil is one of the few living classical languages and has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millennia. The written language has changed little during this period, with the result that classical literature is as much a part of everyday Tamil as modern literature.”

In this museum I also saw paintings of many places in India, I learned about many of the leaders (political, scholarly, and religious), and I saw paintings of the goddess Kali - the primary goddess for Kolkata.

Next we drove to the riverfront between the two main bridges. They say the River Hooghly is very polluted. It doesn’t appear much different from the Mississippi in size but it is much muddier in appearance.

The people do bathe here in the river and they wash their clothes. This is very sad to me knowing how polluted the water it. The reality for these people is that they have no other place to bathe and when they striving just to get by each day this seems not to be a hardship to them.

This river is also where the ashes of the dead are spread after cremation with a type of spiritual ceremony.

Along the river there are many people selling foods, socializing and sleeping.

Everyone looks for shade from the hot sun. Here, people are socializing under in the shade while the street vendor cooks. Today it is 108° F
More vendors selling foods.	There are many types of boats in the River Hooghly.
These women have come from bathing in the river.	This tree has beautiful red flowers. It is named after Krishna but it Kingshuk did not know the English name. There is a version with yellow flowers too.

Driving through the central part of the city we saw many other sites including the Writer’s Building which was built in 1770. This is the secretariat of West Bengal and it is where all political meetings and conferences are held.

And finally... views of city streets.

Kolkata (and maybe India in general) is a land of extremes with many contrasts. Modern buses and taxis weave through the streets dodging people and rickshaws every 50 feet. Buildings of all types from majestic palaces built by the British to shantis and huts lived in by the lowest classes here. Yet despite the contrasts, despite the extremes the people seem excepting and even happy with the life that they know. Even when they see a “westerner” who clearly has more in his pocket than most of them will have in a lifetime rarely do they reach out, never do they sneer, and always they are willing to help with grace and respect.