I am interested in 4 places that I'd like to visit because of family associations, none of which anybody has heard of, and I'm thinking 'Gazetteer of India' (and I hear everybody screaming out 'internet, internet!'- but for some reason it hadn't occurred to me at this stage). I'd found the Library, (at the 'Library' bus stand) the first day I arrived, but it was now some sort of Hindu temple. Later I mentioned this to the bookshop man, but he said the Library was definately still open. I ask and ask, and finally find it upstairs above a row of shops. An elderly lady who speaks pretty good English is waiting there too, as it is the librarian's lunch hour. She says it is a subscription library only, but she will ask for me. One look at the approaching librarian convinces me I'm not going to get anywhere, and I'm not wrong, but I do get directed to a 'public' library at the Picture Palace. The 'Picture Palace' apparently closed down years ago, but the name stuck, and it is now the name of the whole of that end of town. To me the name evokes, (in the early decades of the twentieth century), the 'Mems', (up from the plains), strolling along the Mall, with kids in tow, looking forward to an evening's entertainment at the new-fangled moving pictures.
I've made up a shopping list of things that I need to buy, including 'super-glue' for some running repairs ('scusez pun) on the welt of my runners, and a weighty tome for the 35 hour train trip, (got 'Anna Karenina', which should do nicely). Weighed down, I eventually arrive at the library, and state my request. The young female librarian looks me up and down, and says 'could you speak in Hindi please' (not a good sign, I gotta tell ya). Once we've got that sorted out, I show her a list of the four place names, explaining that they are in India. She checks in the card catalogue, and then makes her way right down to the end of the library, and then comes back with a book for me. Nothing unusual about that, except that she is seriously disabled, so that her left leg sticks out at a wide angle from her body, giving her a sort of crab-like way of getting along. She gives me the book, saying 'India'. It is a history of India from the time of the Harappans (3000 BC?) till medieval times. I give it my serious consideration for a minute or two, and then tell her that it's not quite what I wanted. In the meantime, another lady, one of the library users, has a look at my list, on which one of the place names is 'Wellington', but she reads it as 'Washington', and this necessitates the librarian making another perambulation of the library, to return with the United States Stock Exchange Annual for 1952. The thing is that if I was in her position the last thing I'd want is for people to help me, but on the other hand I'm sitting there cringeing, and thinking 'please don't let her go for any more books'. Another three or four unsuitable books arrive all at once, which I have to reject. So I ask if I can take some photos, as the library interests me. On one side of the library there are all Hindi books, which I imagine accounts for most of the library's usage. The other side has books in English, some 'History' and a lot of 'English Literature', which is mostly novels. What intrigues me is that most of the novels seem to date from the early decades of the twentieth century, and ninety-five per cent of the authors would have vanished without a trace. From a book dealer's point of view, there may have been some items of interest. I looked in a couple of early Hemingway's which I'm sure were first editions. The only other library users now are two newspaper-readers, so I sit and have a nice chat with the librarian. She is a diminutive and very pretty girl, and her name is Anjeeta. She raised the subject of her disability, and seemed to have a comfortable acceptance of her situation. When I left she said not to forget to come and visit the library again the next time I'm in India.
I then made a trip to a 'Domino's Pizza' shop that I had noticed on the Mall this afternoon. The smallest ('personal') size was about 6 or 7 inches across, and I had a cheese and pepperoni with side orders of capsicum and olives - what a beauty! Washed it down with a latte that I had to get from the Cafe Day shop upstairs. Cafe Day is a coffee-shop chain that I've noticed right across northern India. They tell me it's not an international chain.
