Morning Breaks...

Even in this Hobbesian maze of a city, mornings come quietly and pleasantly. That is why I have taken to the routine of walking out to get the morning papers. I usually step out about 6:45 am. At this time, the sky is a pale yellow color. The streets have a light gauze of moisture--evidence of the previous night's rain. And the day's humidity is just beginning to work to a good boil. Frank Sinatra sang that he loved London by night. If Ol' Blue Eyes had ever visited West Bengal, he might have said the same thing about Kolkata by morning.

The paper stand I go to (for in Kolkata, you must visit and re-visit the same businesses to build up a rapport) is about six blocks from our guest house, around two sharp curves and up a moderately busy street named Purna Das Road. As I walk, I pass day laborers rousting themselves from a hard night's sleep--gurgling water and brushing their teeth with their fingers as they squat in the gutters. Women dressed in variegated saris trowel the streets' refuse piles for recyclable materials that they can later sell for a tiny profit. Stray dogs lick and clean themselves as best they can as they lay plum in the middle of the crusty sidewalks. The lower classes wander to curbside water pumps to fill up bottles and buckets of water in order to wash themselves.

Laundry hangs from trees or simply lies on the concrete, having dried overnight. The sudden bleating of car horns breaks the hush every once and a while, but their frequency is refreshingly sparse compared to the near-continuous racket they make at rush hours. Entire families whiz by on mo-peds with father driving, mother propped precariously in her workday salwar-kameez on the back bump and daugther ('bibi') perched in front of papa by the handlebars in her school uniform. It is a constant amazement to me that I do not read more about fatal and tragic traffic deaths in the papers each day. I have yet to see such a story. Either they do not happen, or they happen with such frequency that it is no longer news. Other, possibly less adventurous mothers walk their sons and daughters to school, tugging impatiently at their little ones' hands as they dawdle and delay.

In little less than three weeks time, Kolkata's biggest festival--the Durga Puja--will begin. This five-day citywide bacchanal is spoken of in reverent terms by Kolkata's citizens. Each time a person learns that Jenna and I will be leaving before the Puja begins, they cast their eyes down disappointedly and shake their heads, clearly sorry for us. For the Puja, each neighborhood funds and constructs an idol house--a place where locals can come and worship images of the goddesses Shiva and Kali. These are imposing, impressive structures made of bamboo poles, towering as high as three stories in the air. There are two currently rising on our street. In the mornings, as I walk to get the paper, the laborers who are constructing these anachronistic behemoths are beginning their toil--bending the bamboo stalks, splitting them with axes, tying them together in an intricate latticework that belies the seemingly primitive methods of putting them together. This is not a mere hobby: there is real devotion and love that goes into these houses. And Jenna and I have been lucky enough to see these things grow from a mere pile of chalky bamboo into real structures, with roofs, stairways, and floors.

Once we leave Kolkata, I will not miss the car horns or the smells or the garbage stacked ankle-deep in the gutters. But I will miss these mornings. And the dewy feeling of a new day, and the sounds of bamboo being chopped and the vroom of a family off to work and school on their mo-ped. I'll get the paper in whatever places we go to in our journeys but I know--even now--that it will not be the same. Kolkata by morning is, indeed, a wonderful sight.