Calcutta

Kipling called it The City of Eternal Darkness. Kipling, of course, was a shill, a propaganda-monger for the British Empire, and a hack poet to boot. But on the subject of Calcutta he may well have got it right.

Arrival: First Impressions

Descending from the night sky, May 13, 2005, my first impression of Calcutta is that it resembles less the 4th most populous city in India, and more a sprawling refugee camp. Open fires pierce a landscape of shadow and smoke like peepholes drilled upward through the crust of hell. It is as though the shallow landscape has suffered multiple puncture wounds and is bleeding flames.

Strings of streetlights glimmer unevenly like broken strands of incandescent plastic pearls lying in the depths of a great swamp. And this isn’t just hyperbole run rampant; in 1698 the city was in fact built on and around a swamp (by British merchant Job Charnock). When the annual monsoon hits hard, Kolkata soon reverts to its original state: a land partially underwater. I still have this to look forward to, I am told.

But the monsoon hasn’t hit yet. It’s coming, the taxi driver tells me, but it’s late.

When I fall into the taxi at 1 am the air temperature is still hovering well above 100 degrees. The 98 percent humidity level makes it feel like about 115. I’ve landed, left the sky behind; but still there is a sense of floating, as if I haven’t really touched down yet. The ancient Ambassador heaves me away from the airport and out into the seasick streets. The traffic, flood-like, builds mass and momentum at each confluence of roads as I submit to the current that pulls me from the rutted and squatted farmland toward the center of it all: Calcutta.

Calcutta, Kolkata, whatever. The Communist Party came to power over 25 years ago, and has held onto the reins ever since. They renamed the city, along with assorted streets and monuments, for no apparent reason except perhaps as a kind of thumbing of the nose at the departing British. Lower Circular Road became the far less wieldy Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, named after an Indian freedom fighter (and Hitler sympathizer, by the way). As a comment on the Viet Nam war, Harrington Street, home to the US embassy, became Ho Chi Minh Sarani.

You can’t say the Bengali Communist Party doesn’t have – if not a sense of humor – at least a highly developed sense of irony. But as amusing as I find most of the name changes, I feel compelled to voice the opinion that perhaps re-paving the roads (rather than renaming them) would have been time more productively spent. Whatever.

The ancient taxi pitches and rolls on through potholes and dustbowls like a foundering schooner in a summer squall. Images loom suddenly out of the darkness and disappear again: cows, old men on bicycles, pariah dogs, rickshaw-wallahs, angry crows devouring a midnight snack of trash.

Whole families crouch motionless in corrugated steel sheds like stick-figure nativity scenes, huddled round a single Holy TV set. Men fill buckets of water at corner hand-pumps. Children shout ‘Hello!’ and play dodge-em in the dark. The details accumulate; the information wells up as the city closes in around me. But at first it doesn’t compute; it reads as gibberish, resembles chaos: a maelstrom of dust and smoke, garbage and construction debris, vehicles and animals and people and sewage, music and shouting and confusion.

Nothing here is static. Things that appear motionless are merely caught in a state of perpetual transmogrification, like some sordid act of creation or dismemberment captured accidentally in a flashbulb’s glare. Objects that are in other cities solid and permanent – like streets and buildings - here seem as fleeting and temporary as the ghostlike people that inhabit them. Roads are suggestions of what one-day may actually become roads. Buildings are shadows of structures that once were buildings. Every object in Calcutta appears to be undergoing a process either of construction or demolition; often it’s hard to tell which; sometimes it’s both simultaneously. Everything is perpetually poised on the verge of rising from, or reverting back to, dust.

Shopping

I’ve been here for two months now and I still haven’t really gotten the hang of the place. For one thing, the concept of convenience has yet to hit this part of India. Buying anything at all in Calcutta can be a trying endeavor, unless you know in advance exactly what it is you want to buy and where to seek it out. There is no comparison-shopping here. Calcutta convenience stores are like shadowy caves hung with plastic packets of who-knows-what, holes hacked into the block-long facades of weathered and dilapidated buildings. I am not yet familiar with the local brands, so I guess at things and I point. No matter what it is I’m attempting to purchase, I never fail to draw a crowd.

