Time, Out Of Joint

Among the more unusual people I have met on my travels, are the Time Travellers. Years ago, ‘at the stroke of the midnight hour’, many Asian countries stargazed into the future. But Time moves in loops in Kolkata.
This is a port city with the smelliest financial centre. I tripped across fishing nets. In a little shop, the owner was wrapping large ceramic cutlery. Armenian Christians and Jews still rub shoulders at this bend. The end of the year brought with it large meals. The fish seemed to multiply on the streets.
I arrived early at St Paul’s on Christmas Eve. In the candle light, people grew quieter and voices sounded the heavens. The archbishop was resting content in his pulpit having delivered a perfect Xmas message. Then came the rumble of thunder. No one turned, but the noises in the big cathedral grew louder. The choir sang higher. There were thumps from behind and the doors threatened to come crashing. A riot here, I wondered? You couldn’t jump out of stained glass! The young pastors ran down the aisle, and in the most generous gesture I have seen yet, threw open the doors and invited the snaking queue of people from all walks to join in the celebrations.
The young woman next to me cocked an eyebrow in amusement. Later outside, we took swigs of grape wine in an old rum bottle, procured from one of the homes in the Anglo-Indian Bow Barracks. She told me of her Bangladeshi-Australian roots. In a mosque in the Bush, she had discovered a 200 year old parchment in Bengali and had traced its publisher to Calcutta. People carrying the faith on Ships, Camels and Trains, she said, her eyes dancing across the Hooghly river. No passports.
Join us for adda tomorrow, she said. Historians take years to work on the years, you need to spend more time with us! So I followed her to the Kali temple crematorium where pilgrims paid their way to the front of queues and stone idols sat with lit cigarettes in their mouth. The life of objects, she pointed out. Adda is a typical languid phenomenon, where Bengalis fired by liqor cha (black tea) sit or sprawl to discuss the affairs of the day. This is how time slows down.
What do historians want, I thought bewildered. 'It’s a question of your dreams', and she took me to the Indian Psychoanalytical Institute, where Girindrashekar Bose carried a 20 year correspondence with Sigmund Freud. This is dreamscape, she smiled. What you dream is your past coming back to you, shaping you. Historians mine the city’s dreams.