Tuesday September 30th, 2008 - Kolkata

In preparation for the Pujas next week, we had a class on Hindu Goddesses and Goddess worship within India. Durga, to whom the Pujas, this next week long festival is dedicated, is a form of the Mother Goddess of Hinduism. She is worshipped particularly in Kolkata and the Durga Puja festivities, we are told, in this city are unlike anything anywhere else in India.

Our professor for this class began by talking about how Goddess worship originated in Hinduism. She went on to describe some goddess worship ceremonies and certain practices and traditions in which some people participate to worship and show respect for various Hindu Goddesses. Although she started off quite seriously and seemed to be talking earnestly, as she went on she began to break out into quiet laughter at the end of all her sentences. It was the strangest experience…because as she began to laugh with her deep-bellied silent giggle, she started to make the rest of us laugh. And we couldn’t even figure out what it was that was so funny, what it was that she was laughing at. She could have been laughing at us perhaps for some reason, or maybe it was the material she was teaching for some odd reason. We just couldn’t figure it out, and pretty soon we were all breaking out into nervous, confused, and sometimes hysterical laughter in the middle of our cramped class because she kept giggling and having to stop after every few sentences…Good thing we only had two classes with her…

Today was also Rosh Hashanah - Le Shannah Tovah

Dan, Seth (the only two guys here on IPSL), and I skipped out on service this morning to go and check out Kolkata’s Jewish Synagogues, and to see if we couldn’t find a few of the supposed 50 some Jews still living in the city with whom to celebrate the Jewish New Year. And we did find some, a few at least…We took the metro from Kalighat Station just about fifteen minutes from our house all the way up past Park Street (city center area), to the Central Metro Station which is just north of an area called BBD Bagh, where many of the British lived during colonization and where West Bengal’s current government headquarters are located. We found our way (quite miraculously – as many streets are unmarked and wind this way and that) to Canning Street also sometimes/once called Jewish Synagogue Street I believe, home to Kolkata’s oldest Synagogue, the Maghen (or Moghen or Magen) David Synagogue. The gated entrance was crammed between the stalls of a market lining the street outside and although there was a man who let us in, the doors leading inside the Temple were locked. From what it seemed the gatekeeper was trying to tell us we needed to get someone’s permission to go inside. Luckily there was another foreigner outside the gate who had followed us inside, a man named Cliff who had been in India for a while for his work. And he showed us to BethEl, where Rosh Hashanah services were being held.

We were really in a whole new area of Kolkata. The streets seemed to be even more packed than usual, cramped so much that it was tough for even one car to squeeze its way through all that was happening on foot. I don’t think I have seen equal loads to some that men were pulling in their bicycle carts and carrying on their heads on these streets…stacks of fifty or more shoe boxes held together by a cloth sack balanced upon a small cloth cushion and stabilizer atop one head, a huge coffee-table sized basket full of fish, fruit, or street snacks atop another’s head, carts so full of building material and bamboo rods that it took three men pushing to get it to move on the flat section of the road, and I could go on…there were also what seemed to be a number of mosques in this area, and many women bore covered heads and men small white skull caps. We later found out that it is a predominantly Muslim area of the city, and that the two Synagogues in the area are kept entirely by Muslim men.

Both Synagogues were absolutely beautiful. Maghen David looked almost like a church from the outside, painted in yellow and red with a huge squire like structure on one end. The entry doors were huge and the covered entryway looked as if it had been designed for carriages to pull right up into, dropping their passengers off just in front of the entrance steps. BethEl, which was located on a smaller side street called Pollack Street, had a larger more open entryway whose gates also open up into a market only slightly less packed than at the other Synagogue. There were seven people sitting together on the benches and chairs off to one side of the very open and spacious interior of BethEL. The monstrous front doors were wide open and the tens of windows lining both the lower and upper levels of the Temple were open as well, letting the sun shine in from all sides and the noise from the streets outside add a slightly different type of music to the gathering.

