Kolkata to Ganga Sagar

Julian Hollick, Bijay Tiwary, Raja Chatterjee and myself leave for Sagar Island and the town of Ganga Sagar this morning to cover the Ganga Sagar Mela (a mela is simply a meeting or festival, but it is interesting to note the simple transition to the word melee, which means combat or a brawl, and was originally French but is in somewhat common English usage).

Julian recently had the misfortune to be interviewed by the local glad rag The Telegraph. You can see the article and the strange choice of picture here. Not sure of the reporter's choice in picture. Maybe he decided it was appropriate to capture Julian's artistic temperament.

The weather has been wet and unseasonably cold here in Kolkata, with sporadic rain yesterday that was very hard at a few points. More clouds today and pleasant cold weather continues. No doubt it will be the same on Ganga Sagar island, which is right on the water. We acquired some large umbrellas so that we can still record, even if it is pouring.

Map that includes Kolkata and then Sagar Island down in the bottom, left of center. The intelligence that is Microsoft decided that you don't need a scale for this map, so we will have to do it ourselves: at this latitude 1 degree of longitude is equal to about 100 kilometers, so use the faint blue lines that indicate half-degrees (30' of latitude) to get distance (that's 50 km per blue line, folks . . .).

Talk to you all when I return! Here's some thoughts taken from my journal right before I left Kolkata:

January 12, 2005
"Decaying concrete, peeling paint, faded facades, tall-ceilinged rooms dimly lit with dirty, dust covered fans hanging down. Trees and plants attach themselves to the buildings, roots wrapped around the walls, pulling apart drainpipes and the structures themselves that they cling to. Brown, black and green mold [and water] stains [coat almost] every building[,wall, and fence] here, except [some] that are freshly painted . . . even if painted, the colors are bright and basic, with no attempt to scour the surface before applying a new coat, giving [the new one] a thick, lumpy [appearance] . . . Kolkata is like many Indian cities in this way."

Picture of a tree growing right out of the wall, three stories up. Taken from the roof of my guesthouse in Kolkata.

"I went yesterday to the General Post Office (GPO) here in Kolkata to send back to the states some clothing, tea and an etching I had bought. Men with tables and piles of packing materials wait outside to wrap and label your goods. This is the way it is done in India. The package is [boxed and stuffed by them and then] wrapped in cloth that is hand-stitched tightly shut . . . then sealed at all corners and folds with hot wax imprinted with a seal. Your address is written on the coarse cloth, [and the customs declaration, which was a yellowed piece of paper printed in 1974 in Lausanne, Switzerland, written in both French and English, is pasted right on the outside] . . you then take it inside the cavernous, dim, high-ceilinged hallway of the GPO where it it weighed and sent. I shipped one box of clothing and tea for 1140 Rs, about $30 USD , via [boat]. It should arrive in a few months. The other, a print I bought, I sent airmail for 500 Rs."