Proprietors love me: I’m good for business. I can walk up to a completely deserted shop and begin a transaction, and within seconds there will be at least five Indians gathered around me pretending to want to buy something, meanwhile observing me with great interest. Apparently there is nothing more fascinating than a foriegner trying to buy a bag of peanuts. 

Liquor stores (or wine shops, as they are called here, though they sell no wine) aren’t much easier. Alcohol is perfectly legal in India, but apparently sternly frowned upon. Shifty looking men (never women) line up outside well-hidden holes in the wall, clutching bags and sneaking furtive glances over their shoulders. If you stand less than three inches away from the man in front, some jerk will cut ahead of you. Usually upon reaching the jail-like grill that fronts every wine shop the men will gasp for a pint of whiskey, shove it into their pants pocket and skulk away.

Sometimes it will be a couple of large bottles of beer, and here is where having your own bag comes in handy. If you don’t have a bag, the man behind the steel grate will laboriously wrap each bottle or can in newspaper, lest someone spy through the transparent plastic bag he gives you that you have purchased the demon alcohol. Of course the newspaper cylinders are a dead giveaway. On the way home, people spying your purchase will either leer knowingly or turn away in disgust.

Why the wine shops simply don’t hand us our liquor in a black bag, I do not know. Perhaps the public humiliation is due penance for our crime. Nonetheless, our dirty transactions completed, we men of the bottle look guiltily about before sloping off into the night to indulge our not-so-secret vice.

Nightlife

Bars too seem to be a guilty pleasure here. On first arriving I was cheered by the multitude of establishments with the word ‘saloon’ emblazoned above their Wild West saloon-style doors. ‘My kind of town,’ I remember thinking. Sadly, these turned out to be not saloons, but salons: beauty parlors. ‘Fine,’ I thought. ‘As long as they serve cold beer.’ You can imagine my disappointment on learning the bitter truth.

In fact, you could tally the total of Calcutta’s bars on the digits of one and a half extremities. And remember, this is a city of 4.5 million people. In my experience bars in this town have invariably proven to be either immensely depressing or fabulously dull.

So my (ahem) spirits were temporarily lifted upon the discovery of an ‘old man bar’ in my neighborhood that, in its desperation, had hired a midget in a general’s uniform to stand outside the place to drum up business. This seemed worth investigating. Call me what you will, but I am a sucker for midgets, and the prospect of a genuine, old-fashioned midget-bar in the neighborhood seemed too good to be true. It was.

I endured two solid hours of buttonholing by drunken advertising executives with nary a woman - or even another midget - in sight. ‘What are the ladies like in America’, they asked me. ‘They are feeling sexy all the time, yar?’ After a brace of beers, my boredom with this line of questioning began to express itself in belligerence. ‘Why don’t you use more midgets in ads?’ I demanded of a soggy-looking clutch of ad men. “Everybody loves them. And isn’t everyone sick to death of babies and dogs already?” None of them could provide me with a satisfactory answer.

Eventually, bored nearly to tears, I made my escape. Passing the midget at the door I saluted and slurred, “Let me take you away from all this, Admiral.” There was a significant pause filled by the cackling of crows. “But why?” he replied earnestly. “It is my livelihood.”

Fauna

In contrast to the dearth of actual saloons here, there is a surprising amount of other wildlife. Geckos roam the walls of my apartment (palacial by Kolkata standards), dining on mosquitoes as I sleep. I awake each morning to a parade of small, red ants devouring the crumbs from last night’s dinner. Large black centipedes lazily patrol the marble floors. (I don’t know what they live on; I’m hoping it’s ants.)

In the parks hundreds of flying foxes hang from the trees like strange fruit, each one fanning itself with one leathery wing through the torturous heat of the day. At sundown these giant bats shake off their torpor and take to the air en masse in search of food, an image straight out of a horror film.