Four of the seven people at services were native Indians or Kolkatans, yet each and everyone with whom we talked, told us that they came from outside of India. It seemed that if even they had been born in India along with their parents and perhaps grandparents, they still did not totally identified as Indian. Their identities seemed to rest more upon where their Jewish ancestors had come from…Pakistan, Afghanistan…
One of the two ‘Indian’ men, who were both well into their sixties, named Mordechai told us a little bit about the Synagogue and the Jewish community in Kolkata. He explained how there were once thousands of Jew in Kolkata, but how that number had now dwindled down to only around fifty or so. His children, along with many other Kolkatan Jews as of recently have moved to other places in India, Israel and the US, leaving only a small group of older men and women to make up Kolkata’s Jewish population. The man leading services turned out to be (a) Nachoum, an eighth generation Kolkatan Jew who runs a very popular and one of the only Jewish bakeries left in Kolkata – Nachoum’s. Even as an eighth generation Kolkatan, he identified himself as a Jew of Middle Eastern origin. His bakery is in the Center of New Market, a huge shopping center near Park Street (said to be one of the largest shopping centers in Asia). It’s mostly run by Indian men any more though, as most of his family has either died or moved out of the city.

The three other people attending services that morning were also foreigners, all from the US. So with our arrival, us foreigners outnumbered the Kolkatans six to four. We must have showed up pretty far into the service, because it only went on for about another forty-five minutes or so after we arrived. All of it was in Hebrew, straight from the prayer book and I couldn’t really identify any of it even the few songs were completely different from anything any of us seemed to be familiar with. Dan and Seth were handed yarmulkes as we walked in and we were passed small prayer books as we sat down with the rest of the group, but there weren’t quiet enough to go around. So I sat and listened and looked around at the insides of the Temple…

It was really spectacular! Because the windows were open, little birds had found their way inside and were chirping away behind the ceiling beams as Mordechai went on in prayer. Although we were sitting a bit far off from the bema and some of us had our backs to it, as we were set up in a circle facing each other, it certainly stood out. Set off from the rest of the Sanctuary with a small intricate metal gate and the usual higher step up, there were four or five some door-like fixtures covered with dark silky curtains covered in Hebrew prayers and beautiful embroidered designs. The ceiling over the bema went up into a high archway and there were candles and lanterns hanging from high up. It was painted in a dark blue with soft golden stars here and there. I’m assuming that there were Torah scrolls behind the doorways, but I am not sure as there was no Torah reading during the service and the doors were shut and locked tightly. Some of the windows were large flower shaped blue and red stained glass and the second floor was a balcony like level where the women must once have sat through services looking out over the same ornate metal balcony rail which marked off the bema. The middle of the ground floor also had a large stand from where the Rabi must have given sermons and lead services when the congregation was a bit larger. It was all a mix of Indian and Jewish décor, as well as perhaps some colonial European designs too.

We brought a few apples and a jar of honey to share after services had finished. And we all stayed and talked for a while, and eventually found our way back over to Maghen David Synagogue and took a look around with the other three Americans. It was only a little after ten in the morning by that time and so the six of us decided to find some bread and make Tishlich…for the Ganges was not too far off.

And so we had Tishlich on the banks of the Ganges with Rs 3 for each of the two tiny loaves of bread we bought on the way to the ghats. There were already some thirty people at the waters edge when we arrived washing and playing in what seemed like their daily routines in the dark water among the trash and flowers and other things (offerings) they were throwing into the river. There was a speaker blasting one of the local radio channels and we stood towards one side of a ramp that lead into the water, looking out at Howrah and the ferries shuttling people across for only a few rupees per ride. There was a strong smell of feces, mixed with rotting food and we cast our sins into the Ganga making sure not to slip into the water nor step too far backwards into the mounds of excrement and insect covered, rotting debris…but it was darn moving all the same. We even said a short prayer and finished off the last bit of apples and honey…

