A Leisurely Sunday in Calcutta: Mass at St. Thomas' Catholic Church, Stroll Along Park Street, Last-Minute Shopping at New Market

 Calcutta

Sunday, August 28, 2022

A Leisurely Sunday in Calcutta: Mass at St. Thomas' Catholic Church, Stroll Along Park Street, Last-Minute Shopping at New Market

    I woke up, as usual, at the crack of dawn, in a comfortable bed at Hotel Elgin Fairlawn where I would spend my last night. After reading in bed, chatting on the phone to Llew and checking my email and Twitter time line, I checked mass timings at St. Thomas' Catholic Church which, by my estimation, was merely a 15-20 minute stroll from my hotel. The internet informed me that Mass in English was at 8.30 and 10.30 am.  Deciding to have a good breakfast before Mass (yes, I know, it's a bit sacriligious), I washed and showered and did most of my packing before going downstairs for breakfast.

Full English Breakfast (Kind of) at the Hotel Fairlawn:

    I enjoy nothing as much as I do an FEB (a Full English Breakfast) especially when I am on holiday or on the road. I remember the really good ones that the Fairlawn used to serve in the days of Violet Smith. Under new management now, you can still get a fairly decent one, but there are no pork products anymore. This means that you can order Chicken Salami and Chicken Sausage instead of bacon and pork sausages. Let me assure you that they simply do not (and cannot, I suppose) taste the same. Secondly, instead of getting a large platter with your eggs, salami, sausage, grilled mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and baked beans all crowded together, you get a plate with scrambled eggs, a hash brown and half a grilled tomato.  All the other 'accompaniments' that you order are brought separately to your table in little containers! Anyway, I was not one to scoff at such large portions and decided to plunge right in. I also ordered white toast with butter, a plate of mango (to end my meal) and a glass of watermelon juice to begin. I need not tell you that the next meal I ate was at 6.00 pm when I was on the aircraft headed back home to Bombay!

Mass at St. Thomas' Church:

    Breakfast done (yes, I did feel a tad over-stuffed), I began my walk to St. Thomas' Catholic Church for the 10.30 am Mass. I used the map app on my phone to get there along the seedy side streets behind my hotel--Sudder to Chowringhee Lane (the Number 36 as in the film simply does not exist, so do not go looking for it), to Kyd to Park Street. I crossed the road over at the corner of Fleury's and entered Middleton Row and could see the church at the end of the street. It was a real pleasure to take this walk on a Sunday when the traffic and the human movement were barely present. It was nothing like the chaos I have seen in the last couple of days. 

    And let me tell you that the non-touristy parts of Calcutta (which is 95% of the city) are just awful. It is dirty, crowded, dirty, poorly maintained, dirty, stinking, dirty, slimy, dirty. Okay, you get the idea.  Hutment structures line almost every street--even those in the heart of the city. And because people live in these makeshift dwellings, there are fires and cooking pots on every footpath, dirty cooking or dish water emptied into the running gutters, loads of stinking sewage everywhere. There are also a lot of public toilets and they smell disgusting. I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that most of Calcutta is like one big stinking slum. It is truly appalling, even for someone who now lives in Bombay. If I have been posting items on Twitter and here in my blog that have sung the praises of the beautiful colonial parts of Calcutta, it is only because those have (so far) remained untouched by the detritus of poverty-stricken human habitation. I can only wonder how long they will remain pristine.

    So, after sauntering along at leisure and appreciating the lack of human or vehicular activity, I arrived at St. Thomas' Church that probably dates from the mid-Victorian period. It is not as old or impressive as Calcutta's Anglican churches, but it has plenty to attract the visitor from huge statues of St. Thomas and St. Peter at the entrance of the church to a striking stained glass window behind the altar.  In a colony in which the majority of the rulers were Anglican, it is refreshing to come upon some marble mortuary monuments on the wall that remember colonial Catholics who died serving King and Country. I noticed that a couple of these folks had French last names, however--so they were probably French colonials living in the colony of Bengal. There are no pews in this church--instead each worshipper has an individual chair (in beautiful polished, black ebony) with a padded kneeler in front. 

    Mass began on the dot of 10.30am. Because I had arrived 20 minutes early, I had time to survey the church inside with its huge seated statue of Christ the King in heavy gilding. In fact, there is a lot of gilding in this church, which leads me to believe that it was newly painted. There was a nice choir at the side comprising of two Anglo-Indian teenagers--two of them sang and one of them (the young man) played the keyboard. I was struck by the diversity of the congregation: there were loads of Anglo-Indians of mixed racial descent from the surrounding neighborhood as this warren of little lanes was once the stronghold of the city's Anglo-Indians (most of them have emigrated to the West or to Australia or New Zealand and only small numbers now remain). There were loads of Bengali Catholics and dozens of Hill Country folk, easily distinguished by their Mongol features. They are probably migrants from the hill towns of Darjeeling and Kurseong where missionaries in colonial times did vigorous work and gained many conversions. The priest had a Bengali accent and was dark-skinned enough to lead me to believe that he was a native of the state.