Thursday morning I lie in late, and wander down to the Picture Palace bus stand mid-morning. The bus that I came up on is sitting there empty, so I get the best seat and wait while the bus gradually fills up. When it is, everybody has to pile off and get on another bus, and I am lucky to get the last seat - 'it always happens to me'. Though the trip up took an hour and a half, the return trip is one hour. The bus hurtles downward on the horn, and anything coming the other way at a corner has to stop. On the rare flat (but winding) spots, the driver fishtails the bus along, then whizzes downwards some more, driving entirely on the brakes. If the brakes faded you wouldn't touch bottom till half a mile down. In bush dancing, if you're being swung round and round, the only way to avoid getting giddy is to stare straight in front of you all the time, and this trick works with these buses - in order to avoid losing all your breakfast, you need to find some fixed point high in the roof of the bus, and just stare at that all the time. Unfortunately, not everybody knows this, and on this trip three people started chundering out of the windows simultaneously - which makes you really start looking forward to your next bus trip.
At Dheradun I need somewhere to leave my backpack for a few hours, and in preference to any sort of 'left luggage' facility at the train station (which might or might not be open when I need to retrieve my backpack), I take a room at a really el grotto hotel near the railway station, for 200 rupees, where at least I'll also be able to freshen up before the train. At the desk is a long list of instructions for the desk staff, signed by the lady owner, which began 'If at desk, don't be useless, and doing nothing, but be doing something useful'. When I walk out afterwards there are three of the hotel staff sitting under the sign with their feet up on the desk, watching cricket on the TV. Most of the hotel is in a state of dereliction and disrepair, except for an Alsatian dog, (fortunately chained up), that took about a month off my life, and I picture to myself that the lady proprietress must be a venerable nonogenarian who hasn't left her room in years.
I had mentioned to Brother Muldowney about the German internment camp in Dehra Dun, and he immediately said that it was at Premnagar, about six kms out of Dehradun, where the I.M.A. (Indian Military Academy) is now. So I decide to quiz Mrs Mishtri at the travel office as to the best way of getting there. But the office is closed, due to a religious holiday, (naturally), and the security guy there gets me a reasonable quote for a tuk-tuk for the trip. The tuk-tuk drops me outside the main entrance to the camp, and as civilians seem to be just wandering in, I follow them. However, I am soon stopped by an armed guard, but fortunately an English-speaking officer comes up, and I have quite a yarn with him, explaining my interest. There are some solid looking buildings about the place, and he says they date back to 1932. He seems like a nice guy, and I can sense that he doesn't really know what to do with me, so rather than get him into any sort of trouble (the place is like a regimental depot, with people marching about everywhere), I say that's okay, I'll just have a walk around the outside perimeter of the camp. But this would probably be a feat of epic proportions, as I walk about 2 kms, and I'm still only part way down one side. However, I do see an old gateway in front of an obviously unused and over-grown part of the camp, with a standard British army issue concrete water-tower beside it, so I decide that must be my grandfather's old camp, and take a photo. I have a look through a nearby village and market, and get another tuk-tuk back to the station, albeit via a route of quiet backroads, and not through the horrendously traffic-choked Gandhi Road etc.
I had pictured myself having a leisurely couple of hours dinner at the Hotel Meedo before drifting down to the train, but the Mafia say that the dining room doesn't open till seven. So I mount an expedition to Rajpur Road, where LP says all the half-decent cafes are. This only takes about thirty five minutes on foot, easily achieved along a Gandhi Road that had seemed quite daunting on the night I arrived. Ellora's Melting Moments is a real find, where I have the two best jam tarts ever, lashings of jam surrounded by cream, in a light, flaky pastry base, plus an excellent latte. The lights have just gone out, but it is still daylight outside, and as the place is crowded, I sit at a table with two identically-dressed guys, light grey suits, white shirts, red and white striped ties. There are another four similarly-dressed guys at another table, and I begin to fear Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons. They start to talk, and it turns out they are all officers-in training at the I.M.A. They tell me that they do one year's training, then one and a half years post-grad, and pass out 'with two pips' (full lieutenant). Bearing in mind that I probably won't be able to buy suitable tucker on the train trip, I stock up at Ellora's with an enormous packet of coconut biscuits, and some chocolate and lemonade. Then I moved on to a very good Chinese Restaurant, for a final blow-out. Back at the hotel, I re-pack my stuff so that I won't need to dive into my big pack during the trip, freshen-up, and go to check out. A different lot of boys are on duty, and can't understand why I'm leaving before the night, and call the lady proprietress, who is not a nonagenarian, but a rather comely lady in her late 30's or early 40's, who urges me to come back and stay again, next time I'm in town.