Sunday September 21, 2008

Shantiniketan was amazing! It’s already been a full week since we’ve been back in Kolkata, and Durga Puja is only about another two weeks away, things are hopping. Shantiniketan was like a retreat it was so calming and reviving. It’s a pretty rural area, but compared to Kolkata I guess that isn’t saying much. I think the air was one of the most noticeably drastic changes, and the blue skies and quiet roads were really something else after having gotten so used to living in the city. There were rice paddies all over the place turning the landscape into literally a sea of green dotted with color by palms, livestock, and the bright clothing of people tending to the grains. We went out to visit one of Arnab’s friends, Sharuk who owns a farm just outside the main village of Shantiniketan, in a smaller village area called Nanoor. Sharuk is another professor that I guess helps plan a lot of this trip. Along the way out to his farm, people had scattered rice over the road in little patches out to dry (so not only were we swerving to avoid the people and animals on the roads this time, but also various patches of grains – almost cooking from the heat of the asphalt). Sharuk gave us a short tour of his farm, complete with a small fish stocked pond, acres of rice paddies, and other small patches of eggplant, ochre, cucumbers, squash, and even the beginnings of papaya trees. We also visited Sharuk’s house which was just down the road from his farm, where there were cows everywhere and where the houses, whose walls were covered in the dung pies that are used for fuel. Cows, goats, and groups of children also occupied the spaces between each house, which were most often walled off with a gate or small opening out to the narrow road. Sharuk house was one of the most colorful we’ve seen yet, Bright pink on the outside and orange, yellow purple, blue and green which all blended together on the inside. His parents and wife provided us with copious amounts of samosas (or Bengali sheenaraas) and huge, fist-sized, pure curd/milk sweets, and let us lounge in a sitting area on cozy couches; it was the ultimate experience of Indian hospitality.

Another very interesting place that we visited not far outside Shantiniketan was a small Kali Temple. It was a small place but one of great importance in Hinduism. This Kali temple is the place where the thigh of the Mother Goddess fell after her body was torn to pieces from her husband Shiva’s dance of destruction. The story goes something like this…Long, long ago, the Mother Goddess Sati fell in love with God Siva (Shiva) who was know to be a rather lazy god, the great smoker of grass he is sometimes called. Sati’s father was very disappointed in his daughter’s marriage, disapproving greatly of this character Siva. And so he threw a party to which he did not invite either Sati or her new husband Siva. But Sati was determined to win over her father and so she went to the party, only to find him telling terrible stories of her and her husband. Distraught with shame and sorrow because of her father’s words, Sati kills herself. When Siva comes to find that his bride has committed suicide, he becomes the great Siva, God of destruction and begins to dance his terrible dance of destruction. Lifting his bride over his head, he tramples and stomps all over the earth killing others in his path and wreaking total havoc. And so it is god Vishnu who interferes in order to stop Siva the Destroyer and save the earth from total destruction. Vishnu throws a special blade, which cuts into the Mother Goddess, Sati’s body cutting it into 51 different pieces which each fall onto different locations of the earth (India). And so it is in the water of a small pond at this Kali Temple, just outside Shantiniketan that a piece of Sati’s thigh fell, when Vishnu stopped Siva’s great dance of destruction and saved the earth from complete destruction.

Shantiniketan is/was also home to one of India’s, or more particularly West Bengal’s, most famous and well renowned authors, also poet, and artist; Rabindranath Tagore. We visited a place called Amar Kutir on the first day of our trip, a cooperative, emporium type shop put up in part by Tagore’s father, in an area called Sriniketan. Back in the early 1800’s, Shantiniketan had been a retreat like place for Tagore’s father, and he later helped develop a rural reconstruction project in Sriniketan. He had come from a very rich landlord family in Kolkata, and had discovered the area around Shantiniketan in his adolescence as a peaceful place away from home. This rural reconstruction project helped many of the local people of Shantiniketan and Sriniketan to develop more sustainable life skills and vocations and also to revive aspects of their culture that had begun to die out in the presence of colonialism. There were tons of things to buy in Amar Kutir, beautifully dyed and embroidered materials and pieces of clothing, all sorts of jewelry, bags, books, and trinkets all made by local people and particular to the Shantiniketan area. I got a chance to talk with some of the men and women working in the shop. They wondered where we were coming from and we spoke a bit about our respective homes. They told us how lucky we were to be able to travel so far…I have to say that I cannot agree more with that sentiment.

