08.19.08
Calcutta
A colleague recently sent me the following “definition” of Calcutta/Kolkata – whichever you want to call it – from, he says, Sashi Tharoor’s Glossary: An A to Z of Being Indian.
KOLKATA: More a state of mind than a city; it epitomizes all that is magnificent and all that is squalid about urban India: its people, its theater, its coffeehouses, and its bookshops set against some of the most depressing slums, the most wretched pavement hovels, the most noxious pollution, the most irreparable decay in the world. It seems a city without hope, a soot and concrete wasteland of power cuts, potholes, and poverty, yet it inspires some of the country’s greatest creative talent. To the true Kolkatan there is no other city quite like it; if one tires of Kolkata, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson about old London, one tires of life.
I wouldn’t characterize it in quite such bleak terms, but then again, I only spent most of three days there. There were fewer slums than in Bombay, and it was calmer, quieter, greener, perhaps even cleaner. The city seemed in general to have more grace. I met a whole lot of my husband’s relatives for the first time, and over all it was a good trip, and a nice break from the chaos of Bombay.
08.09.08
In Olympics News . . .
. . . it seems as though everyone must have switched flags!
Here in India, as in many other countries, there’s only one channel that is showing the Olympics. Here, it’s a government channel, and they seem to get most of their feed showing actual events from the BBC’s coverage – and there’s a very marked change in quality when it moves to coverage initiated by the Indian networks. For example, video footage of an air-rifle competition (in which there was an Indian who came in something like 42nd out of 48 competitors) that clearly came from a hand-held camcorder in the audience. And a listing of the medal standings with the wrong flags next to country names.
Then again, I don’t pretend to know everything. Maybe there’s been some mass switching of flags by all the countries involved in the Olympics – perhaps all the heads of state threw all the flags into a hat and drew new ones out, saying something about the “spirit of the Olympics.” Still, I’d be surprised.