And of course there are the usual city-dwelling pests like rats and cockroaches. But these last seem to be kept in check by the crows. Locals maintain that the annual monsoon floods hold the rat population at bay, by sweeping them away once a year down the Hooghly toward the Bay of Bengal like so many silverfish down a drain. But I like to think it’s the work of the crows. The crows are everywhere.

Though the common house crow can be found throughout India, there must literally be hundreds of millions of them in Calcutta alone. Like the cows, rats, goats, cats and dogs that roam Calcutta’s streets and alleys, crows live off piles of garbage left lying in the streets, but are much more vocal than the other scavengers in their complaints about the quality of the cuisine. They bitch and moan outside my window, morning, noon and night. They build their nests from scraps of newspaper and electrical wiring.

The crows of Calcutta have a certain cocky style that has won my admiration, despite their ceaseless carping. Black and greasy, like 1950’s juvenile delinquents, they loiter on every tree branch, telephone cable, roof, wall, and street corner. While the dogs sprawl about in the heat, stoically panting, and the cows mill around looking, well, a bit cowed by all the chaos going on around them, the crows never lose their cool; they never let you forget that they own this town, and you are on their turf. They are cranky as hell, and they remind me of me right now.

Weather

It might not surprise you to learn that it is hot here. Walk out the door and your clothes are soaked with sweat within minutes. And when I say soaked, I mean sodden, saturated, sopping. It’s too hot to walk around. It’s too hot to write. Hell, it’s too hot to think most of the time. It’s too hot to do anything. They keep telling me the monsoon is coming (and with it the cool weather), it’s just late this year. Sure, sure. And if you believe that, I know a beauty salon that serves ice cold Kingfishers. Thank god for air conditioning – when it’s working, that is.

'Load Shedding'

Things don’t function here like in other cities; things function intermittently, if they function at all. The power goes on and off with a regularity that could be clocklike – could be, that is, if any clock in town told the same time.

While the power always seems to stay on in some places, huge swathes of the city can become veiled in darkness for hours at a time. Indians call this ‘load shedding.’ Because these all-too-frequent events extinguish the fans and the air conditioner, they certainly result in me shedding a load of sweat. Even when the streetlights are out, night drivers don’t use their headlights, for reasons known only to themselves. Taxis materialize out of the steamy void, their horns bleating at lackadaisical cows, crows, dogs, people and all the rest.

City of Horns

Ah, yes, the horns. People drive with their horns here; they use them with greater frequency than New York drivers employ their middle finger. People blow their horns as warnings and as threats. Driving in Calcutta is like a citywide game of chicken in which drivers seem to point their cars directly at oncoming vehicles whilst attempting to blast their opponent aside with the pure force of decibels. Ironically, the back of every truck and bus boasts the slogan ‘blow horn’. As if drivers here needed any encouragement.

While bus and taxi drivers are clearly the biggest instigators of horn-related noise pollution (the relative silence instilled by a recent transit strike proved this theory correct), ordinary commuters are forced to respond in kind. As a result drivers use their horns so often that the old-fashioned, one-push-one-honk model is simply no longer effective enough to get the job done; the number of horn-blasts a human can generate per minute no longer suffices.

Necessity has given birth to new technological terrors, such as what I have dubbed, for lack of any better name, the Gattling Horn. Like the early machine-guns its noise resembles, the Gattling Horn produces a rapid-fire, staccato blast of horn bleats at every touch of the button. As the sonic arms race between taxi drivers and commuters accelerates, Shiva only knows what terrifying new weaponry lies down the road.

Taxis

Calcutta taxis are a challenge in other ways too. The taxis have meters, but the number that comes up on the meter is not the amount you are supposed to pay. Over the years the fares have risen (along with inflation, presumably), but the meter rate has not. The local government apparently considered it impossible to adjust the meters every time inflation struck, so rate adjustment cards were issued. Rate adjustment cards are supposed to solve the problem by translating what the meter reads to the new going rate. But there are two different types of meters: a fairly modern-looking one with a digital LED display, and the old fashioned type that sits outside the car and has numbers painted on metal wheels like a 1930’s cash register. So along with the two different meter types go two different rates, and hence two different rate adjustment cards.

