Crazy Calcutta

The impressive Victoria Memorial, Calcutta
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Calcutta is a strong contender for the ultimate culture shock city.  I almost envy those first-time visitors to India who happened upon Calcutta as their first port of call.  There is so much life on the streets here - my senses, although a little desensitized from seven weeks in India, were still overloaded by the whole theatre of everyday life being played out around every corner, buying, selling, washing, eating, sleeping, human-powered rickshaws carrying regal looking passengers past limbless beggars.  This was the India I'd read about and a sick part of me was really pleased to see it!

Vic enjoys cake at Calcutta's Flury's confectioners
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We were not expecting to "enjoy" Calcutta (notwithstanding my tendency to voyeurism of poverty and squalor).  After Sikkim and Darjeeling we were weary and keen just to get to the Goan beaches by the most direct and speedy route and means possible.  This meant getting ourselves to the nearest major airport, and so we found ourselves in Calcutta with a few days to kill, or so we thought.

Calcutta is a strong contender for the ultimate culture shock city

We spent an afternoon looking around the Newmarket area near Chowringee (the area where we were staying).  Hundreds of stalls crammed into a small building, with more stalls spewing out around it - selling everything from suitcases to sweet corn - Vic and I seemed to cause quite a commotion.  Several young men wanted to "guide" us through the market - stall owners vied eagerly for our attention.  It was the quintessential "madam!  Madam!" mayhem experience that I suppose celebrities have to live with every time they venture outside.  Two or three minutes of it proved to be enough for us and we beat a hasty retreat to the nearest air-conditioned bar.

We booked cinema tickets for that evening - the only English film was entitled "The Jacket of Terror" - rated 'A', starring some familiar names.  From the poster it seemed to be a horror film, a genre not usually favoured by either of us, but the experience of going to an Indian cinema proved to be entertainment enough.

The cinema was practically empty.  From our posh eighty rupee seats, positioned right at the rear, we could count only nine or ten others.  When the film began it was revealed that the actual title was, "The Jacket" - the words "Of Terror" must have been added for the Indian audience who, presumably, favour more precise titles.

Like Calcutta, the film exceeded our expectations.  It was more of a thriller than a horror and it held our attention right up until the words 'INTERMISSION' ripped onto the screen and awoke us quite unexpectedly from our 'film-dream' - something I had not experienced since 1981 as a young boy in the cinema at Tywyn in North Wales.

It wasn't until much later into the film that the lead man and woman shared their first kiss.  Suddenly there were loud 'whoop-whoops' of joy and then came actual APPLAUSE from the sparsely populated cinema audience!  It was like a certain wound-up tension had been released by this on-screen kiss, a long-harbored expectation finally satisfied, and after the film skipped suddenly to the couple lying next to each other in bed, Vic and I struggled to hear the post-coital dialogue as the cinema audience continued to buzz in collective distraction and excitement reminiscent of a classroom full of twelve year old schoolboys.  Vic and I looked at each other smirking, both of us unable to conceal our amusement at the ease at which young Indian males could be so aroused.  A kiss.  Just a kiss.  One can only wonder what carnage would have ensued had the proceeding sex scene not been censored.

Before we departed this amazing city Calcutta had one more surprise for us.  Beef.  There it was on the menu.  Chateau Briand no less.  I called over the waiter.  Do you really sell beef?  He looked puzzled at why I was questioning what was plainly before we on the menu.  We had not prepared for this.  Nearly two months without beef and we were sure the only place we would be able to find it was in Goa - something both Vic and I had daydreamed almost every day since arriving in India.  After endless curries, relieved only by very poor renditions of "western food", we fantasized about the steak back home in Wales - specifically the fillet steak served at Charlestones Steak and Grill on Caroline Street in Cardiff (if you are ever in the area, it's the ultimate place for a red meat fix in South Wales - say hello to Dennis from us, the legendary waiter).

"Where does your beef come from?", I asked the hovering waiter.

"India", he replied nonchalently.  We'd seen plenty of cows in India, skinny bovine wrecks whose bodies did not look as if they could possibly facilitate anything like a 4-pack of Asda economy burgers let alone a chateau briand.  Despite all this, we both ended up ordering it and what ended up on our plates was a sort of tenderised 'car-crash' of well-pounded braising steak.  Vic and I were quite disappointed although very little was left on our plates!