The Blossom Cycle
Searching for rebirth in crumbling Kolkata
The Hindu deity Kali, she of chaos and compassion, governs life’s ever-turning cycle of death and rebirth. With her tongue protruding, her necklace of dismembered heads and dishevelled hair she is the black goddess, a perpetual force of destruction that precedes new beginnings.
In some parts of India, she is venerated as the benevolent divine mother who protects her devotees from misfortune. One such place is Kolkata, that great, misty metropolis deep in the Bengali sprawl. Once the colonial epicentre of India, the city remains a beacon of life, ethereally on the cusp of the sweltering, mystical jungle — as if Kali herself is closing in. After all, it is a city named after her, a city that reveres her, a city that patiently follows her rules, a city that embodies her cycle of life.
Most of India’s mega cities are challenging this cycle. Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai were sown, blossomed, wilted, then on the cusp of death, they were reborn again. Since then, progress has come fast, but to Kali, their rapid rise since rebirth seems rushed. Kolkata is different. The city would not be so arrogant to challenge her order of things, but with loyalty comes sacrifice. Kolkata knows she will protect them, but her protection manifests in strange ways.
As such, the capital of West Bengal bears a worn and weathered soul. The markets and streets and alleyways whisper stories of golden reminiscence. But some jaded buildings, faded white and garlanded with clumsy nests of tangling wires, whisper something different.
“Our modern purpose will come,” they declare. Between these frail buildings, life churns unerringly on.
What would we find here, in this beautiful, weary city of 15 million restless souls, who like their home, are just trying to find their way?
The world’s greatest places bare their deepest intricacies and purest forms in the early morning. As Archie and I arrive on a night bus at dawn, we discover Kolkata to be no different. Through the buildings of once-glorious Park Street we go, the grey, humid morning sweeping in. The old colonial buildings are tired, their whitewashed facades crumbling, a meeting of venerable old gentlemen past their prime. Beggars emerge from their tarpaulin shelters in the sweaty daze. Worshippers trundle from small roadside temples, their foreheads adorned with holy reds and yellows and oranges. Even at 6am, the sun low in the sky, kids carrying cricket bags twice their size walk to practice on Kolkata’s great misty mid-city plains.
We enter the teeming mass of intestinal alleyways. The clatter and cacophony tells us street vendors have begun their morning business. Chaiwallas swirl bubbling tea in worn cauldrons with aged tea leaves cemented to the sides. Beside them, fry cooks flip puffed luchis and kochuris in drums flooded with dark, bubbling oil. An orchestra of spatulas hits aged steel pans, slices of eggy bread bejewelled with green and red and purple gems fill the nostrils. Rich chickpea curry is thrown into paper bowls then is sprinkled with spicy chili and generous dusting of pepper, white and black. Paanwallahs sit atop their tiny wooden stalls and expertly wrap shiny green betel leaves full of nuts and spices. Next to them, crinkled dhoti-clad men leak red from their jack-o’-lantern mouths, tired vampires self-cannibalising their own pearly enamel.
Archie and I, still wallowing in an early morning daze, gravitate towards a chaiwala. We hold the dusty terracotta cups to our lips and indulge in the sweet and creamy tea, glad to share the lifeblood of Kolkata mornings. Though the rest of the city has slept, we haven’t. But you must keep walking. Caffeine is our slumber. Overwhelmed senses are our friend.
We escape the effervescent gloom, then the vibrant colour of Bengal rises and blossoms like a forest of ancient flowers. The vibrant minarets of mosques glow. The ivory white spires of churches soar. The occasional flicker of gold, the blinding sheen of palatial white mansion amidst rickety shops and bamboo scaffolding. Towering lotus temples flaunt their cream and crimson shikharas that contrast with the clammy ashen sky above and the cramped, ashen, Soviet-like buildings beside them.
Another chai. We duck under the clumsy nests of tangling wires overhead. We sidestep between motorcycles carrying entire families. We dodge the porters carrying great, ballooning bags on their heads. We squeeze past the professionals in tight, tucked in and well-starched shirts elbowing their way to work. We swerve the packed rickshaws of school children. We skip past the flecks of betel spit and fountains of gargled water. We weave through the endless technicolor of buses, passengers dangling from windows and conductors from doors clasping bouquets of green, red and orange notes. We stagger past the humped cows and mangy dogs. We smile and nod at the elderly men, their hair fiery orange, with small round hats perched atop their heads.
Another chai. We wander through Kolkata’s labyrinthine markets. We waltz through the fruit market vendors proudly displaying pyramids of limes and watermelons. We rush past the freshly butchered blood pouring through gutters, the goats sipping from buckets of milk beside it, young chickens chirping their desperate final chorus. We feast on fruitcake in an old Jewish bakery which juxtaposes the stalls of textiles and too-small T-shirts with grammatical misprints next door. We are lost among the towers of books peddled and shouted over on College Street, the world’s largest book market. We stare at fish the size of cricket bats bulging from the boot of a bright yellow taxi. The unlikely vendor opens it like a wartime spiv; “want to buy a fish?” his eyes ask.