    Mass was very absorbing indeed. The readings were wonderfully done (both lectors, a man and a woman, had Anglo-Indian accents), the homily was interesting (and short and sweet) and the choir and its hymns were just wonderful. After Mass, an announcement was made that a retreat would begin and we were all invited to attend. I had to leave, of course, but I did say Hello to the priest who stood outside meeting and greeting his parishioners. 

    I noticed that just next door to the church was a gate with a plaque that said 'Loreto College' on it. I wondered if this was the same Loreto College that was supposed to be the finest college for girls in Calcutta, at least girls of my generation. I took pictures of it and sent them to my friend Laureen who lives in Connecticut and who, I remember, had graduated from Loreto. She came back confirming that this was indeed her college and that St. Thomas' was the church in which college students, like herself, heard Mass. 

    Down the quiet side lane I walked until I reached the busy bits of Park Street. I entered Fleury's just to take in the Sunday morning brunchy atmosphere of the place. I was much too full to order anything and so a quick look later, I was out again. Other places into which I stepped were Trinca's, the restaurant in which so many great names associated with the golden age of Indian jazz (Pam Crane, Louis Banks) once performed, but it is also where Usha Sammi (later Usha Iyer and then Usha Uthup) got her start. There are pictures of these singing stars all over the walls of the restaurant. Finally, I ended my browsing of Park Street with a peek into the large Oxford Bookstore as I have never met a bookstore I did not like.

Last-Minute Shopping at New Market:

    I had been thinking for the past couple of days that I should have bought more than just the Bandel cheese from J. Johnson when I was at New Market, two days ago. Indeed, I had a list and when I reached the Market, I headed straight to J. Johnson from which I bought twists of barley sugar, mango cheese, guava cheese and Kasundi (mustard) sauce. I also stopped at Nahoum's bakery for chocolate fudge and vanilla fudge and with these goodies really heavy in my hands, I walked straight back to my hotel. New Market also was much more pleasant a place to be on a Sunday morning and I was delighted with the overall old-world ambience of it all.

A Long Nap in my Hotel:

    Laden with my packages and smarting with the heat and humidity, I decided to have a lie-down in my cool, air-conditioned room after I had packed my last-minute buys into my case. But, I guess the heat and the gadding about of the past four days had taken their toll. What I expected to be a 15 minute nap turned out to a solid 90 minute one! When I awoke, it was almost 2.00 pm--just enough time for me to pack up all my things, ask the Reception for my bill and call my Uber to get to the airport. I hoped to be at Dum Dum airport at 3.30 pm for my 5.30 pm flight as I did need to check in a bag on this segment of my travels. 

Journey to the Airport:

    My Uber did arrive about fifteen minutes later, after I had settled my bill, and bid goodbye to a hotel that I really and truly love. The water logging of the previous afternoon had disappeared completely and you would be hard pressed to believe that there had been knee-deep flash floods in the city only yesterday. It is always a pleasure to try to get anywhere on a Sunday and my cab ate up the miles without any traffic hitches. In fact, the city looked much more appealing in the less chaotic atmosphere on a quiet Sunday afternoon when most Bengalis were getting in their Sunday siestas. 

    I arrived at the airport with no problems at all and easily found my Vistara Airlines check-in counter. I was, in fact, one of the first passengers to check-in (web check-in before all domestic Indian flights now seems to be mandatory) and I had loads of time to browse in the shops at the airport. It is a very lovely airport indeed and there are lots of interesting wares should one be inclined to buy (which I was not). My flight was announced with a slight delay of 15 minutes, boarding was swift and well-organized and Vistara actually served a meal on board (a chicken roll, a small serving of pasta in tomato sauce and chocolate ice-cream for dessert).  I was absolutely delighted to get some splendid pictures from the aircraft as we left the city and climbed higher into the skies. Despite the fact that it was twilight and light was fast fading, I got superb pictures of the Maidan, of Eden Garden cricket stadium, of the Victoria Memorial set in its green grounds and of the Hoogly River with the Vidyasagar Dam spanning its two banks. I was simply thrilled. 

    We touched down in Bombay, twenty minutes ahead of schedule at 8.10 pm, which left me enough time to pick up my case from the conveyor belt and find out how to get to the auto rickshaw stand that would then get me home. It was 9.30 pm when I reached home, 10.30 pm by the time I finished unpacking and eating my dinner (soup and a sandwich that I hastily prepared at home) and after a long call to Chriselle and another to Llew, I called it a night.

    What a delightful and deeply adventurous four days I'd had in Calcutta. But how pleased I was to return to the home comforts of my own bed and bathroom!

    Thank you for following me on this armchair journey. Until the road rises up to meet me again, I bid you farewell.