Rabidranath Tagore also set up a university in Shantiniketan. Beginning with only around five students and a similar number of teachers it now has about 7000 students and 700 professors. It’s called the Visva Bharati or the World University, and most classes are focused on art and or cultural studies, with tons of language programs and studies in all sorts of different art. The campus was huge; it included even a primary school, and neighbored a museum and bookstore of Tagore’s works. There was also a compound exhibiting the five some houses in which Rabindranath and his family had lived. I’m not exactly sure why he had so many homes, or why they had all been set up so closely together on the same few acres of space, but each was uniquely different from the rest. One was a smaller pastel yellow house built out of mud (later reinforced with concrete), another, a wide one storey with windows on all sides so that air could flow right through and sun flood right in. A third seemed to go on forever with rooms attached one to another on what seemed to be all sides imaginable/possible, and there were even more….

Arcs of red earth around the bases of trees, distinguished the outdoor classrooms of Visva Bharati, where professors could sit on a higher stone seat, while students faced them from the ground under the shade of a tree. Part of Tagore’s whole philosophy about education was that it was best to be learning outside in the fresh air (learning from and surrounded by nature) rather than shut up in some room (especially in a place as beautiful, serene, and refreshing as Shantiniketan). It really was a campus unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, most of the buildings were a soft yellow color built of rough stone, all surrounded by trees, flowers, and birds. There were banyans so incredibly wide whose branches hung down as if they were in constant reach of the ground. There were sculptures and mosaics on some of the outside walls to various building and in other open areas along footpaths. Of course there were dorm like buildings, called hostels, and quite a few people riding their bikes around. But the roads/paths were not paved and although there were flowers and beautiful trees and the greenest fields and patches of grass, the whole place had a somewhat wild look/feel to it. It was certainly different from the perfectly square trimmed fields and bushes, and geometrically designed flowerbeds that make up so many university campuses back home. The buildings, classrooms and other structures just seemed to blend right in with their natural surroundings, not excluding the troupes of cows and goats roaming wherever they seemed to please.

We could walk from our hotel to the university campus, and although the sun was even stronger than back in Kolkata, and we felt not only drenched after a few minutes but also burnt to a crisp. But apart from the insufferable heat, Shantiniketan felt truly like a natural paradise (and it only took a few drops of rain to cool things off to a perfect temperature), the blue sky, fresh air, laid back and quite atmosphere gave it an oasis-like air. Little tea shops and souvenir type shops with all kinds of beautifully embroidered and colorfully died clothing lined the streets. There were small restaurants and little marts with a variety of foods and bath supplies, just like back in the city, but there were also a number of shops selling house supplies. There was a stand just outside our hotel where men were carving doors, and just about a block further down the road was a store selling sinks and bathroom/kitchen furnishings…and we noticed tons more on our drives around town.

One morning we visited a ‘tribal’ village, just outside the main city of Shantiniketan. All mud buildings, some with woven straw roofs others patched together with pieces of metal and tarp. There were a few people out and bunches of goats, cows, pigs and birds, small ponds and stream flowed through and it was quite beautiful. But it took us only a matter of minutes to drive through this small village and get set back on our way to visit another part of the countryside. It felt pretty strange looking into peoples homes and lives from the insides of our huge jeep, speeding through their village, in one side and right back out through another. Arnab explained to us that many of the people living in this village and others like it had been forced to find jobs outside, in Shantiniketan and further out, even in Kolkata. He told us about how although originally these people spoke a language of their own, it has been slowly dying out as people have been forced to find different sources of livelihood outside of their own villages and homes.

We also drove by ‘resort home’ and gated community type neighborhoods under construction/going up all over the outskirts of Shantiniketan. Homes where rich city folks most likely have their holiday/country homes. I’m not sure what that meant for the general village of Shantiniketan, but it was definitely a sight to see white concrete multiplex housing developments fenced off on their own, with hoards of rickshaw men lined up waiting outside for a customer to pull into town. There seemed to be tons of these little developments lining the outskirts of the main town, no wonder we had seen so many of those home furnishing shops. It was almost like being back in the US, where housing developments, with identical box shaped homes seem to plague some cities and their neighborhoods.

