And next? Already buses have louder horns than cars - horns so loud that if you are riding a rickshaw and are at bus horn height (well, there is no “if”, you are at bus horn height) - it hurts to hear it. These new perma-horns will surely up the ante and if I was a budding Indian entrepreneur, and let’s face it there are 1.2 billion of them, I’d start making loud-loud-louder horns with an on/off switch instead of a button. In fact one could dispense with the “off part” of the switch altogether and just wire it into the car’s ignition system. When you turn the engine on the horn starts at the same time and stays on until you turn the engine off again.
***
That evening we both have an engagement. Mark Twain had to give the first of his three At Home Talks at the Royal Theatre, a few minutes stroll along Chowringhee Road at no. 16. I had to give the same Joy Unconfined! Byron Talk[52] I gave to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club at the Oxford Book Store in Park Street.
Sita had not been able to find out too much about the Royal Theatre, except that it had burned down on 2 January 1911 and that it was in bad repair even on the At Home nights of 10, 12 and 13 February 1896. The site at 16 Chowringhee Road is just fifty yards from the Continental Hotel and is now part of the Oberoi Grand Hotel. I later found a theatre review by a Major Hobbs who reported that during a performance of Much Ado about Nothing a horse fell through the rotted wooden floorboards and “played the devil’s tattoo with its hooves on the corrugated iron walls of the theatre during the remainder of the evening”.
The Byron Talk at the Oxford Book Store seems to go well enough and they sell a few copies afterwards. In general, English bookstores in India have a great selection of titles but have them displayed without any obvious organization, a mild metaphor for India herself. Many a happy hour can be spent here in Park Street as to browse is to borrow: there’s a lovely little coffee shop with home-made cakes upstairs. Next to the café is a row of armchairs in which one can read the books and then just put them back on any old shelf that comes to hand.
But here’s a funny thing. All along the Park Street sidewalks either side of the Oxford Book Store are stalls selling pirated copies of the books randomly displayed in the store itself. The idea is that you find the book you want in the shop and then pop out and buy it at a fraction of the price from the sidewalk. Not only that, but one cannot help notice that the pirate sellers had their stock categorized better than the shop. I ask the manager, Sandeep Sharma, how such a thing can be allowed.
“The Marxists sympathize with them. We have complained many times but we are the big bad capitalists,” he replies.
“But surely the pirates are just as much capitalists as you are - and not tax paying ones either?”
“Yes, but they have more votes. As for taxes, don’t make me cry! Only the few shops pay taxes - and indirectly pay all the non-taxpayers’ taxes too. The city is bankrupt, totally bankrupt.”
“So I’ve heard. By the way, I couldn’t find a copy of Joy Unconfined! on the pirate stalls.”
“So?”
“I don’t know whether to be pleased or displeased it’s not being pirated. It’s either vanity or greed being ruffled.”
And here’s another funny thing. The next morning at breakfast Gillian is reading the Calcutta edition of Times of India and notices a familiar face on page 3 - a 1/8 page color photograph of your correspondent arguing with a politician at a public rally, and under the headline “British writer in GJM bust-up”, a great big article about me disrupting the rally for Gorkhaland independence. It had indeed happened that the previous afternoon on the way back here from the Ochterlony Monument; while Gillian and Sita peeled off back to the Bengal Club and a ten-minute shower, I headed for an appointment with the editor of another newspaper, the venerable old The Statesman.
It’s a timely story of today’s interconnectedness and here is how it came about. About ten days ago I was in the public library-cum-cobweb-museum in Benares and started chatting to a young American. He is a freelance travel writer-cum-tour guide. He was interested in the Mark Twain in India story and later we had dinner and an interview about my trip and it appeared the next day on the web version of In-Travel magazine, with a reference to our strathcarrons-ahoy website. The next day there was an email off our website from the Asian Age, another of the Indian English-language papers: they had seen the In-Travel piece and could they do a telephone interview about the trip for a Sunday supplement? Yes, I replied, but check on our marktwainindia website to find out more first. They did - and then wanted to change from doing a telephone interview to repeating the Allahabad blog about the Magh Mela under a Friday feature called “Then & Now” - and would I mind if they took out some of the “more offensive” jokes? No problem - and I thought that was the end of it.