If it sounds confusing, it is. But basically, you only have to remember two things. The first thing is that the taxi driver will invariably try to stiff you. The other is that the amount they will try to stiff you for usually amounts to a handful of American pennies. So there is little reason to get too upset. You can ride from one end of town to the other for about 2 dollars, and I do this often enough, just because I can afford it.

Miss Management 2005

The most frustrating part of living in Calcutta so far has been envisioning how nice the place could be -- but isn’t. I’m not suggesting turning the city into Hindu-Disney. But, come on, people! Power, sewage and sanitation are pretty much the bottom-line basics of modern urban management. It’s indicative of the Communist Party’s ineffectiveness that they blame the British for the overloaded 100 year old sewer system. At least the British actually built a sewer; all the Communists have done is re-name it. If you can’t get your shit together to get the garbage picked up or cover the sewers after 35 years in power, maybe it’s time to give somebody else a chance. The middle ages ended a long time ago.

But before you get the impression that the Communist Party is all bad, I should say that they have done many great things for the peasant farmers that make up the majority of the population in West Bengal. However, as Communism is great equalizer, if some were to rise others had to fall. The result is that what has been good for the majority has not been very good for Calcutta. But I guess that makes the Communists only half bad.

I actually met the Mayor of Calcutta at a school opening ceremony I attended as part of my job. As a farangi (foreigner) I was naturally assumed to be an honored guest and was seated next to him in the VIP section. (I’ll take respect wherever I can get it, no matter how misplaced it may be.) He hadn’t actually been elected Mayor yet at the time. If he had I certainly would have given him an earful, and we likely wouldn’t have got along half as well as we did. It’s probably for the best that I didn’t start ripping into him about the lousy job his party has done for the last 30 years. You never know when you’ll need to call in a favor.

My Job

So what the hell am I doing here, you might well ask, in the City of Eternal Darkness? Good question. The answer is that I edit English textbooks. To be completely accurate, I’m a professional plagiarist. Here’s how it works: a skills-challenged typist (or typo-ist, as I refer to her – she must be somebody’s cousin) inaccurately copies copyrighted work from previously published textbooks onto a floppy disk (a floppy disk!) and hands it to me to edit. I correct the grammar, change the names from Steve to Sanjib, then hand it over to the printer to produce ‘original’ Indian textbooks.

Do I feel guilty about my participation in such a flagrant violation of international copyright laws and intellectual property rights? Nah, not so much. Imported books are expensive here. And the people who will profit from my crimes will be financially strapped teachers of English, not gazillioniare corporate execs. The pirated material I conspire to produce will be cheap to buy: probably one tenth the cost of the European or American originals. Plus, the content we’re talking about here is only bogus conversational business English, not fucking Proust. I can still sleep pretty well at night.

(At least I can try. It’s still hotter than the devil’s bollocks. They say the monsoon has hit the south already and might be here in a week. Whatever. I’ll believe it when I can leave my apartment without losing precious bodily fluids by the pint.)

As for the job itself, my co-workers are friendly enough, but mostly they are dull as paste. All are either married, overweight, obsessed with food, or all three. Few of them seem to possess definable skills that would justify their being hired by anyone, let alone this company. Everyone is somehow related to somebody else; nepotism appears to be the sole justification for employment. Not that I deserve to have been hired, mind you; my chief qualification appears to be my scanty grasp of the English language and my pasty white skin.

Second Thoughts

Well, I’ve been here for a couple of months now, and probably the most heartening and enlightening thing I can report is that, despite all my bitching and moaning, Calcutta is really not such a bad place after all. Yes, Kolkata (Calcutta), the universally acknowledged asshole of the world, is dirty and smoky and miserable. But in many ways the city can be disarmingly sweet and charming. Its residents are certainly far friendlier than my neighbors in Bushwick ever were. Sure, as a card-carrying Ugly American, I have my share of crass and cross remarks to make, my gripes to bear. But really, dear readers, most of Calcutta ain’t much worse than the Lower East Side on any given Sunday morning following a Lower East Side Saturday night. You would just have to add a few cows to the picture.

