Kolkata: Where to Begin?

How to begin writing about my experience in Kolkata, India is a challenge I have struggled with for several days and that is a pretty good indication of how incredibly complex and overwhelming I found this city and its people to be. In my personal quest for balance I encountered this mysterious place where life appears to be both alarmingly out of balance and yet serenely stable at the same time. The social, religious, political, and economic forces that all work together, sometimes at odds with one or another and other times in harmony, to weave the beautiful and moving tapestry of this city are more than I can hope to write about much less to understand in one or more blog posts.

Once again I had the good fortune to meet nice people and make new friends. I was very fortunate to make the acquaintance of Dr. Kakoli Sengupta who teaches at Jadavpur University in the International Relations department. Dr. Sengupta graciously took the time to show such sites of interest to me as the Ganges River, the National Library, one of the several temples of Kali who is the patron goddess of Kolkata. We talked about the caste system and its historical role in defining social identity in such a way that seemingly leads the poorest of the poor to accept their position in life as destiny. We also talked about the recent Right to Information Act that is empowering the powerless to obtain justice against those persons who have abused their more powerful positions in society to the detriment of others.

I also had the pleasure to meet several faculty members from the School of Library and Information Science at Jadavpur University. It was an honor to receive their gracious hospitality while we visited about such library science pioneers as S.R. Ranganathan from their country and Jesse Shera from mine and the collaborative work they did for our field towards the end of their respective careers.


My experience in Kolkata has led me to do some thinking on the inter-relationships between fear, uncertainty, information, and religion. I awoke on my first morning in Kolkata with a great deal of uncertainty and an inability to access information that would have helped to reduce this uncertainty. I was a stranger in a strange land, isolated and cut off from information and communication tools that I took for granted. I was way out of my comfort zone and found myself suddenly realizing what all could go wrong over the next three days and afraid that I might not be able to get any help at all. Thankfully, I was able to stay calm enough to seek out the assistance I needed in order to feel safe and somewhat in control of my life again.

However, I came to a much greater appreciation for the fact that far too many people in this world live with levels of uncertainty that I cannot begin to comprehend. This, in turn, reminded me that my sense of control is an illusion and that we are all equal in that we live but from one moment to the next. My smug feeling of not needing to believe in a higher power to intervene on my behalf is a luxury made possible only with the security blanket of a socio-economic position in life that affords me access to education, health care, job security, and so on. But when my access to those resources is removed, and smugness is replaced with fear, I can find myself easily identifying with the throngs at the Temple of Kali petitioning for her divine intervention and holding on to whatever is available in the hope that things will get better.

I am thankful for the experience and also that it was short lived. The impact and memory of the experience will be with me for a long time to come.