In the City of Joy

As we left Calcutta airport by an aging Austin taxi, India wrapped its considerable arms around us. In this sweaty embrace, we breathed the familiar scents of frying food, incense, paan and sun-dried urine. The traffic and the city contracted and pressed around us so that every visible space contained anther life, another narrative. In that 45 minute journey, a thousand stories rolled by the window, stories of tragedy, joy and drama. Ragged men in grubby lungis pulled man-powered rickshaws laden with plump ladies, fat rolling from the gaps in their saris. The sides of the streets (for, in India, pavements are rare) were colonised by shelters of tarpaulin and stoves of battered tin, hot chai being brewed for the slow-wheeling masses. As we stopped at a traffic light (another rare thing), a child came to the window to beg, his clothes black, his skin grey, his eyes deadened from glue-sniffing. In all likelihood a  Fagin-like beggarmaster would be watching his young charge, waiting for his pockets to be filled. In many respects Calcutta is remarkably like Dicken's London. But such tragic views are soon obscured by a joyously hand-painted truck, gods and goddesses in garish colours, garlands of plastic flowers around the windscreens. 'India is Great!' proclaim inscriptions on the trucks, or 'Horn Please!' (this because many vehicles lack wing mirrors and subsequently any knowledge of what is behind them). In compliance, the roads are filled with the sound of honking, screeching horns that clash with the Bollywood music and holy songs that crack and spit from distorted speakers. Monsoon-ravaged colonial buildings sprout foliage and cracked plaster, like once-elegant 1920s dames that have lost their marbles in old age. Roots wrap window frames in an echo of Angkor Wat but here there are still faces behind the glass.

Too tired to search for a decent room, we took a darkened hole with peeling paint and a fan held up with newspaper and parcel tape. Pressing our faces to filth-smudged pillows, we drifted off to the beautiful music of a nearby prayer session.           

All of this may sound somewhat hellish and, in many ways, it is, but it is also so alive, so full of hope and joy. It's as if you can witness the full spectrum of human experience in a few steps down the street. It had been six years since last we were here and twelve since we first arrived as wide-eyed teenagers and we were now delighted that our own narrative had finally rejoined this great ocean of tales. In a strange way, it felt like we were home.

We took refuge from the teeming, reeking streets in an old British Museum. Many rooms had barely changed since Victorian times, glass topped cabinets of rocks and fossils gathering dust, eight-legged goat fetuses in jars, slowly decaying stuffed animals. If, like me, Victorian taxidermy is your bag, it's a fine day out. In Calcutta, you realise how permanent a fixture the British believed themselves to be, there are buildings grander than many of those in London, great bridges of iron, monuments to the distant, mythical monarchs. Despite our strict anti-colonialism, we couldn't help but feel some measure of sorrow at the sight of these buildings slowly crumbling, the rotting corpses of a vanquished empire. I'm not quite sure what is happening to me, in Bangkok we had somehow ended up waving flags at the passing King in a gaggle of fawning grannies, and here I was in Calcutta shedding tears for our once 'glorious' Britain.

With the car horns still echoing in our ears we left Calcutta by sleeper train, the city sliding, no, juddering, by. We settled onto our grotty bunks and enjoyed the night air that filtered in through the glassless windows. Our train was due in to Gaya (the sight of Buddha's enlightenment) at 5:30am but at midnight they announced that the train was being re-routed and was going nowhere near our destination. We were suddenly headed instead to a city which we were almost hesitant to go back to, a city so intense it was like no other in the world. Allowing ourselves to be swept up by the twin powers of fate and poor time-tabling, we shrugged and returned to our bunks. Lying in my juddering bunk, a grin spread across my face, we were back in good old India, riding the rails to the holy city of Varanasi.