Yes, it’s a godawful wreck of a town, but Calcuttans are proud of their city - proud of its history, its artists and poets, its well-meaning almost-saints and native sons and misbegotten souls. Mother Theresa and Rabindrath Tagore and Bose served and won their fame here. Yes, people still go hungry: there’s a homeless guy and a skinny puppy who live on my street toward whose dinner I contribute on a regular basis. But the falling-down buildings retain a kind of crumbling nobility. And the people, despite all their annoying, gawking ways, can be forgiven for staring. Because, like me, they are really only country rubes suckered in by the big city dream. It’s a dream we all still seem to be struggling to remember.

Monsoon

Maybe I’m slightly less cranky these days because the monsoon has finally come. It arrived in an instant of sweet reprieve after a month of not-so-silent mass supplication. For weeks the temples have been booming with prayers for rain. The sound of chanting and bells echoed through my neighborhood as silent heat lightening taunted us from a distance. Now it is here. The monsoon has come. And now that it is here all doubts have been blown asunder.

The temperature (stuck for incomprehensible weeks at levels far exceeding those inside the human body) plunged by 20 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of minutes. Refrigerated breezes blew in under cover of an eerie premature twilight. Crows lost their cool, grew silent and jittery. The cloud formations were the biggest I’d seen since that one monolithic storm I drove through out on the plains of west Texas.

One moment, it was sweltering misery as usual. The next, the monsoon clouds rolled up out of the southern sky like something huge and ugly from a child’s nightmare: a floating black mountain range of cumulus crawling with giant electric spiders; a dark, roiling monster snorting fire. The rain crashed down suddenly, like a curtain on a bad play. People quit the street: bit-part actors yanked into the wings by invisible crooks. The real show was about to begin.

The lightening flashed upside down: spectral skeleton hands shooting upward out of the ground into the electrically charged air; terrifying time-lapse trees bursting forth from the horizon, branching and flowering in all directions, then dying out across the depth of the void. And all of this captured by my eyes through the rain, hanging overhead as thick and impenetrable as the saturated tresses of a woman’s hair.

How can I accurately describe the thunder? The sound of it. The way it made me feel. I can’t really. It didn’t rumble or roll so much as it stumbled across the sky. You felt it in the depth of your body, rattling your bones. You had the feeling the gods were either very angry -- or nearly ecstatic. Yes. Very drunk and very happy. I certainly was. I stood half naked on my veranda belting out ‘Singing In the Rain’, letting the cool spray soak me, slugging down Kingfisher and smiling from ear to ear as the crows took cold showers and clung to the branches like soggy rats. It was more than a relief, it was a release.

Maybe I’ve just got used to it all. Calcutta, that is. Kolkata. Whatever. They say you can grow accustomed to just about anything: cockroaches, heat, chronic discomfort, defeat, creeping damp, dust, deformity, poverty, whatever. Whatever life might throw at you, they say it only takes a little time to lower your standards and adjust. Maybe I’ve reached that point. But maybe not. It feels like time to move on.

Comments

[od]

Mr.Tod,
While listening to your CD (excellent) I was reading "The Dead Rat". I understand and relate to India now like never before. In one story you captured all that I was confused about and misunderstood. Thank You Mr. Tod. Incidentally I have driven 4100 miles in the last 11 days, but experienced .05 of what you did. Of course my travels were in the east and midwest areas of our US. Although I did manage to break my foot, how boring is that.

[DomiKko]

Tod, it seems that you've really upset these people. It's strange how your american fans have no qualms with your less-than-savoury views on NYC and america, I am sure that those who are against what you are writing here would have no problem with someone from Calcutta making the same kind of remarks. I would also like to point out to the people who have called you "illiterate" that this cannot be the case - even if they do not agree with your views, they cannot deny that what you have written is certainly not gibberish, and is surely plain english, or it is to my own understanding. I know this is written a couple of years after their comments were posted and indeed after your travels have finished, but I'd like to voice my opinion as well.

