Day 44 (11th March) Kolkata – David Jenny Travel

Day 44 (11th March) Kolkata

Last night we went looking for a reasonably high-class restaurant and were directed to Cafe Delight. We had barely sat down when a karaoke man started singing Indian pop songs. He was actually rather good, but the sound was ear-splittingly loud. By pointing at the menu we were able to order a meal: we each had a chicken manchurian, which is balls of boneless chicken meat cooked in a sauce which has a slight taste of orange or lemon in it together with chopped onion, pepper and tomato. It is slightly spicy and very tasty. When the bloke stopped singing, eight girls stood in a row and started gyrating, wriggling, squirming, grimacing, and waving their arms and bums about. They were allegedly dancing. Two rows of seats in front of the stage were occupied by middle-aged men leering, ogling, drooling and salivating. I wanted to join them but Jennifer wouldn’t let me. So I sat and drooled on my own. We were accosted by a genial drunk who seemingly wanted to kiss me before the waiters hauled him off; just as well because who knows where things might have ended up. On the way to the restaurant there were numerous little stalls selling fruit, vegetables and fish including tanks full of live fish.

Today we went to see the Eden Gardens cricket stadium which, with a capacity of 68,000, is the second largest stadium in India. We then went looking for some presents Jennifer wanted to give her family and had an exhausting trek through the Maidan Market to the New Market where a “fixer”, a man who stands outside markets helping customers find the shop they want in the huge market, took us straight to the shop we needed. The next plan was to go to St John’s Church which is a huge building and an idiot taxi driver got lost before deporting us outside the Archbishop’s House. An official told us how to get there, but casually mentioned that Mother House, where Mother Teresa lived, was on the way so we went there. It was very interesting; an Albanian, she was born in Skopje (now capital of North Macedonia) in 1910 and lived in Ireland for 2 months before going to Calcutta in 1929. She lived there until her death in 1997.