Kolkata, part 2

It's now Thursday, 30 April 2009. Illness has departed, and we're in good shape. We got our Bangladesh visas without any problems, then our flights from Dhaka to Kathmandu, and finally our train tickets from Kolkata to Dhaka for Saturday (2nd May - wow this year is going quickly).

We have done a fair amount of walking around the city, and... I like it. We went to the Victoria Memorial and a Planetarium yesterday, both of which were good. The Memorial is set in a 64 acre park (really helpful to see that amount of space, actually, if we're talking of an ecovillage of 200 acres), and is a huge white building. Like many white buildings with domes and pillars it rather reminds me of the White House, and a number of other buildings in Kolkata are similar too. I guess that form of architecture is fairly common (and I know the White House was based on something else, though I forget exactly what).

Inside the memorial is an overwhelming amount of history, art and artefacts. There are 4 different sections, one blessedly air conditioned - and containing an almost year by year history of Kolkata since the British arrived. It seems so sad to me that what was a prosperous partnership in India had to end because of misrule by the British. I'm not saying Britain should still control India, not at all, but rather that we could learn an awful lot from India, and vice versa. The partitions that happened after the second world war seem to have caused little but grief.
Just outside the Memorial is a statue to Sri Aurobindo, ha!

Anyway, after the Memorial we wandered a little, walked up to see Fort Willam only to realise it's a prohibited area, rather than a tourist attraction. So we walked back to the Peace Garden, next to the Memorial and close to the Planetarium as well, to wait for the next English language show of planets. The peace garden is really nice, except you're not allowed to lie on the grass or the benches (or do any number of other things, I imagine), else a nice warden blows a loud whistle at you. How uncouth!

The show at the Planetarium was a bargain - only Rs. 30 - and very cool, really old equipment. They showed the Indian satellite that is orbiting the moon at the moment, something I think they are very proud of, as well as a few slides of Pathfinder, Spirit et al on Mars.

After, a quick taxi ride home, bananas and biscuits, and I fell asleep early...
Following our unpleasant experiences after Agra, we have been eating safe, at a couple of nice restaurants, and often buying stuff from proper supermarkets, rather than off the street - expensive, but...

One of the things I have noticed is how few manufacturing companies there appear to be - TATA does maybe 80% of the cars, with the rest mostly being Suzuki; Coca Cola and Pepsi make amost all the drinks (including most of the bottled water - TATA, oddly, do the premium water); biscuits, toiletries and God knows what else are made by Unilever, with a couple of other companies doing the other biscuits. Unilever make the bread! It's quite scary, really. That, and how much focus there is on improving yourself BY buying this stuff - that you are a real person, important, worthwhile... if you buy this stuff. The adverts here seem to tell you that. How much effect this will have on the average man on the street I don't know, but it is certainly being pushed hard onto anyone who watches television.

What do people aspire to? Owning a mobile phone that defines them? My God.