India: Day 2 – A religious experience and a trip to the colonial past

I woke up early in the morning, still a little dazed from jet lag. It was only five o’clock, but Sparsh’s grandfather was already sitting at the dining hall table. Holding a necklace of glass beads in silent reverie, he was facing away from the door and towards the family shrine, a tiled structure set in a niche on the balcony and filled with various plates and other metalware. The lamp was shining, and the incense was already placidly burning away.

Noticing me with my laptop, the grandfather turned the lights on and invited me to sit down. I felt awkward at interfering in what seemed to be a moment of religious contemplation, but I had nowhere else to go while everyone else was sleeping. I took my place at the dining hall table and as I wrote, the household slowly came to life.

For a while, nothing seemed to happen. The grandfather mouthed a few words and stood up a few times, which I thought would be the end of his religious reflections. Then the servants started filing in. They were mostly bustling around the kitchen, but every now and then, someone would come out and make a prayer or help the grandfather tend to the shrine, which the man had taken to with great vigour.

I never realised how much there was to do at a Hindu shrine. Several bowls with leaves and water had been brought in, as well as a metal pot filled with water and orange-coloured blossoms. Every time such an offering made its way to the table, the grandfather took it and began to distribute its contents around the shrine. In between these acts, he would take out the various metal plates and holy objects, spraying them and polishing them with a red tea towel. Both the metal cow in its golden cloth and the silver bell received this treatment.

To a layperson like me, the prayers seemed interspersed with no readily apparent rhyme or reason. Sometimes, the grandfather mouthed them from memory, sometimes in a droning voice to accompany his other actions. Prayers were also read from the phone and from a bright pink prayer book. As the grandfather moved from tending the shrine’s interior to arranging objects on top of the shrine, the servants made no qualms about interrupting his humming to ask which plates and offerings they should carry off. Eventually, the cluttered wooden table in front of the shrine was completely empty again, and the shrine itself was filled with flowers and leaves.

I could not quite see what was happening at the top of the shrine, where the grandfather seemed to be moving objects left and right. Every now and then, he took a plastic bottle perched atop of the shrine and poured ghee on top of the metal bowl arrangement. He finished the act by dabbing it with some kind of ointment that had been brought in and by waving a bundle of incense sticks above the shrine.

The whole ceremony lasted at least an hour, during which the grandfather left his glass beads inside the shrine. When he was done, a priest arrived to continue the ritual. He was wearing a beige kurta and loose-fitting trousers, and he had an orange mark on his forehead. Laying out a carpet in front of the shrine, he cleaned the metal figures, carefully dressed each of them in cloths and red strings, and then put them back in their places.

I was so mesmerised by the whole procedure that I missed all the accoutrements reappearing on top of the foldable table. The canister that had held water and orange-coloured blossoms had come back, as well as a large silver plate with an assortment of vials and bottles. Two bowls with red ointment were also brought in, which the man used to dab the objects inside the shrine. He then refilled the lamp.

The last portion of the ritual was the most acoustic. Sitting cross-legged in front of the altar, the priest set fire to a metal lamp, which he waved in front of the altar while ringing a bell. Then, he stood up and – after glancing in my direction, apparently with apprehension as to how I would react – fished out a conch shell from the top of the altar and blew it three times. I have never heard a conch shell played, and I was surprised by how loud it was.

After washing out the conch shell in a bucket by the cabinet, the job was finally done. The priest walked off, and I realised that it was already seven thirty. Some two hours had been dedicated to tending the shrine, but I am sure it was returned to many times later that day.

It was only with the arrival of Sparsh’s mother that much of what I had seen was explained to me. The shrine is dedicated to the goddess Durga, of whom Kali is another incarnation, and the leaves put on her altar are a kind of basil; every deity has a favoured herb and flower, which in Durga’s case is the hibiscus. As for the priest, he comes over every day on the specific request of Sparsh’s grandfather.

For breakfast, we were given a kind of toast filled with spiced potatoes, and a bowl of semolina with vegetables. The family is also very fond of spicy coriander chutney, which makes regular appearances at the table, as well as sweet chai made with tea leaves from the family’s estate.

