New Light

Dearest Readers: many apologies for the lapse in posts. I had caught the "oh-dear-Kolkata's-air-is-so-polluted" sickness that is so pervasively rampant in city. The addition of sporadically working wireless delayed the posts as well.

As was previously mentioned in the Design for Development post, one of the projects is the Interwoven Storytelling project, led by Joann, Coleen, Atisha, and Devon. The project is attempting to provide a sustainable model for perserving the local cultural traditions of textiles, generating income for those communities and for education of these traditions.

There are four phases to the project, the first was completed in Providence and the second phase was tested in Kalighat over two nights. The first night (day four) had the kids of New Light [these are children of the red light workers] use the printing blocks created in Providence on paper.

The group then unveiled the tapestry created in Providence from those printing blocks, but created by RISD students before we left for Kolkata.Colleen and Devon, from the Interwoven group. Maren, Shannon, Matt, Mike, and others were the very patient volunteers. The kids were crazy!
Yours truly giving out crayons above. Some of the kids and their creations below.

Day Five - Urban Transect

I got fried today doing the urban transect. We were split off into groups of two to draw a transect (a really long section/section elevation) through our site. I was with Stephen and we started from the beginning of Kalighat Road, went down past the entrance to the "Sporting Club" and hooked a right into a lane that led past a shrine and into the Adi Ganga Canal.
It was hot and unpleasantly sunny. This older man came up to me and asked why I was drawing and I told him: to understand the scale of the neighborhood. Stephen interjected that we were architecture students but the man said it was illegal and that people might suspect us as being terrorists. From America. ... He went away and we were only bothered by the dozens of people looking over our shoulders -- most of them just stared, others looked and pointed at the buildings and others tried selling us something, which is usual. I think we both didn't want to stay there any longer than we needed to. Most of the day we spent on the transect, after which we went to New Light at 2pm. There was supposed to be an artist there to show a local painting style, but he/she never showed up (we later learn this). We didn't stay long but we met up with Atisha, Mike and Filomena.
Atisha witnessed the boat bridge in high tide. Apparently the boat bridge disappears when the tide is high; Atisha told us (and showed us a diagram) that the boats do a 180 to get across to the other side of the canal -- it sounds pretty efficient. I've posted the boat bridge as it is at low tide above. Atisha and Mike did a transect near the Burning Ghats and from what I've heard, Mike had quite an experience of a female priest singing to the both of them for well wishes (and then of course, asking for rupees).

Note: The two days of New Light (yesterday and today) will be described in its own post. I still need to collect photos from Mike and Coleen as I was only there today, and ended up being rather busy and unable to take my own photographs.

Day Four - If you drive like hell, you will reach there soon

But it still took us an hour to reach the north side of the city. We were visiting the temple complexes of Dakshinishwar and Belur Math. Photography was adamantly prohibited so you'll just have to get an idea from the Wikipedia links. Daksinishwar was built with a clay brick structure covered with plaster and then painted. Belur Math was built from stone.

We took taxis for much of the day. The photo above was our driver to and from the temple complexes. After Melissa greeted him with the standard Sikh greeting he got all happy and started teaching her all these phrases. He was a funny guy.

The Ambassador taxis that we were in had, of course, no air conditioning. The windows had to be open for air circulation. The problem with this was that all the trucks and buses in the city had their exhaust pipes close to the pavement. We were inudated with rolling black clouds of exhaust. It was rather severe and uncomfortable.
In the afternoon, we visited the Horticultural Society of India (w/ Mahua Ghosh, landscape architect and member of CBE; Anupama Mitra and Subhojit Lahiri, Agri Horticultural Society) on Alipore Road. Founded in 1820, it is the second oldest horticultural society in the world -- the first being the Royal Horticultural Society of London founded in 1816. We were told about how they had a water conference for landscape archiects last year and realized that water is a priceless resource -- that bird baths on roof gardens are extravagant. Some of the other things discussed were deforestation (losing medicinal plants) and educating clients on solutions to these problems.

After this meeting we had a tour of the gardens. The 'Mad Tree' was notable for the distinction that not one of its leaves are alike.
At about 5pm we split off into three groups -- one went to New Light, Nate and Jessica stayed to see more of the garden, and one went to walk the Adi Ganga Canal in Kalighat.
The New Light building.
The Canal is tidal, here it is seen flowing north. The stench from the garbage was repulsive. I would not say nauseating but it was still unpleasant. Sulfur, methane? and decomposing stuff were the principal scents.

The sluice gates seemed to function for storm water and drainage but presently have the function of taking everything including the "baby and the bath water" with it out into the canal.
This was curious -- the lines on the buildings and street seemed to designate a function. A game perhaps?