Another chai. No time to stop or say no. No time to rest or shake your head. Close your eyes and ears in Kolkata – you’re dead. Refuse to indulge them – you’re dead, but in a very different way.
Witnessing this deluge of different quests on every street is captivating, but the overarching quests of Delhi, Bengaluru or Mumbai are at least united in their mission. Delhi as capital, Bengaluru as tech hub and Mumbai as cultural powerhouse. In contrast, Kolkata’s unwavering industriousness lacks a common goal. It hasn’t for a while.
The city, once Calcutta, was a key hub for the East India Company, before it became the capital of the British Raj from 1772 until 1911. It blossomed a reputation as the cultural nerve center of the Empire, a stronghold of rampant intellectualism among the lavish orgies of port and claret and madeira. It spawned surprisingly liberal thinking for the 1700s as well as remarkably grand buildings for the colonial era.
We navigate through the hive of lawyers in old-fashioned wigs and workers tap tap tapping on typewriters under pavement awnings at the magnificent High Court. We circle Eden Gardens – the Mecca of Indian cricket – with stands fanning out like petals of a giant sunflower. We stumble through the impressive, vermillion New Market – via Charlie Chaplin Square – bustling with life and overeager hustle.
But with needless decadence, increasing racial intolerance and harsh rule in the 1800s, a determined independence movement spawned too. Then the “second city of the Empire” lost its title to Delhi, the flower of imperialism was beginning to wilt and with it, Calcutta’s relevance.
The signs of once-iconic Sports Clubs on the mid-city plains are faded by the sun. The Lalit Hotel, named “Jewel of the East” in the 1900s, sheds its once-virginal white paint like a tree’s leaves succumb to winter. Park Street, at the once-sparkling centre of it all, is wearied. Once-great establishments like Trincas and Mocambo crave rejuvenation. Even walking through the door of Peter Cat, famed for its admittedly delicious Chelo Kebab, is like walking through a wormhole to the Seventies.
The Victoria Memorial perhaps represents Calcutta’s demise best. Opulent and stately, the huge marble monument stands proud among its manicured, green gardens. However, its construction almost bankrupted Bengal in the early 1900s and now, it has become an Independence Museum. While it rightly glorifies major freedom fighters like Gandhi, it also praises Vinayan Savarkar, the radical widely thought to be behind his murder, and Subhas Chandra Bose, the once-Calcutta Mayor who craved independence so deeply he sought allegiances from the Japanese and Nazis during World War II.
After independence in 1947, the city continued its downfall. Calcutta’s radical goodwill - including the world's longest-running democratically elected communist government from 1977 until 2011 - was consistently blighted by issues. A militant Naxalite movement destroyed infrastructure in the 1960s, a flood of refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971 there wasn’t enough room for. An Indian government that refused to help its old capital. Kolkata grew larger without growing stronger. Where cities like Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai found a route forward, Kolkata was distracted and as a result, it wilted.
Archie and I are searching for a rare, modern glimpse of Kolkata just off Park Street, and bump into Kairab, a tech worker living in Bangalore. “I rarely come back, this city is 20 years behind,” he laments. “I’m only back here to see my family, none of my friends live here anymore.”
Dejected, we duck under the clumsy nests of tangling wires overhead, sidestep between motorcycles carrying entire families and dodge the porters carrying great, ballooning bags on their heads. Deep in the underbelly of a vibrant bazaar, up a set up of ramshackle steps and under clumsily hung awnings, a flickering neon sign reads “Tripty’s Bar, established 1935.”
Archie and I have entered one of the oldest bars in Kolkata: pink walls faded, fans whirring, the heads of its uniformed waiters bobbing, the beer cheap and cold and delicious. A chilli chicken dish reminds Archie how spice feels and it, admittedly, awakens my senses too.
“Kolkata reminds me of home, more than anywhere else in India,” I reflect.
There’s an obvious irony to the sentiment, but after all, the fate of the UK and its old empirical jewel are forever interlinked. Like the West Bengal capital, the UK reminisces on long-gone past glories and is searching for an identity in this tempestuous modern world. Together, both places are lost in quiet, crumbling majesty, unsure when Kali’s unrelenting cycle will change their fate.
Sometimes a flower needs to die to let another grow in its stead. That next flower may not look as pretty, smell as sweet or have as strong a stem, but it will blossom nonetheless. Rebirth in Kolkata will come, as it will in the UK. Only Kali, a perpetual force of destruction that precedes new beginnings, knows when.