The 8.25 train comes in about 8.10, and a man goes along the train sticking up notices of the names and the seat numbers of all the people in each carriage. I'm in carriage B1, but my seat number (and some others) don't have names alongside. To confuse the issue, the middle of the carriage (on the outside) points B1 towards the rear, and B2 towards the front of the train. The carriage has just 2-tier bunks, and I'm sitting across from a lady who has been visiting her son at school, and is returning to Bareilly. She is very chatty, and while we are talking the ticket inspector comes along, and disinterestedly points out that I should actually be in B2, instead of B1. I decide that I'll move when I have to, and later have a snooze sitting up. Then a guy gets on who has the correct ticket for the seat, and starts reading the Riot Act (in Hindi), and so I move to B1. This is a 3-tier carriage, and two guys are stretched out, one on my lower-bunk, number 25. So I sit on the lower of the 2-tier bunks by the window, and we chat for a while. Then the train stops, they get off, and straight away a whole load of people get on, and soon 6 people are sitting on the two lower bunks 22 and 25, and me and another guy on the lower bunk by the window. One lady doesn't look at all well, and most of the others don't look all that agile, so I can see I've got Buckley's of scoring my lower bunk. There is some talk of getting ready for the night, so I wander down to the 'loo first. This must have been interpreted as a given signal, because when I return a minute later, the middle bunks ( which fold up against the back wall during the day) have been let down, and all the bunks are occupied by supine figures, except the two top ones. A youngish really evil-looking guy gets into one of the top ones, and I get the least desirable one (that is, the one facing the front of the train, so that you'd get flung out if the driver slammed on the brakes). The agility of a monkey would be useful in gaining access to these upper bunks, and once I'm in I reflect that it's weird that the oldest of our group has to be the one that gets the top bunk (a little prior discussion would have been nice). Anyway, that's not my main worry, which is that the air-con vent is pelting cold air out of the roof nine inches above and six inches to the left of my bunk. I improvise a pillow out of my 'Lonely Planet India' and a jumper, and wearing all my clothes, including my fleecy, I use the provided blanket doubled over, plus the pillow, plus 2 sheets folded over several times, in order to insulate my body core from this Arctic blast, and so preclude my having to get up and swing my way to the 'loo in the middle of the night.
Most of the other 7 people in our little section drop off immediately, and as about 4 of them are really loud snorers, it very quickly begins to sound like feeding time at the zoo, and I can't really blame the child in the next section who begins wailing. Soon however, most of the lights go out, and as the train is a very slow-moving one, I'm soon rocked to sleep, and apart from having to come to and turn and stretch my right leg occasionally, I have quite an acceptable rest. Next day the evil-looking one (who I later realise is probably just slow) takes off to elsewhere in the carriage, leaving seven of us, which are Tapan and Anushila, plus the parents-in-law of their son, who have all been holidaying together, and two brothers from Calcutta sitting by the window. Tapan is a retired mechanical engineer who worked on modernising steel mills in India for 30 years. Has visited all the Australian steel centres, loved the Aussies, hates the English (guess who didn't mention his antecedents). They live at Kalyani, an hour's train-ride out of Calcutta. The in-laws come from Assam. One of the two Calcutta brothers is rogueish-looking and voluble, and loudly goes through a lengthy prayer ritual each morning. His brother is very quiet. Anushila has a striking resemblance to Pauline, who used to work at Moorabbin Campus. Not physically particularly, but she had Pauline's eyes, and the same way of looking at you from the side, and bending in towards you as she spoke - it was uncanny. Anyway, we got on like a house on fire. She has quite a good voice, and at one stage sang some Bengali songs. Then she said that she would sing an English song for me, and started in on 'Eidelweiss'. This is the only song from the 'Sound of Music' that I like (and know the words of, to some extent), so I sang along with her. This unleashed a whole repertoire from the 'Sound of Music' and so I had to sit there and try to look interested. I tried to keep a straight face when she talked about them escaping from England into Scotland in the movie. Anyway, it was a really good day. Anushila and Tapan were a really great couple, the in-laws a bit quiet, but the two brothers were real good company. I think the seven of us all enjoyed the day, including the mother-in-law, who is apparently quite unwell with bronchial and heart problems.
