So, when someone says "Calcutta", what is the first thing that pops into your mind? The Black Hole of? Mother Theresa? Slums? You are not alone. None of us expected to find this city anything but wrenching. We had already been worn down by beggars, cripples and slums in six cities. We expected Calcutta to be worse. To our amazement the road in from the airport is lined with attractive middle-class houses with graceful balconies and gardens. The city itself is a hive of activity crammed with vendors and hawkers, movie makers, and bright yellow cabs. There is an an electric trolley system and a subway which help reduce city congestion and enable poor people to travel cheaply. Building is going up and hawkers are being cleared from downtown streets in "Operation Sunshine". Yes, there are slums, mounds of garbage, and sewers spewing into the Hooghlie River, but what is hopeful about Calcutta is that there are people in this city working hard, and successfully to address its problems. Many of these problems are caused when the third world and the first world collide - i.e., the introduction of plastics to a market that expects everything to biodegrade. In Calcutta there are examples everywhere of recycling.
Calcutta, once second only to London in size and wealth, was established in the mid 16th century by the East India Company which controlled the rich Asian spice and textile trade. This English port city, through which much of the wealth of the British Empire flowed, occupied the east side of the Hooghlie River which flows into the Bay of Bengal. The English settled near the mouth of the river, while an Indian settlement developed to just to the north. Indians were only allowed to enter the English area as servants or day workers until well into the 20th century. One exception was the Raja who was able to attend garden parties with the elite for a price which contributed to the building fund for the monolithic Victoria Memorial.
The bank of the Hooghlie, in both the British and Indian areas, was lined with palatial homes where the rich held court. A wealthy family might have as many as 110 servants. This would include a personal ironer for each member of the family, a necessity in a society in which a woman is said to have had to change her clothes five times a day--no wonder in this heat and humidity. From the beginning, this wealth attracted people from the villages to the streets of Calcutta; and from the beginning, there was always a problem with street people. We saw many examples of programs designed to help these urban poor.
When speaking of help for the poor, one immediately thinks of Mother Theresa [whose tomb we duly visited] and the work she and the members of her order have done among the poor here. We had not, however, heard of Sister Cyril and the Loretto school. There are some 22 schools in India run by the Sisters of Loretto; seven of them are in Calcutta. Originally, they catered to middle and upper-middle class children. When Sister Cyril arrived, however, she decided to make some changes. Today, this Loretto school has a student body of which about 40% pay tuition and about 60% do not. She selects all of her students on the basis of an admission survey which screens for the values Sr. Cyril deems essential to her mission--social service values. Her major thrust is helping Calcutta's street children. To this end she has created the Ripples and Rainbows program in which the students at the Loretto school spend part of each day in a work/service class tutoring street children.
Consequently, there are tutors available all day and street children, who can't always come on a regular basis--because they have to help their families earn a living, or because they have to take care of a sibling, or because their family migrates in and out of Calcutta seasonally, or because they have been swept out by the Sunshine Program [an attempt to eradicate street dwellers].
So these children come when they can and learn at their own rates. There is always an open door for them. The progress of each child is recorded on his personal chart by each tutor. When the child can do some basic reading and arithmetic, he/she is then sent to the local public school just across the street. [The Loretto school itself can't handle all of the children who need schooling. As it is it has classes of 55 students] The child then comes to the Loretto school in the morning before public school begins [at 10 a.m.] and after school. Here he/she gets help with homework, snacks, clothes, and, in many cases, a place to sleep. Amazing? Well, this is only part of the Loretto story. Their "Barefoot Teachers" Program trains village members with limited formal education but a positive attitude, to set up village schools. These teachers are brought to Calcutta to take part in workshops in the latest teaching techniques and are trained to use materials at hand--recycled paper, rocks, nature, etc. Students from the school travel to villages on a regular basis to provide tutoring for village students.
We saw more than just the poor in Calcutta. We took the subway to the Tollygunge Club, which is one of the oldest golf courses in the world, and had tea on the 18th green with the cream of Indian society. Although once the exclusive purview of the English gents and ladies, the Tollygunge Club is now 99% Indian and is open to anyone, including "single ladies".
Still emulating the leisurely style of the Raj, we boarded a steamer on Sunday morning and headed upstream on the Hooghlie watching the locals on the ghats performing their morning ablutions. In colonial times, ladies living in the palatial houses which line the shore, would be taken in their palanquins and dunked--palanquin and all--in the River and then carried home again. Today, women bathe in the Hooghlie sarees and all.
In colonial times, the river was deep and ships could sail up the river to Calcutta's protected harbor. Today, however, the river is so silted up that only shallow draft boats, like the ones we saw carrying rice stalks or those dredging up clay for making pottery, can navigate it.
Happily our stay in Calcutta was punctuated by some down-time. We needed it because some of us had to use the time to consult the eminent Dr. Chatterji, (hotel doctor) who gets our nomination for Dr. Quinn Medicine man of the year. Others of us, on maintenance doses of oral medication, felt well enough to absorb a little oral history.
The storyteller involved was Ranjit Chitrakar , a man from a village about four hours travel [for him] outside of the city. In villages where most people are illiterate, Ranjit and others like him, transmit cultural history orally. They paint scenes (Chitrakar in West Bengali means "painter") from well-known stories in cartoon-like frames on long, vertical scrolls which are unrolled as the storyteller tells the tale in song.
photo: our guide, Ranjit and Salabuddin
Originally, these scrolls were used and reused and new ones were added. However, as television has siphoned off the young audiences even in remote villages served by satellite, no one is interested in the stories and the storytellers are forced to sell their "story boards" in order to earn a living. Many people buying the scrolls have no idea as to the nature of the stories. Our guide brought Rajit to our hotel room. He came not only with bags of glorious scrolls, but with his 10 year old son Salabuddin who could sing the tales almost as compellingly as his father. Watching this transfer of culture from one generation to another has made us rethink our Western "blanket" position on child labor. Perhaps formal education western style, isn't the only option. Here was an ancient form of apprenticeship. Salabuddin was not just learning how to paint pictures and sing stories. He was traveling to the city with his father, meeting foreigners, and watching his father negotiate a sale. Unfortunately, he was also witnessing the clash of his tradition [oral history] with modernity [Hindi Pop]. To us, outlawing child labor across the board seems like a poor choice. Perhaps a program which provides literacy and allows for apprenticeship is a better alternative.
For those of you still reading, we want you to know that Steve has acquired trip insurance. His luggage was searched for contraband and they looked no further than the 10 statuettes of Mother Theresa.
PS: We are currently only 80 pounds overweight and we haven't gotten to the marble box factory in Agra yet.
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