Best wishes, DomiKko (Dominic Jones).

[Joe]

For a blog this is very well written. I found some Firewater MP3s on the net, but do any of you know where I can find Cop Shoot Cop MP3s.

[Bolle]

Very Amusing. I enjoyed your Blog very much. Reminded me a littlebit on Rohinton Minstry's A Fine Balance with a slightly Bukoskian approach. But as Alex said, the comments are quite amusing, too.
Ca this evening in Düsseldorf to talk a littlebit.
Looking forward to that,
Bolle

[alex]

btw sourindra, i hope by now you have realized that the irony of "U R illiterate" comes from your spelling... this was almost as amusing as the blog itself.

[Alan]

This blog is Shit hot!!!

[alex/vienna]

first, i really enjoyed reading this whole blog. it's interesting and entertaining, and since it's a blog, it's doomed to be subjective. people seem to forget that. i do agree that some people might not be 100% happy with the way they or their city are portrayed here, but it's like that movie LOST IN TRANSLATION which was never meant to simply upset the Japanese, but just humorously observed and gave some insight into the cultural differences. same with this blog, and - as tod himself stated - he wouldn't have stayed away for 3 years if he hadn't enjoyed it as well.

for example, i didn't know about the different english spelling in india. i think it's quite amusing, and - looking at these comments here - apparently true.

a friend of mine will go on travels around the world very soon, and yes - will document it on a blog. now you can argue if that's a must-read, but most people following his life, me included, probably will (if it's just half a as entertaining as this one, i'm looking forward to it) just as people who followed tod's and/or firewater's life, probably read this one.

to me, these essays just provide a great backstory to the lyrics & music on THE GOLDEN HOUR, which is simply a great piece of rock/punk/folk music. and yes, i do realize firewater is trying to make a living by selling records and that this blog may help for that matter.

still i'd rather spend my money on them instead of many other "musical artists" such as 50 cent or the latest test-tube popstar, simply because it's always been original, challenging, surprising and never... krap.

but okay i do not wanna get lost here... looking forward to your gig at the flex and meanwhile enjoy yourself in phnom penh... :-)

[Tod A]

A few considerate (apparently Indian) readers have pointed out some factual errors in my blog, so I would like to take a moment to post some corrections/clarifications. (WARNING: Includes some satire.)

Lower Circular Road was re-named after Sir Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose (Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, science fiction writer, radio and microwave scientist) NOT Subhas Chandra Bose (Indian freedom fighter and aspiring Nazi ally) for whom Dum-Dum Airport was re-named. Subhas Chandra Bose should not be confused with his elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose (lawyer and Indian freedom fighter) or his nephew Dr. Sisir Kumar Bose (pediatrician, freedom fighter and MP) or Dr. Sisir Kumar Bose’s wife, Prof. Krishna Bose (academic and MP). And none of these people should be confused with Ashokenath Bose (chemical engineer), Amiyonath Bose (barrister), Subrata Bose (electrical engineer and MP), Sugata Bose and Sarmila Bose (well-known Indian historians), or Sumantra Bose (political scientist). I hope this clarifies the issue for any readers who may have been confused by my error.

The “Bengali Communist Party” mentioned in this post is of course correctly known as the Communist Party of India (Marxist), West Bengal. My sincere apologies go out to this beloved political organization which has governed so effectively in Kolkata for the last 30 years, turning it into the world-renowned “Paris of the East”.

People of many faiths co-exist in India, mostly peaceably, sometimes not. Approximately 80% of them are Hindu. The others include Moslems (14%), Christians (2%), Sikhs (2%), Buddhists (1.5%), Jains (0.4%), Parsis (0.006%), and Beer-drinking Itinerant Atheist Rock Musicians / English Teachers (0.0000013%).

You’ll be relieved to learn that at present the Walt Disney Corporation has no plans (of which I am aware) to develop Kolkata into a theme park.