Meanwhile Sita had contacted The Statesman in Calcutta to ask if we could nosy around the archives[53] when we arrived from Varanasi the following week. The Statesman was very much the newspaper of record in India and they had an interview with Twain and some reviews of the At Home Talks in the 12-15 February 1896 editions. “No problem, give us a call when you arrive.” Then the editor, Sudipto Das, emailed her back: just checked your marktwainindia website and can we do a features interview with Ian now as we did back with Mark Twain then?
So yesterday afternoon I arrived at what remains of their once mighty offices for the archive access chat and the interview.
The Statesman Building is a massive and imposing semi-circular structure in a prime location of downtown Calcutta. One goes through the vast portals gingerly, expecting inside to find scenes from Citizen Kane or the opening of Scoop but - nothing. Not only is it empty but destroyed. Outside a loudspeaker has started chants and yells which echo around the empty cavern that once housed the mighty Statesman. Up the helical stairwell to the first floor - even higher ceilings and grander rooms and even more desolation but this time with added wanton destruction. Second floor, same story. The newspaper office is now crouching on half of the top floor.
What had happened? A familiar tale. Calcutta’s three-and-a-half-decade-old Marxist government was virulently anti-capitalist. Rents were and still are strictly controlled but property tax on occupied business premises is the very opposite - out of control.
In response the landlords just make the space unlivable and so untaxable, as can be seen on the piledriven floors below. Meanwhile new technology, freelancing and home working mean that they can run the paper from a few square feet in the attic - and pay minimal property taxes. As Sudipto says, “everybody loses but Marxist purity stays intact”.
Anyway, pleasantries over, the editor is displeased; the Asian Age has got there first: there’s a note on the bottom of yesterday’s “Then & Now” column plugging my Allahabad story as next week’s feature. I explain and apologize and suggest that instead we work together on an expanded Calcutta “then and now” piece using their archive and we agree to knock something up on Tuesday.
Meanwhile outside the loudspeakered yelling and chanting is reaching what one hopes will be a final crescendo.
“What’s all that about?” I ask.
“It’s the Gurkhas. They want an independent Gorkhaland. Don’t blame them.”
“Independence from India?”
“No, from Bengal. They are a different race from the Bengalis - they are Himalayan, like the Nepalese or the Tibetans. In fact they are Nepali. They want to become independent like Sikkim. And they hate the Marxists. I’m Bengali and I don’t blame them. They’ve been on strike for two weeks, all of north Bengal is paralyzed.”
That explains a lot. For the past two weeks no tourist has been able to reach Darjeeling - and worse, no tourist has been allowed to leave. We have booked an overnight train to leave late on Tuesday and arrive late on Wednesday. I called the hotel yesterday to find out what was happening. They were furious with the strikers.
“We only have two bu
sinesses here, tea and tourism. The GJM (the Independence party) won’t let the tea out or the tourists in”. Or out.
“It doesn’t sound very clever to ruin the only businesses there are,” I suggested.
“Exactly,” said Sudipto, “why ruin your local support? They all want independence, but not if it means going bust.”
Sudipto says goodbye until Tuesday, which I’m pleased to say has now turned into lunch as well, and I walk down through the wasted, deserted cathedral that once was alive with the rush and hubbub of messengers and subs and cubs, typesetters and expense fiddlers. Outside the noise from the loudspeakers is drowning out even the concerted horns of an Indian traffic jam. On the stage are an array of pretty, well-dressed Himalayan women. Behind the stage stand large posters of Bengali police atrocities. A spokesman is working the crowd, half in their local Nepali dialect and half in English. I’m the only foreigner and people look curiously in my direction. Someone asks if they can help me. Yes, I say, I would like to ask a question over the mike. Much debating, still all smiles. What’s my name (this all on the loudspeakers)? “Mac” (I use this everywhere to make life easier). Where am I from? New Zealand (a recent innovation, no Kiwi imperial baggage - and they always beat them at cricket). What is my question?