Next day Anishela and company got off at Kalyani, and soon we were drawing into Howrah. Howrah Station has a reputation as a place where hundreds of homeless kids live, who storm incoming trains to see what they can find. One of the brothers says to me 'be careful at Howrah - many bad people there', and I nod conspiratorially. I wouldn't be as uncool as to say 'what about the hundreds of streetkids?', but I resolve to stick like glue to the two of them until we're out of the station. What happens is that not one street kid turns up - it was easier than getting out of Flinder's Street in the morning peak. I had worked out from LP that you can get a ferry from Howrah across the Hoogly River to Bishe Ghat, from where it only seems about a kilometre's walk to BBD Bagh, where there are a handful of likely-sounding cheap hotels. There are 3 ferry terminals at Howrah, and I get directed to one of them. Get on the ferry and ask a well-dressed looking chap if it goes to Bishe Ghat. He looks at me dumbfounded, and another, slimy-looking guy chips in and says yes it does. Then I notice el slimo exchanging glances with some other slimes, and seeing a kiosk on the wharf that I'd missed, I get off and ask there, and get directed to another wharf. The lady at the ticket window there says she has never heard of Bishe Ghat, so I slip into plan B, which is to get a ticket (4 rupees) to Babu Ghat, from where it is a somewhat longer walk to the main backpacker area around Sudder Street in Chowringee. Wait on a ferry, and when it's full we all have to get on to another ferry that hoves alongside. My entire previous Indian experience has been one day in Calcutta when I was 18 years old. I was absolutely fascinated with the city on that occasion, and swore I'd return later, but never did. Now, crossing the Hoogley 25 years later, I can still feel that magic, and feel glad that I've made the effort to get across to Calcutta this trip. Unfortunately, there were some street kids on the first ferry, two girls about 10 or 12, one with a baby, and a boy about 3 or 4. He pushed a begging bowl at me, and I dropped some rupee coins into it. Once I got off the ferry, they stuck to me like shadows, and for the whole two kilometres that it took to get to the New Market, I was followed by this immovable procession, the girl with the baby constantly saying "Uncle, give me 60 rupees for karna" (lunch). Everybody in Calcutta, from beggars and rickshaw drivers to cabbies and touts calls me 'Uncle'.
Finally lose them at the New Market, mainly I think because they might have been trespassing on someone else's turf. With the aid of the excellent LP sketch map of Chowringee I easily track down the first place on my list, the Capital Hotel in Chowringee Lane, with the inevitable hotel tout in tow, who had nearly had a seizure trying to get me into the hotel of his choice, a bit further down the road. LP describes the Capital Hotel as about as charming as a prison, but I don't really notice as I'm a bit exhausted from the train trip, and sleep and doze much of the day. In the evening I venture down Mirza Gharib, which is reputedly the home of some Chinese restaurants, and find the really excellent Tung Fong, which for decor, service and food would be equal to any swish Chinese restaurant in Melbourne. Back at the hotel, I realise that the hotel, (unfortunately), has room service, and as the hotel boys tend to sit at the top of the stairs , near my room, that's where the (loud) buzzer is, and up until midnight it makes sleep impossible, and then starts up again at 6 am.
