Savoring India’s Cocktails

We ended up in Kolkata by accident. With the trains booked up in the towns popular with tourists in the north due to locals traveling home for Diwali, we discovered flying to Kolkata was the fastest way towards our next destination, the Andaman Islands. And so we found ourselves spending Diwali in Kolkata.

It seems in the wake of every town formerly ruled by the British is a town with a confused identity. People say Calcutta, but when the name is written, the official name, Kolkata, is used. Just like when we were in Derry/Londonderry, I never really knew what to call it, because use of either term can be laden with political allegiances.

Setting aside any politics of colonialism, we discovered – and later confirmed in Fort Cochin – there’s some alluring about adding a splash of European to the India straight up we previously had been experiencing. It’s a mix that blends well – Kolkata felt exotic, but refined.

It is a testament to just how charming we found Kolkata to be that its charms were evident right away as we raced through its streets in a cab from the airport. We watched tall, leafy trees and stately buildings fly by in a blur. We whipped through one neighborhood, with alleyways draped in flowers, lights and shrines, so fast it was almost as if we dreamed it. We tried to locate the neighborhood on our own but could never figure out where it was.

In other cities, the only thing that assuaged my safety fears in traffic was that the roads were always too crowded to gain much speed. Not Kolkata. There, the wide, tree-lined boulevards – a leftover from the British – are raceways. Barreling down the street, our taxi driver didn’t slow down for pedestrians or stopped traffic. When traffic got in his way, he floored it into the oncoming lane. When pedestrians walked into the street, he didn’t slow down, but merely laid on the horn until they scurried away a second before impact.

We spent the next day becoming smitten with Kolkata. We loved Kolkata for any number of reasons. We loved strolling down Kolkata’s wide, broad boulevards and the stately, leafy trees that lined them. We loved the colonial architecture and the beautiful flowers decorating Kolkata’s classiest and biggest monument, the Victoria Memorial. We loved the tangy Bengali food and will always remember Kolkata as the place where we first tasted India’s sweet baby bananas. We loved the book stores with piles of English books and magazines, which allowed us to stock up on beach reads. We loved the shrines on the side of the roads, ranging from impromptu to elaborate. We loved the way we were mostly invisible as tourists, even though it meant cab and rickshaw drivers drove away if they couldn’t figure out where we wanted to go. We loved that you can find oasis in Kolkata and the city’s relative calmness after Delhi, Agra and Varanasi.

But mostly, I think we fell in love in Kolkata because of the city’s retro yellow British cabs. There’s thousands of them all over the city, zooming up and down Kolkata’s wide boulevards. All of the things above created a fantastic atmosphere, but the cabs really pulled it all together. I felt like we were transported back sixty years into a totally different India than the India we previously had been experiencing.

Our exhilarating arrival and our long day drinking in Kolkata’s atmosphere added up to a rather heady experience during our quick visit. The cheapest flights to the Andaman Islands, our next desintation, was either two days or ten days after we arrived. We would have loved to explore Kolkata further, but sometimes it is just best to savor just one cocktail at a time and not ruin a good thing by getting smashed, lest the honeymoon period be over and you wake up hung over. Maybe someday, we’ll try Kolkata’s cocktail again.

One Response to “Savoring India’s Cocktails”

1. jewels says:

   January 3, 2011 at 6:49 pm

   Those cabs are adorable!