Sorry, I can’t recall the name of the bar with the midget doorman. I rarely went there, as it never failed to depress me. But when I didn’t feel up to facing the rugby scrum outside my local “wine shop”, I would sometimes trudge over there for a beer or three. It was the only bar I found within walking distance of my flat. The bar was located on the east side of Chowdhury Rd, a few blocks up from Pantaloons, as you head north from Gariahat. I don’t know if the midget still works there (this post was written almost 3 years ago). You can go and find out for yourself. (Some of you cranky people sure sound like you could use a cold drink!) But the midget was the best thing about the place, so don’t get your hopes up. If you see him, be sure to salute and pass along my regards.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And now a few comments of my own:

Thanks for the compliment, but I’m no rock star. Rock stars have fancy cars, big houses, and private jets. I have no house, no car, and fly economy.

Criticizing mothers? When did I do that? Most mothers are wonderful people who put up with a lot of heartaches from their children. Just ask my own mother.

I am not pro-USA. Neither am I anti-Kolkata or anti-India. I’ve spent a bit of time in India, all of it quite voluntarily. Logic would dictate that if I didn’t enjoy traveling to different countries and experiencing other cultures I would not continue to do it. I’m generally pretty critical of every place I visit, though I try to be humorous about it. But I can certainly see how living in Kolkata might strain your sense of humor.

Criticizing certain aspects of a society does not make one a racist. I am equally critical of American “culture”, if not more so. Anyone who is familiar with the songs I’ve written over the last 20 years can tell you I am anything but pro-USA. I left that country because the current government does not in any way represent me and is generally unfit to govern. For more on that, feel free to read an earlier post from this blog: http://postcards.blogs.com/postcards_from_the_other_/2005/07/krap_crap_bad_e.html

My heartfelt thanks go out to everyone for all your thoughtful comments and well-considered opinions on my writing. Unfortunately (all forced metaphors aside) I call it as I see it – the good, the bad and the ugly. If it’s not to your taste, you might be more comfortable seeking out the opinions of people you already agree with. As someone once said (I think it was Thoreau), “An opinion is like an asshole - everybody has one”. (Or was that, “A blog is like an asshole…”? I can’t remember.)

Now if you will please excuse me, I have stuff to do.

All the best from Phnom Penh,
Tod A

[Whatever!]

Irony is killing you? I thought it was those forced metaphors!!!!!

BTW what do you prefer - a double-standard nation who basically feed of our intellects and intellectuals, or a nation that we kneejerk nationalist types know of (alive with culture and social impetus)?

If your NYC was even half as old as Kolkata, you would know how much digging and filling up it takes to restore its rich historicity you illiterate rockstar. Like I said earlier, please lie "useless" like your NYC billboards - flashy and all-neon (shallow and temporary) and don't even try to make amends you MORON, coz getting-it-all-wrong seems to be your forte - a damn good one at that - I pity your short-sightedness.

By the by - when your fucking grandfather was writting Walden in the Jungle(am sure you don't know who that is) - Kolkata and Calcutta was way past transcendentalist philosopy - infact we were shitting it out by then.

Now the irony should be sufficient to kill you - so die.

[sourindra]

tod...."u r illiterate" comment of mine doesnt corrsponds to ur "honest" likes or dislikes regarding kolkata. i have no business wid ur likes or dislikes. my comment was solely regarding ur certain ignorances....like crediting j.c. bose as freedom fighter(actually he was a scientist/physicist)...saying "bengali communist party"...using of words "hindu-disney" (india or kolkata is not synonimous with 'hindu'. as i said other religions also live here). such wrong narration of facts and usage of wrong terminologies shows ur ignorance on the matter that u r writing on (thats why i called u illiterate), and shows ur mindset regarding certain ideas too (thats why i called u racist, communal). applauding response by "wow!!" in that particular fashion interestingly certifies the reactionary character of ur text. if u consider urself progressive, reflect on this point. otherwise, forget everything.
no, i dnt get upset as i dont believe in 'likes' or 'dislikes'. all my actions and utterances are based on choice and rationality.
there wil b no further response from me on this.

