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awhile . The setting is indeed like a Tagore poem , with flowers , paddies , red earth , green trees , bright stars . It was a primitive and peaceful interlude .
Pre-monsoon Calcutta was becoming very hot and humid . Mark Twain once said about Calcutta that the weather can make a brass doorknob feel mushy , and that didn ’ t seem like an exaggeration . We decided to go to Manali in the Himalayas .
We took a train to Jalunder in the Punjab , and from there got a bus to Ropar . The bus broke down , and we all had to wait several hours for another bus to come along . When it did arrive there was no room inside , and we all had to sit on top of the bus for the rest of the trip into Ropar . There we waited for five hours for our bus to Manali . Finally , after a rocking , rolling , muscle-tearing , bone-breaking ride all night long , we reached Manali early in the morning , and it felt like the most beautiful place on earth .
A gorgeous green valley surrounded by snow-capped Himalayan peaks , it is filled with enchanted forests , full of burbling brooks and glades , rivers and waterfalls , a zillion kinds of trees , from pine and spruce to cherry and apple . The forest often felt like a spacious cathedral of peace and beauty . There were small paddies of wheat , eagles , crows and cuckoos , and hillsides graced by stone villages and temples . All this and the best charrras in India is grown and rubbed in Manali .
Despite my vacillating feelings , we did get married , and it happened , as so many things did in my life , impulsively . We were back in Calcutta , and Penelope had gone around the corner to the doi ( Yogurt ) shop to buy some doi . They also made and sold a sweet that I liked called limbu sondesh . While she was gone I said to myself , “ If she gets some sondesh , we ’ ll get married .
She came back with yogurt and sondesh , and the next day we went to see the marriage registrar , Sri A . K . Bose and make arrangements . The wedding took place a few days later on the fifth of June . We had three witnesses , a Sikh , a Jain and a Tantric Swami , all friends of ours . It was Thursday , a dry day in Calcutta , which meant no alcohol , so we celebrated by going to Flurry ’ s for tea and almond rings .
The weather in Calcutta had improved by the time we returned . The city , famous for so many reasons , was an unforgettable experience . I lived there for somewhere between seven months and a year , and I ’ ll always cherish the privilege of having experienced this amazing city .
Just wandering the streets I could see women patting dung into patties and sticking them to walls and trees to dry . Later they will use them as fuel for their cooking fires . People taking baths in puddles and at broken water mains . Bejeweled ladies in fine silk saris strolling behind wealthy , well-dressed gentlemen with elegant mustaches . Bearers pulling overloaded carts , and women balancing huge pots , trays , urns on their heads as they weave between cars , busses , taxis , rickshaws , bicycles , buffalo , holy cows and holy men .
Calcutta both bombards and bathes me with consciousness-expanding images and experiences . The city inspired the Nobel Prize-winning poetry of Rabindranath Tagore , the starkly beautiful films of Satyajit Ray and the spiritual music of Ravi Shankar , yet for millions of people around the world it conjures up nothing but images of the black hole , poverty , deformity and death .
For more than three centuries , everyone from rajahs to refugees has continued to pour into the paradoxical city . Calcutta is turbulent and tranquil , a spiritual haven to many , a den of iniquity to others . Many cherish it as a center of intellectual and artistic thought and expression , while for the endless stream of impoverished job seekers that flood into Calcutta from nearby states and countries , including Bihar , Assam , Nepal and Bhutan , it is a sea of hope .
In the midst of grand old buildings such as the Gothic-style Calcutta High Court built in 1872 , the Indian Museum established in 1878 , and the marble memorial to Queen Victoria for which George V laid the foundation in 1906 , a row of women and children crouch on the ground like baboons searching each other ’ s hair for insects . A barefoot man trots down the street pulling healthy , well-dressed children , with deep , kohl-darkened eyes , in a hand-pulled rickshaw . Harijan children , naked , or dressed in threadbare cotton , are running , playing , begging , as men in dhotis sit on the sidewalk and get a shave from the loin-clothed barber squatting before them .
Individuals are roaming , watching , constantly picking up bits of discarded food , or whatever can be salvaged , sold , or made into something . Women squat on the ground and cut scavenged , shriveled vegetables on old , rusty blades . Then cook over burning dung patties , coarse shawls pulled around their faces to shield them from the smoke , as they stir their family ’ s meager meal .
The images , both beautiful and grotesque , dance before the eyes , tug at the heart and wrench at the gut . An intensity of motion and color , dreamlike , yet stark in its reality , is the city ’ s constant song .
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