Week Fourteen (Deus Ex.... Chinese Moonscape)

This week two detached but rather fun anecdotes from the more sundry moments of the recent day to day...

1. Deus ex Machina

Walking to the institute, my roommate noticed several of the cars we were passing had a touch of flair added to their hoods, sitting in stark contrast to the blustery monsoon sky overhead: a garland of marigolds tenderly draped across a gleaming grill or banana leaves tucked behind the ears of a set of headlights, creating a jaunty torch-like effect. Seeing as these decorations were fairly subtle by Indian standards, and rather well dispersed, I thought nothing of it. However his suspicions of a 'machinery' puja taking place were in fact correct. Wednesday and Thursday this past week marked a two-day puja to our leaden cohabitants. As the day wore on more cars plied the streets in similar style, as buses hurtled down busy streets bedecked across the whole of their boxy torsos in a network of garlands and tinsel, like overweight pubescents on the way to prom. Factories big and small closed up, the machinery given a couple days rest while the workers themselves apparently employed themselves with drinking and hollering. Even tiny xerox booths on the street were shuttered, their door-jambs peppered with flower petals, book-ended by tiny green coconuts and terracotta. The neurological scanning clinic on the ground floor of my building was closed, also bedazzled. Pujas have blossomed suddenly on the streets, and the use of a rather friendly, benign, female deity for the representation of this mechanized god is quite interesting. While at first this rather graceful tender figure seemed discordant with the clang and soot of a taxi or a backyard coal hopper, on second thought it makes perfect sense within the common misogynistic perspective. Just as a machine does a man's will under his expectations, never straying save for a malfunction or wear and tear for which he is ultimately responsible, so does this ultra-feminine, delicate goddess represent and fulfill an idealized patriarchal power dynamic. And so man's manifestations of cogs and ball bearings gain something very obviously akin to his desired plunder and domination of the sweetly perfumed bosom. Oh, elbow grease...

2. Chinese Industrial Moonscape with Restaurant (and Bar)

I went the wrong way to get somewhere yesterday. In Kolkata there are a couple 'china-towns', though while I can't speak for the one I have not yet visited, the older 'Tangra' neighborhood Chinatown was nothing like the mixture of sheen and grit that can be found in Amerikan Chinatowns - the familiar strings of alternating fish markets and bubble tea shops spun about a collection of blocks effacing the downtown of most major cities. I'm still not entirely sure if I saw the real 'China-town', though it was where I was pointed to as I asked tea-sipping old-folk on the street for the 'China-lokder jayga', or the 'place of the China people'. (To backtrack for a moment, how I ended up where I did end up...) Rather than asking locals or friends how to get to this part of the city, and where to go within it, I decided that I could simply walk east towards it from a point along the subway route, and sooner or later easilly run into it, red bean buns and paper lanterns announcing my arrival with great pomp. However, Kolkata is not a city of continuity and gradual variation. Rather, through the rather fierce segmentation of the city by railroads, highways and flyovers, government and army installations, and anything else large and imposing, along with social and religious division, what appear to be condensed rural villages suddenly appear along the road leading from a posh inner-city suburb, rice paddies and water tanks interspersed with shopping malls and high-rise condominiums without obvious patterns or planning. Thusly, rather than enjoying a simple walk from downtown Kolkata, from the crowds of shoppers buying their new limes and vermilions for puja, to the golds and maroons of a friendly Chinatown, I first spent an inordinate amount of time walking through neighborhoods of car repair shops and wholesale foam-goods distributors, followed by finding myself caught up in the tumult of the second main train station, Sealdah. I began to cross over the station by way of confusing curving elevated highways with sidewalks, skipping over what momentarily became pastoral below, women in bright saris sauntering about the grass between the railroad tracks below. As I continued, from this point onwards the stares I recieved became more frequent and intense, a mixture of mild hostility and curiosity growing more palpable for the sweaty whitey walking around neighborhoods that have names to very few. Roads gave way to dirt, until suddenly a hollowed skeleton of a partially constructed apartment building thrust from the slowly quieting streets below, a collection of auto-rickshaws at its base. A short ride on one took me through a series of rambling streets as urbanity faded away, dropping me off in an intersection almost identical to that I had come from. With narry a dumpling in sight I asked for the way to 'bhalo chini-khabar' (good Chinese food) and was directed along a road that after a sharp right turn shrank to a 1-lane, yet surprisingly meticulously paved road, winding amongst ever rising window-less walls, laced and fringed by barbed-wire yet unclear in the reason of their state of lockdown.