“I would like to ask what is the benefit to the people of Darjeeling to stop the movement of tea and tourism? I have spoken to my hotelier who says everyone in Darjeeling is very upset that you are ruining their businesses.”
I got some guff in reply about ends justifying means but meanwhile the whole incident had attracted quite an additional crowd. As I left a photographer from the Times of India gave me his card; I gave him mine; and five minutes later the phone rang. It was the Delhi desk asking for a telephone interview; I obliged. Needless to say they made large chunks of it up and it read like I was virulently anti-GJM and pro-Bengali. As I’m having lunch here tomorrow with the British Deputy High Commissioner, Sanjay Wadvani, this may be diplomatically inconvenient, even if far from the truth.
Meanwhile I have taken the precaution of emailing the spokesman of the GJM I met yesterday asking for a an interview with him in Darjeeling as I see parallels between his quest for Gurkha independence now and the Indian quest for independence in Mark Twain’s time. I also thought an email from him would give me Safe Conduct through any GJM roadblocks on the way up there.
***
When Twain wasn’t lecturing at the Royal Theatre he was enjoying the full pomp and pageant of a Calcutta that no longer exists.
I saw the fort that Clive built[54]; and the place where Warren Hastings and the author of the Junius Letters fought their duel; and the great botanical gardens[55]; and the fashionable afternoon turnout in the Maidan[56]; and a grand review of the garrison in a great plain at sunrise; and a military tournament in which great bodies of native soldiery exhibited the perfection of their drill at all arms, a spectacular and beautiful show occupying several nights and closing with the mimic storming of a native fort which was as good as the reality for thrilling and accurate detail, and better than the reality for security and comfort; we had a pleasure excursion on the “Hoogly” by courtesy of friends, and devoted the rest of the time to social life.
There were two visits the Twain party made which I was anxious to see, first to the Indian Museum and second to Belvedere, then the residence of the Lt. Governor of Bengal and now the Indian National Library.
It would seem the Indian Museum is unchanged - at least if the dust and attendants are anything to judge by - since their visit there on 11 February, still housing the same extensive selection of natural history exhibits from around the Commonwealth. Many of the animals are stuffed and it is unclear whether or not they are better off than their counterparts still alive in the disgusting zoo nearby.
It is the ideal shape for a tropical museum, featuring a large square well-stocked garden with a working fountain as its centerpiece and around it the four-sided, two-story building with massively thick walls and high ceilinged colonnades and cloisters. Off each side are various rooms for anything that has ever flown, swum, burrowed, hunted or foraged. The catalogues list 35,000 exhibits; if one did nothing else for two months but spend a minute viewing each one there would still be a pinned butterfly or two that one had missed. Twain noted that: “One should spend a month in the museum, an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities. Indeed, a person might spend half a year among the beautiful and wonderful things without exhausting their interest.” True enough, but from his notes we see he was only there for half an hour; quite enough for the Re-Tour too.
We were all looking forward to visiting what is now the National Library previously Belvedere. Our favorite work in the Calcutta Gallery at the Victoria Memorial is a wonderful painting by Smythson, RA, from 1845 of the viceroy’s bodyguard in superb uniforms lining Belvedere’s drive and steps. Between them Indian ladies in a dazzle of sarees and Indian gentlemen in elegant costumes mingle with drabber European guests. On the lawn are tents with pennants flying and magnificent marquees with uniformed waiters rushing about. Elephants sporting silver and gold inlaid howdahs wait patiently to one side, fully dressed horses with gleaming carriages on the other. It’s a scene of color, light, splendor and pageant - a record of a colonial-tropical fantasy come to life.