[Tod A]

Sourindra:
It's disconcerting to discover that India appears to harbor some of the same kneejerk-nationalist types I was trying to escape when I left America. Yes, I lived in Calcutta. Yes, I would go back. Did I enjoy it? The answer is both yes and no - the same as most of the places I have been. Was I looking for Miami? Not at all. Could the people governing the city have run it a bit more efficiently? Clearly. Sorry if I upset you, but I was merely writing honestly about my experiences. I have been equally honest about my home town, NYC. "U R illiterate"? The irony here is killing me. Best of luck to you. - Tod A

[wow!!!]

Congratzz, Mr Rockstar! Apparently, your blog has won you quite a few Indian admirers. They like your style of writing. Great job! They'll like your style even when you criticize their mothers. After all, you mean business, nothing personal, ain't it???

[sourindra]

a crap from a retarded mind. and with mistakes and wrong presumptions. let me argue that wrong presumptious writings lead to wrong narration of facts. number one, acharya jagadish chandra bose wasnt a freedom fighter. he was a scientist. blogger, pls consult kids text books. number 2, there is no "bengali communist". this is a proof of cow dung existing inside bloggers brain instead of grey cells. medical miracle indeed! communists actually despise regionalism, so party cant be named "bengali..". the list wud become dull and endless. some suggestions to the idiot blogger (a self acclaimed thief!)- please stay in the sky. never land on kolkata. donot try to open your idiot mouth about "lousy deeds" of the communist party. since u r illiterate, our intellectuals will rip u apart (and dont boast abt ur white skin, it wont work that way while confronting communists). dont try to "analyse" what is the communist party doing. for u havent read nothing abt communism. as i said earlier, u r illiterate. pls dont even dare to "suggest a hindu-disney"....mr idiot blogger, other religions also live in kolkata. my suggestions cud be endless, but i shud stop. in all, this idiot is a racist, a communal, a snob and most importantly an illiterate dumbo. doesnt ur country have jobs like "digging holes and filling them up"?

[Amused! a.k.a. Rajashi]

Forgot to leave my ACTUAL name and address with you or you may confuse me with a fictitious character from Robin Hood.

[Amused!]

Hey did you actually visit Kolkata or Calcutta, Whatever?

I personally felt that you are trying your hand at something called drenched-in-metaphors-till-I-don't-know-how-I lost-control-of-everything! Or maybe you are trying to do to Calcutta, what Mr.Gregory David Roberts failed to do to Mumbai or Bombay.

By the way your idiotic and often forcefully "fantastic" description of a morally handicapped Kolkata may EXCITE your amused western readers but I am not buying it man!

You just sound angry at not being able to buy yourself a good holiday in Miami with some not-so-midget women from your American-Dream-bullshit Bar. Ha ha.

This is a personal request to you that please visit Kolkata again and give me a call so that I can meet you and just know an idiot by the name - and of course nest time you write a fantasy - give it some real names so that we all can visit your midget bars and wine shops with no wines.

Get down to serious writing pal and don't make up bedtime stories for your gandchildren. Or better get some crack (am sure you found none in the Sudder Street in Kolkata) and lie useless.

Till then please keep me posted about your arrival in Calcutta.

[utsav banerjee]

Your write-up makes a very funny (am using the term "funny" for want of a better word) reading, I must say. A great piece of anything, but serious writing. Never thought that someone can have such a sense of humour. I am sure you would say the same thing about your country as well. A frustrated mind! And your tirade against communism is well understood. We are very sorry, Sir! We are on the verge of waging wars againts others in order to accumulate capital so that we can make sure all your "constructive," "highly-regarded" remarks are addressed, but just that we are not able to come up with reasons for such wars. Your help in this regard will be truly appreciated.

Yours truly,
fan

[Dian]

Amazing writing in this blog. I feel like I am in a kaleidoscopic sensorium bubble bouncing along with you.
This blog goes next to Tosches in my "favorites folder."

[Jesse]

This is great stuff. I never imagined reading a "blog" could be interesting, but you, sir, have me hooked.