At this point things took a turn towards the beautiful surreal, as normal physical spaces and organization gave way to a completely new world that evoked feelings of Utah canyons, a desaturated moonscape, and soviet Russia. This was a neighborhood of tanneries and barracks, many now closed down yet their shells infilled with family apartments, a number of Chinese characters emblazoned on the entrance, perhaps also adorned by an adorable shiny porcelain kitty-cat waving hello and saluting in good luck. These massive structures stood in contrast to the irregular piecemeal jumble of Kolkata architecture that spills itself out upon its streets with little sense of privacy or seclusion. Stark solids with faced eachother across the narrow streets with little perforation or variation, studded by windows nonetheless darkened and masked by screens. While I heard the occasional waft of Chinese verbiage, emanating from an aggravated mother or a television variety program, they remained hidden behind their domestic fortresses, a few spare inhabitants venturing out but strictly atop shiny motorbikes, streaking through these grayed industrial canyons their pale cheeks and cheerfully colored outfits, a smeared memory of color left mingled in their exhaust, bizarre horsemen for this apocalyptic scene. Narrow streets were lined with moat-like gutters, a dark sludgy water idling by, its surface bound by an iridescent membrane, overtones of blue, purple, and silver redundantly driving home these gentle brooks' toxicity. They were wide enough to require a system of tiny bridges - some as simple as a concrete slabs laid across the banks, others more elaborate, feigning Chinese or sometimes orientalized Japanese silhouettes and embellishment.

As I wandered about these endless twisting lanes, I never finally found the 'china-town' I had been hoping to find: lines of stall-sized stores and restaurants, steamed buns and cheap produce. Rather, installed into the sides of these converted tanneries were massive restaurants, announcing their locations deep within the folds of the neighborhood by way of billboards hoisted high above the walled city below. Each proudly touted its bar which, combined with their rather desolate state of emptiness, was an obvious indication that 4 in the afternoon was not the high time to wander about in search of good food and memories of home. After a bowl of rather viscous sweet corn soup at the Hakka House, recommended by a rather jolly man with poor teeth and a plaid lungi wandering about and rather comically upfront about his Muslim background, I stumbled out of the confines of this ghetto, now standing on the edge of a highway, opposite a lush pond fringed with palm trees, traffic whizzing by. Ironically, this was an area I knew, and also knew to be easily traveled and within an hour of my house. A ride on another auto-rickshaw, the electric trolley, and finally a short walk by foot brought me back home in about a third of the time it took to get there originally. However, I'm glad for my solitary errant wander, having gotten a chance to get profoundly lost, feeling a vertigo that has become more unfamiliar each day, grounding myself through the help of many strangers and conversations in surprised Bengali.

As I've gotten more comfortable here, surrounding myself in a small bubble of friends and the familiarity of South Kolkata, this sort of wonderfully confusing wandering has become less frequent, the feeling of truly being in a foreign place fleeting, my life lacking in the novelty and profoundness with which this place is in fact quite richly endowed. As the monsoon ebbs away I hope to get back into this occasional habit, setting out with just enough money to get home in case of emergency, alone, relying on little more than a vague sense of direction and destination, and seeing what happens.

Sadly, I actually took only a single photo to document this particular jaunt... will post when camera works again.