It has to be said that even in its pomp Belvedere was never the prettiest stately home in the world, but still, a proper stately home it was and one with its own parkland to match. It was originally a “gift” from the Mir Jafar to the new rulers, the Company, on behalf of the outgoing Moghul Empire. Just before the Sepoy Uprising it became the official residence of the Lt. Governor of Bengal, as it was when the Twain party lunched there.[57] Fifteen years later, after the capital moved from Calcutta to Delhi, it ceased to have its former significance. All ranks moved up a notch: the viceroy from Governor’s House/Raj Bhavan to Delhi and so the Governor of Bengal from Belvedere to Governor’s House/Raj Bhavan. Belvedere’s fortunes declined and it was used only occasionally by viceroys on their winter visits to the races and for gala parties and balls.
Lord Curzon took pity on it and declared part of it to be the site for the new Imperial Library. The aim was simple but typically, imperially grandiose, for it to house a copy of every book that had ever been written about India. Thus it continued until Independence when it was renamed the National Library, one of Jawaharlal Nehru’s pet projects. Nehru said: “I do not want Belvedere for the mere purpose of stacking books. We want to convert it into a fine central library where large numbers of research students can work and have all the amenities of a modern library. The place must not be judged as something like the present Imperial Library - it is not merely a question of accommodation but of something much more.”
Oh dear, poor old JJN would be horrified at the awful mess they’ve made of it since the lofty pronouncements. The building itself is in a terrible and decayed state, the neglect having worked its way through the first line of plaster defenses and now attacking the exposed brickwork. The gardens are a shambles and, as always, covered in litter. The parkland beyond has become a sort of freelance dump caused by people throwing junk over the perimeter walls.
Meanwhile the books have been moved out to new surrounding buildings, all done in the usual Sub-Continental Hideous style and all totally ignorant of what was and still could be the wonderful parkland in which they lie - and of course the stately home which they surround. The whole operation must have cost far, far more than maintaining the stout stately home, but as Sita points out, there’s far more baksheesh to be had from building new horrors than maintaining old ladies. To add insult to injury, the Reference Library, the centerpoint of Nehru’s vision, is now off limits to anyone without prior permission from an office in the Writers Building, which Sita says will take a week and the usual tea money.
It’s a shame some of these incredibly newly-rich Indians we keep hearing about don’t buy a fe
w of India’s own stately homes rather than buying them abroad. Presumably they can “find a way” past the dead hand of the Archaeological Survey of India, here too destroying what they are supposed to preserve. The Indian “piles” are not yet real piles and are still just about salvageable, but not for much longer. In the meantime lovers of the sublime can only remember Smythson’s portrait and weep.
***
Time for us both to leave Calcutta/Kolkata for the Himalayas - but lastly we have to ask what Mark Twain would have made of the Kolkata we have lived through. I think he would have loved it for a short period, as we both had and as he loved the chaos and confusion of India, a free-for-all which this new Calcutta compresses and amplifies before hurling it right back.
Darjeeling
The Twain party made the twenty-four-hour train journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling from 14 to 15 February. It was a delightful trip, the first half through the beautiful fertile upper plains of Bengal and then the 6,000-foot climb up to Darjeeling on the toy train. We can see equally now what he saw then:
The plain is perfectly level, and seems to stretch away and away and away, dimming and softening, to the uttermost bounds of nowhere.
What a soaring, strenuous, gushing fountain spray of delicate greenery a bunch of bamboo is! As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the view, their spoutings refined to steam by distance. And there are fields of bananas, with the sunshine glancing from the varnished surface of their drooping vast leaves. And there are frequent groves of palm; and an effective accent is given to the landscape by isolated individuals of this picturesque family, towering, clean-stemmed, their plumes broken and hanging ragged, Nature’s imitation of an umbrella that has been out to see what a cyclone is like and is trying not to look disappointed.
Smythe was feeling particularly gleeful, having some payback for being bounced out of his lower bunk by the English cavalry officer’s servant on the way in to Calcutta:
The Indian Equator Page 15