My second visit at Chowdhury is drawing to a close...thought you may like to see a few pictures of my temporary home before new flat photos posted! I'm also going to stroll down the Maidan, "the lungs of Kolkata", to take some nature snapshots. This is my first trip during the rainy season - monsoon tapering each day - and the world is technicolor! It looks like individual leaves have sprouted extra stems so more can sprout, unable to resist the humidity and jolt of heat...philodendron climb across cracked walls, tropical flowers, that we Midwesterners see in florist windows only, bloom in the medians and window boxes...the flower arrangement at a hotel I stopped into for directions was created out of the local fauna...had to take an extra moment to just sit and stare at it...so very far removed from marigolds and petunias of our late August!
The Guest House is not such a fancy hotel. It is retrofitted out of the court yard and former summer "cottage" of King Edward when he was growing up - the walls are over 18" thick, as are most Colonial buildings, to keep out the heat, and, as with all of Kol, window vistas are only more and more buildings, holding the 13.5 million people who call her home.
Thick walls and marble "window sills" to keep the plastered, fortress like walls, from disintegrating in the constantly wet environment.
Mornings are grey, with the sun burning off the fog by 10 a.m. Shops open between 10:30 and 11 a.m, close for an hour some time in the afternoon heat, and then are open until 9 pm.
Views from my window -
Fancy hotels and government buildings are painted at least twice a year to keep the first the smog, in pre-environmental intervention years, and now mold & non-monsoon months dust, from staining the buildings. All other buildings are "required" to white wash every three years, or so I've been told...not sure how much it's enforced.
Long sets of flats fill block after block. Nandini and I passed the newest high rise set of condos just blocks from where I'll be living - they are the tallest buildings in Kol, reaching 35 stories. Some flats are immaculate, with awnings & decorated trim, while others need quite a bit of work...and a very few hold small patches of green, like the area just outside my window...
There are dozens of men who work at the guest house and adjoining Maharaja restaurant where I eat my complimentary breakfast each morning. (The extraordinarily gregarious, kind servers have taught the cook how to make Western scrabbled eggs with onions, peppers and hot chilis, with none of the over salting they have on the buffet...I eat Indian every other day and splurge on the delicious special order from them on the opposite.) I heard a strange sound outside my window on Sunday and looked down to see three employees in a heated conversation. The man on the right was using the cobblestones to sharpen metal files and the man in the middle, with the striking white hair, spends two hours each morning, crouched on his haunches, using a twig broom to sweep all five flights of wide stairs & wash the green marble by hand.
The color of shirt, and quality of ironing, denote the level of employee - as you can see, the man on the left is most senior in responsibility, while the older, floor caretaker, and right hand positioned, younger service worker wear clothes I've seen hanging in the workers quarters; from what I can determined from short conversations and being up in the building at different times of the day, these lower grade employees live in shared quarters, rotating in and out of the uniforms that fit them best, rinsing them between shifts, each pulling the most dry off the line before "clocking in" and heading out to their designated posts, whether that be cleaning, bell hop, running errands like bringing clients laundry off site or doing basic maintenance for the patrons drivers.
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Location:Chowdhury Estate Guest House, 55 Chowringee Rd, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
