Fulbright-Hays Indian Summer: 31 July: part one (Kolkata bus tour and idol makers of Kumartuli)

31 July: notes taken during on-bus lecture...soemwhat disjointed but lots of interesting information about the city of Kolkata, clay idols and...well, we'll see!

Tour guide Asif:

Kolkata is colloquial pronunciation, reclaimed a few years ago. British capital for India until 1911, more than 125 years. Still lots of nostalgic colonial influence. That's why some of city is still called White Township. We're heading to North Kolkata, through Dalhousie Sq., now called BBD: Binod, Badal and Dinesh, 3 young freedom fighters. We're heading to far north, area full of life, to Kumartuli. Famous for contrasting characters.

Divide city into 3 parts:

north, old part of city, residential for middle class
central, business area
south, for rich people, affluent class

west is river Hooghly, branch of holy river Ganges
east is township (lost thread)

Statue of Gandhi, sports stadia for many different sports. 2nd largest cricket stadium, 67,000 (smaller now to facilitate better security). Also central city bus terminal, the Esplanade area. Can see tower, monument in memory of British soldiers in Nepalese. Indira Gandhi road used to be WWII runway, other end of 2 km straight road is Fort William, now HQ of Indian army. Kolkata as mecca of Indian football, 3 important teams, East Bengal and 2 others. We're at south gate of gov's house, 64 acres, official residence of governor of West Bengal. Stadium in front of us is HUGE with giant lights wrapped in red and wide metal scaffolding-like towers. Next to stadium is All India Radio building. Kolkata's mother tongue is Bengali, with Hindi spoken widely. But English is still official language of state. State parliament's Assembly House sits across from Radio. Gothic architecture of high court building used to be Supreme Court of India until 1911. Treasury Bldg (Central Finance Dept) is housed in beautiful, large red building with 100s of Palladian widows, air conditioning units jutting out of every window with gray shutters thrown open. Bright white and blue wrought iron fencing. Is this an Asian or European city, he asks?

Oldest Anglican church, 1784, St. John's first cemetery of East India Company, inside church, lots of historical artifacts including old painting of Lazarus. First reserve bank sits across street, first branch of Hong Kong Bank on Asian subcontinent, before war area, next to Suez, this was the only metropolitan city, all global offices were housed here. Insurance companies where here, Royal Insurance, largest post office (beautiful, 24/7 operation). Rail offices for whole of nation, tax collectors, writers' building (now secretariat, from 1882) was barrack for writers, clerks for East India Company. Deep red painted brick. Now serves as cabinet offices for state gov't. Dalhousie Sq. houses square water tank used to supply drinking water for city, now used as basement parking for emergencies. Historic church across from writer's building, St. Andrews, Scottish church, first with air conditioning. Bus is making loop around central area.

Now we head north, as we pass through north, lots of old buildings. In some cases, you become puzzled to see, full of banyan trees, so old, they need good maintenance, gives area a lot of charm. Central Telegraph Office Bldg and Standard Life insurance Buildings, 5-6 grand stories tall, trees growing out of upper walls, crumbling balconies, windows broken. Such beautiful buildings, rich stone work, will be expensive to renovate but worth it, in my estimation.

Bara Bazar, largest wholesale market in Asia, 200 million rupees in cash, daily transaction, no receipt, totally depending on trust. Business conducted via relationships. 4 square kilometers. Open water taps on roadside: one water directly from river, kept here as fire hydrants. Street vendors use for washing and cleaning. Drinking water comes 2 x a day, 2-3 hours at a time, morning night, purified for drinking purposes. People use who have no direct water connection in their houses. Area for wholesale products is divided by product. We're driving by wig shops also with chamor used for puja (horse or yak tails used for religious purposes).

West Bengal is actually in the east, only state created just on basis of language.

We're driving by oldest mosque in Kolkata, where 10,000 people pray together at a time. He says after prayer you cannot walk these streets, they're so crowded. I see this from the bus window. Shops are built out into the street across the sidewalks, so people have to walk in the street. Stores are built on our around elevated pallets, a meter off the ground, and in these pre-market hours, many vendors are sleeping on them, colored tarps stretched across slender tree/rattan "trunks" serving as poles, lashed with twine or secured with rubber bands. Looking at rickshaw driver resting at light. The man can't have more than 5% body fat, maybe less.

Lungis are always loose, never stitched in south, just in north. New generation doesn't care so much about very gendered dress (lungis).

