Visiting Kalighat Temple in Kolkatta (Calcutta) was one of the VERY few highlights in this city; otherwise, I found the city to be most depressing - poverty, squalor, Bangladeshis and others in the worst slums I've ever seen; grimy buildings, city looked extremely OLD and rundown; gridlocked traffic in a cab without air-con; I could hardly eat anything in the hotel and outdoors. I left after 3 days - took the express train outa there, on a 12-hour hour journey through Bengal, Jharkand, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, where I stayed for a few days in Varanasi. Somini Sengupta's sympathetic description of Calcutta, with the expert eye of one who lived there, is a sad tale of a city bursting at the seams, unable to cater for some of the poorest in the world, but yet there is hope and optimism..............
"FOR the traveler with limited time, the best way to explore Calcutta is roughly to trace the route of the Hooghly, meandering on and off the main thoroughfares by foot, tram and subway, known here as the Metro. This is not a luxury destination. It is more a journey through the grimy layers of time. History is inscribed on every lane, like tattoos on an aging diva. Calcutta was once quite a diva...............................................
South Calcutta has two attractions, and they are worth exploring by Metro. The Kalighat Temple is a tableau of faith, blood and hustle. Devotees prostrate themselves before the dark goddess, goats meet their death and touts, some in holy men’s garb, home in on tourists. The poor squat on the street at lunchtime, for a bowl of rice. It is hard to imagine a worse fate than to be poor in Calcutta. Hunger still stalks the city............................................................
In Calcutta, people get used to deprivation and turn it into a virtue,” he concluded. Then he paused, offering a peephole into the soul of Calcutta. “I’m saying all these dreadful things about my city. But I love living here.”