One evening we were taken to another neighboring village of Shantiniketan, where, we were told a group of people called the Bauls live. The Bauls, Arnab explained were once a sort of castaway group of artists, known for being a bit too politically liberal and socially looked down upon. Now they are a very respected group of musicians and artists, distinguished in their saffron attire, that live around the Shantiniketan area. We were all pretty confused when two Indian men joined our jeep ride from the hotel and another man and women hopped in just shortly after that. The man and woman were both dressed in bright orange sari and kurta and we later found out that these four were the Bauls who would be playing for us. When they joined our jeep, we weren’t sure who they were, and although they were all carrying bags that looked suspiciously like they contained instruments, we weren’t sure if they were simply hitching a ride or if they were the Bauls we were supposedly going to see (as we were under the impression that the Bauls were from the village to which we were headed). And because our Bengali is slightly ridiculous and we weren’t sure if they spoke English we simply exchanged silent greetings and waited in the confusion that seems to ever linger over us, in hopes that Arnab might explain or that we might find some sign to illuminate what it was that was going on. It was quite a hilarious situation, as we also had to pass through what Arnab told us was a ‘robbers forest,’ in order to get to this other village. And although Arnab had assured us that there was nothing to worry about, he explained to us that Sharuk, who accompanied us, was terrified of this particular forest/section of the road and would get very anxious during this portion of the trip. In fact Arnab had told us that in years past that the students who had shared a car with Sharuk had been hushed into a nervous silence during that portion of the drive. Luckily we were riding with both Sharuk and Arnab, who was able to keep his friend cool throughout the ride.

We also made a pit stop along the way for an Indian specialty called pan. As Arnab, Sharuk and our drivers had just come from a “particularly delicious meal” they decided to grab some of this after-meal treat that is supposed to curb hunger and give the palate a clean and refreshed feeling. It’s a triangular wrap of sorts, made with beetle leaf, and filled sometimes with tobacco among other bits of chutney, nuts, spices and sauce. It can be sweet or spicy, and it’s just for chewing. You see people spitting it out all over the place, in red juicy gobs that splatter the streets and sidewalks. But as Arnab said, after I asked him if it was something for eating, “only those with little tact spit it out….”

When we arrived at the village where we were to hear these famous Bauls, we walked around a bit and got a good look at the sky and surrounding greenery. It was late afternoon, so the sky was a beautiful color and it was just about to rain so the wind was blowing and the air was nice and cool. We were led to a small patio type, covered area so as to escape the rain. But we were followed by a small group of men who had been in the area when we arrived. The Bauls, whom we had by now realized were the four people we had driven with, began to set up their instruments and we kind of just hung out for a bit while they put together their instruments and set up to play. What we began to realize was that the small group of men who had followed us to this roofed off area was growing and growing by the second, and that there were people even lining up behind us on the road to stare at what we were up to. Our group became larger and larger and more rowdy by the minute. We were all totally confused…yet again. We couldn’t figure out if these men were local people who had come to hear and participate in the Baul’s performance, or if they were coming to get a look at what these strange foreigners (we) were doing in their city. They kept crowding around us and blurting out bits of English, and some of them were yelling things, dancing and singing all while the Bauls were warming up. Arnab, Sharuk, and the Bauls became progressively more aggravated by the growing mob and after the rain had stopped succeeded in getting many of them to leave. Arnab explained to us later that most of these men had come from a cremation ceremony at a crematorium not far from the village, and had been very drunk, and not particularly the nicest of people. It was, not for the first time in one day, a pretty awkward situation. We didn’t really know what to make of the mass of men surrounding our group, not wanting to be rude to anyone, yet feeling at the same time a bit uneasy about all the attention we were attracting and the commotion that was ensuing.

So that set a bit of a weird feel for the Bauls performance (not that it wasn’t already a bit awkward having picked them up to come play for us at this village far out from where all of us appeared to be staying). But they sang and played some wonderful music, and the sunset as they played, lighting up the sky with some of the most brilliant colors I’ve ever seen…