“What do you want” the fifth annoying hawker in five minutes asks me. “I can get you anything.” “Guns” I reply. “Is there a gun shop around here.” “Toy guns,” inquires the hawker, scratching his rather long nose. “No, no real guns, high caliber sniper rifles, damn airport lost mine, the kind that will take a man down at 500 yards, can’t trust anybody these days, airports heh” I sigh with frustration. “You will need a license in India for those sir”. “Surely not, surely there must be a shop around here someplace,” I peer into a bag shop, the shopkeeper smiles at me expectantly. “ Would you like silk scarves sir, I have a shop just here” the hawker tries to steer me into a silk scarf shop. “What caliber are they?” “What?” “What caliber are your silk scarves?” “No sir these are silk scarves, export quality.” “Well they are not really what I am after, thank you for your time.” I walk off into the crowd leaving a rather bemused hawker with his silk scarves.
Calcutta is a shopping paradise. It has streets that would rival Oxford Street or 52nd street. Shop, shop, shop. Consumerism is here and middle class India loves to shop. Actually Calcutta is very much like New York. With its Ambassador yellow cabs, Park Street could easily be 1930s Broadway. The architecture though is distinctly colonial and in fact the British truly have left their mark here. The Maidens (large grass areas) provide all sorts of clubs – cricket, badminton, polo and the Kennel Club are all here. All very la di da.
Fancy coffee shops sit next to record shops and book stores that are awash with self help books – the secrets of life, how to become rich in 10 days, yoga for people that can’t be bothered, Mein Kamph, and other light reading. India is on the rise and there is plenty of advice as to how you can retain your spiritual self, make other people wealthy and ignore the realities that surround you.
The middle classes are the new India, consumerism is on the up, India’s future is there on the smiling faces of its shopkeepers. Turn a corner though and you are into the other India. Chah wallahs, street food, pissing in the street, people sleeping rough and rickshaw wallahs that don’t even have the luxury of a bicycle. So don’t worry there is still a high enough level of poverty to keep old India alive for a few decades yet.
Now where can I buy rocket launchers.
4 comments
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January 18, 2009 at 4:38 am
A. N. Nanda
Whether you write about Chittagong ship-breaking hazards or wonder about the invention of Yoga in the subcontinent, you surely write evocatively. I read all the four parts of your Bangladesh accounts and enjoyed them. I have no answer to suggest, but then they are realities. While writing this sometimes the writer is misunderstood: don’t they say nothing sells like poverty? A Booker at the minimum 🙂
Thanks for sharing.
Nanda
http://ramblingnanda.blogspot.com
January 19, 2009 at 11:59 am
Andy
Oi Colin
You have avoided the question of washing your clothes. How do you do it? Do you do it? Do you purchase a large economy size pack of powder and lug it about with you? Do you have to go without conditioner? Is it done in a Launderette where a machine is used or by maidens beating your smalls over rocks? Perhaps a recycled bicycle, with a steam ship paddle in place of the back wheel in a bucket of suds? Either way please confirm that you do not smell and change your pants every day.
January 22, 2009 at 12:47 pm
colinlaidlaw
Yes washing can be a problem sometimes. The last time I washed any clothes was in Calcutta from a bucket. That was a week ago. I am in Bihar in a posh hotel (2 Stars) at the moment, so I have sent it to their cleaners, which is such a luxury. Generally I am squeezing 2 days out of my pants…. I will send my post Mumbai half marathon thong to you by special post, so you may truly appreciate the scent. I don’t need to worry about socks as I am in flip flops most of the time. Shoes are for loosers.
There is always somebody whom is willing to beat my clothes against a rock in the ganges though. Cleanining ones own gusset is so un british.
January 26, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Stuart
Can you please send me some weapons grade plutonium through the post if you manage to get hold of any?