Although many other friends arrived at the house in the night, no one else was up by nine o’clock, so I was the only one to hitch a ride closer to the centre of town with Sparsh and his father. After leaving them at work, the driver took me to the entrance of the Victoria Memorial, a massive 20^th-century marble structure and reportedly the largest monument to a monarch in the world. The building struck me as being a mixture of European and Indian styles, with Mughal domes perched atop neoclassical pillars and orientally ornate arches standing above statues of British leaders. I read the style being described as Indo-Saracenic revivalist.

One of the major attractions at the memorial, however, was my very own skin. With no other foreigners around, I was constantly approached with requests for photos, which I happily fulfilled. After all, everyone there was a tourist and had paid for the full experience.

From the Victoria Memorial, I crossed the road to Saint Paul’s Cathedral. It is a large, white building whose gothic exterior would easily fit in in any English town. Unlike the Victoria Memorial, where the entry fees are 500 rupees, the entry fee to Saint Paul’s is but 10. I thought it a quite sensible price, as the grounds are much less extensive, and the interior of the building was undergoing heavy reconstruction.

I did not want to catch a taxi from the Cathedral, since I figured that doing so in such a touristy area might be expensive. Instead, I walked north along the road hoping to come across an unoccupied cab. What I found, however, was even better: the entrance to the Maidan Station of Kolkata metro. I hesitated for a while, worrying that some local experiences might be just a little too authentic. The colourful mosaic on the façade, however, reassured me that this public work was well taken care of, and I went inside.

Figuring out the metro system was quite easy. The employee at the counter looked apprehensive at having to speak to a foreigner, but upon hearing the name of the station where I wanted to go, he gave me a token and asked for 5 rupees – a very good rate considering a taxi driver might charge around 200 to cover the same distance. I scanned the token at the turnstile and descended to the platform, where a train was just arriving. I did not have enough time to study all the different signs (most of which seemed to be in Hindi or Bengali), so I asked a fellow passenger if my train was the right one, and hopped on as soon as she said yes.

I was surprised to find that the metro was quite full at eleven o’clock. What surprised me even more, however, was its very good air conditioning. Having gotten quite sweaty during my travels, I almost wished I could spend more time on the train just to enjoy the cool air a little longer.

I got off the metro at Esplanade Station, depositing my token at the turnstile. As is typical for me, I initially walked off in the wrong direction, wandering into a giant parking lot for busses. The slowness with which the passengers boarded these busses indicated that these were the more long-haul versions of local transport, as the municipal busses simply let people hop on and off while they race throughout the city. Adding to the chaos of the scene were stalls ranged along the kerbs, which variously obstructed and enabled passage along the pavement.

Eventually, I found what I was looking for: the Shaheed Minar. Towering above the Maidan, the tower was built in 1828 as the Ochterlony Monument in memory of the British Major-general who defended Delhi against the Marathas in 1804 and commanded Britain’s troops in the Anglo-Nepalese War. The name “Shaheed Minar,” meaning “Martyr’s Monument,” was bestowed upon the monument after independence. It is built in a mixture of Middle Eastern styles, resembling a minaret in shape, and the motifs on the base seem to be a mixture of Egyptian and Persian influences.

Having finished my itinerary, I took a cab to meet Sparsh and the rest of the group, many of whom had arrived in the middle of the night and had only just woken up. We met at the restaurant Ballygunge 6, which we were told is the major meeting place for India’s elites. Well-airconditioned and decorated with sturdy furniture, it was a far cry from Kolkata’s roadside eateries, where people ladle food into their mouths from thin, wide plates with their bare hands. Sparsh made sure to order vegetarian food for me, which included a mixed vegetable dish and paneer circles in a red sauce. As for the dessert, we had an assortment of sweets in which I only recognised gulab jamun; besides that, there was some kind of yogurt, balls that tasted like cottage cheese, and cottage cheese that tasted like smoke.

We tried to visit the Tagore Museum and the Marble Palace after lunch, but the former was closed and the latter required booking 24 hours in advance. Instead, Sparsh’s brother Smayan took us to the nearby College Street, which is associated with many of India’s luminaries and most of its Nobel laureates. It has historically been the centre of communist activities in India. We looked around the bookstores for a while before the most tired of us hired cabs to head home.