Whole fruit market, 2 kms long land stretched farther than I can see, 70% of lane is choked with vendors and their wares, starting at 10-5 daily, auctioning fruit. The other 30% space is for buyers, if they can manage to squeeze past each other. Glad I don't have business to conduct there--you cannot browse at a leisurely pace. We continue to pass people in this wide bus with just an inch or two to spare. People sit on their palettes, chopping vegetables, wrapping bidis, resettling their blankets. Just passing Tagore house, can't see it, doesn't stand out amid dilapidated buildings. Oh, at end of side lane, behind gate. A huge old red building. And another man relieving himself against the wall at the side of the street. I have seen more of that in Kolkata than anywhere else, but it happens everywhere. Just saw a man chiseling stone into smaller pieces. The curious thing was that he was squatting on the stone he was chiseling, chipping away a the surface below his feet until it was just at his toes. I wondered how much longer he could strike it with such force, because the stone as I saw it was almost the exact area of this feet. What commercial purpose could that have?

Wow, what's NOT for salw on this street?

I wonder what it's like to live here? People in the West would pay a fortune for some of these building facades. All the posters from typical Bengali folk theaters or the village stages (jhatra), has its versions in other regions, etc. They give color to the streets (not lacking, actually). People come to these areas to book the performers for shows in their areas.

Kumar = potters

Tuli = area of village, localities. An old part of northern Kolkata.

Partha: professor of art, was at Univ. of Iowa on Fulbright.

Kumartuli, make idols with local clay. Don't fire it. Used to use different kinds of pottery along with clay sculptures,

use earthen colors, paint according to mythological characters.

4 sculptures: Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesha

, lion, Ashura...all have 2 hands.

No properly organized studies, use roads to create their work. We can see dozens of examples in streets already. Roadside shrine to Kali, roadside barber (no chair, no nothing, except lather and razor) and shoeblack on opposite side of elevated square.

.........so we're just back in the bus after having a walk through the idol makers area. We walked a 1-2 km semicircle through the narrow streets looking into the various craft spaces where men worked on different stages of clay idol production. Some bunched straw together into the molds, some matted clay onto the rough straw figures, others massed and smoothed clay by hand onto the figures, lifting clumps of gray mass from large mounds on the sidewalk. Then there were men who smoothed the clay into finished forms, using their hands almost as paint brushes. The weather, the heat and time had caused some idols to crack, so I saw some workers tending to the necessary corrective measures, patching in long lines across the torsos and arms of otherwise robust brittled gray forms. The men squatted in dusty lungis, undershirts already discolored with sweat. Most workshops had alcoves where other team members worked, but most spaces kept high ceilings to accommodate the largest idols. The clay is brought from the river, so it's holy clay, and these figures are returned to the river at the end of the festivals, so it's only proper that the river reclaim them, as the unfired clay dissolves on its return to the water. Durga Puja festival happens in autumn, probably in October this year. It's the largest festival in Bengal, generally lasting 10 days and peaking during the last 4 days. The idols are worshiped during the festival, then after the 10th day, they are offered into the river with great fanfare. We saw 1000s of idols today, and Kumartuli is the main supplier nationwide (do I have that right?), but there are other suppliers around the country. Kumartuli has become a brand, considered to be more authentic, most sought-after because this style of pottery/idol-making started here. It is priced a little higher than other outfits, but the busy hive of activity we saw suggests they have no trouble keeping customers.

Reminder: Durga is a wife of Shiva, an incarnation of the goddess Kali. She has two children, Lakshmi (goddess of wealth, celebrated on Thursdays) and Saraswati (sp?--goddess of knowledge). And as all teachers know, a person can have one or the other, but not both.

The idols are painted with vegetable dyes, and the government apparently checks to makes sure the paints used are non-toxic. The first batch of clay each season must be purchased from prostitutes (who get it from the river) as a gesture of social inclusion.

I asked Partha (the professor of ceramics, potter himself) about how the monsoon affected the industry and more specifically the idol makers. He said flooding was a constant concern, as the whole lower tier of people's work could be wiped out with unexpected floods. Potters try to mitigate the effects of the sun/rain with tarps, that explains why they stretch nearly fully across the side streets.

We are seeing some people hunched on the outside of the curb near the entrance to a mosque. Most are men in their 50s, 60s, sitting on their worn sandals, chatting with each other or staring at the back sides of the vendors whose stalls line the sidewalks. I saw a mother with matted hair, dirty sari and two naked small children sitting in the dirty curbside. She was reaching out in a gesture of management, hey, get back over here, kind of way. Like we all do. This is hard to see and think about.

Just driving by the rather elegant Tipu Sultan Mosque, 2nd largest mosque in Kolkata. White, low and large. Seems to cover a lot of ground, with many stupa-type protrusions from the roof, not quite onion-domes, and clustered together in a way I've not seen before. Busy traffic circle, again with clusters of folks sleeping on the sidewalk. Usually these people are sleeping on a mat or cloth, some with their possessions bundled near them, sometimes just as is.

We have a long break this afternoon and I'm torn about what to do: Victorian Monument and St. Paul's Cathedral, or Indian Museum? Don't think my brain could handle all of those together. I am grateful for the extra two hours of sleep this morning, even though I missed the Kalighat trip this morning (which was excellent, so everyone says. That's good, especially since we were prepared for the worst).

Need to go in and make plans for the afternoon!