Deciding on a change of venue, I am up very early, and wander over to BBD Bagh, as I can see that anywhere around Sudder Street will tend to be a bit noisy. It is a fascinating area, full of small markets and roadside stalls, and after some to-ing and fro-ing, I find my first choice, which is a hostel for Buddhist monks etc in Robert Street, which sometimes lets travellers in. As silent as the grave, but unfortunately full, as is The Broadway Hotel in Ganesh Chandra Avenue. In retrospect, this was just as well, because BBD doesn't have the western-oriented cafes and internet facilities that Sudder Street has. It's still not yet 10 am, so I decide to wander over to Dalhousie Square, (now called BBD Bagh, as is the whole of the surrounding area). As an 18 year old I overnighted in Calcutta for a night and most of a day, staying at the Great Eastern Hotel, near Dalhousie Square. In the early days of the Raj the square was called Tank Square, because a tank (reservoir) in it's centre held Calcutta's drinking water. I don't know if the water would still be fit for drinking, but the tank is still there, surrounded by colonial-era buildings on all sides. I wander down the western edge, and immediately a particularly tenacious tout attaches himself to me. This one has a novel angle, he says he works in the police office nearby, and 'knows everything' (not about me, I hope). Gradually the offers to 'guide' me around Calcutta start to creep in, and I get rid of him by doubling back to take a photo of the Post Office, and then keep doubling back. Then another guy attaches himself to me, who needs 'money for an operation', and when this falls on deaf ears, starts making offers to 'guide' me. This is a Sunday morning, and there are not really many people about the square. I wander over to the eastern side, where there is an army post half way along, and pull out my camera and take a photo of the Writer's Building. This elicits some muffled shouts from the army post, so I wander across the road towards the Writer's Building where there are two more soldiers, who inform me that it is forbidden to take photos of the building. I beat a circumspect retreat, and decide it might be time for the Great Eastern Hotel. LP says that it has been under renovation, but 'should be up and running when you read this'. I am envisioning taking morning coffee and cakes in some civilised tea room of the hotel, but alas the hotel looks as if it is being dismembered. The main entrance is still there, with what looks like a doorman outside, and I sneak a photo while he's looking the other way. Then, sure enough, as I go past him, and try to get a longer shot, the security guard (I now realise), comes running up 'no photos' "Why?" 'because of management vision'. Nothing loth, I cross the street a bit further up, and take a general picture of the street. Is it my fault that the camera tilts to the right and zooms in on the hotel? I just make it back to the hotel by 12 o'clock (check out time), and book into the Time Star Hotel in Tottie Lane, the next street.
After a snooze, I venture out for afternoon tea to a place I noticed last night at the corner of Mirza Gharib and Park Street, called the Tea House. Half the menu seems to be ice cream based delights, but when I enquire : 'we don't have any ice-cream'. I instinctively feel that the plethora of cakes at the glassed in counter could be of a certain age, so I settle for a grilled cheese sandwich and two large pots of tea. This cost me almost as much as the hearty meal I'd had at the swish Tung Fong the night before. This wouldn't have been so bad except for a loud shouting argument that was going on between the chef and guy in charge at the front, which kept moving between the kitchen and the front and then back again, keenly followed by half a dozen waiters, so that service was virtually non-existent. I had to ask 3 times before I got my second pot of tea, and it's a mystery to me how anybody found time to grill the cheese sandwich. The show went on when I was having another lie-down at the hotel, where for about an hour it sounded as if someone was on a whiskey-fuelled rampage. Plus the rooms have TV, and as there's a twelve-inch gap between the top of the walls and the ceiling, you get to listen to everybody else's TV as well.
I retreat to an internet shop. This one I particularly like, because it has ample room, so that you don't need to get into any compromising positions with the other users when entering or leaving the cafe. Many internet places in India ask to see your passport, and then they register your details. This place has a very high-tech method of registration, whereby, as well as the normal procedure, you have to sit in front of a computer, which displays your image on the screen, while you type in all your details. Not everybody is happy about having to do this, particularly Indians, and every night that I've dropped in to the cafe there is at least one altercation, tonight being no exception. Have a late dinner at the Tung Fong, which is in full swing, despite it being a Sunday night, and when I get back, all has quietened down at the hotel.
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