Kolkata Kitsch

There’s a catch, of course; there always is, in Calcutta. It isn’t a city that yields its mysteries too easily and certainly never over a weekend. Its best chroniclers — in art, film, journalism, fiction — have spent generations (and I’m not exaggerating) getting to know the city, and even then, believe there are areas best left to the pundits. Satyajit Ray, for instance, never ventured outside his upper middle-class milieu in either his fiction or his cinema; Pather Panchali famously caused him to wince in later years with its rural inaccuracies.

So, our writers start with a handicap: time is definitely not on their side. Their brief is to stick to storylines determined by the editor (well-known Scottish novelist Andrew O’Hagan) and the managing editor of the Daily Telegraph, Susan Ryan. All, Ryan writes, except Irvine Welsh (Porno, Trainspotting, The Acid House) ‘‘who finds his own inspiration’’.

Their pointman and escort is Tim Grandage, an HSBC banker who founded Future Hope, one of the many charities that make Calcutta their mission. He takes them everywhere: the burning ghats, Raj Bhavan, New Market, Id prayers on Red Road, Howrah station, the river. The tourist trail, in other words.

And that is exactly where the anthology goes wrong. The city’s organic catholicism, its essential middle-classness, humour, tolerance, even timidity, on one hand, and frustration, desperation, on the other, are not showcased in windows, to be pointed out to every gawker. It is far more practicable, then, to reopen the Mother Teresa debate, delineate the life of the river, visit the red-light area, the AIDS-stricken prostitute with the placid eyes, than delve beneath the city’s overwhelming layers to seek out a 300-year-old soul.

So, Bella Bathurst (‘The Nightfishing’) does to Calcutta what William Dalrymple did to Delhi, with less homework: her impressive introductory paragraph and retelling of the Ganga myth is completely undone by her reference to Shiva, Vishnu and Indra (Indra!) as the holy trinity.

It gets worse. The venerable W.F. Deedes’ short story ‘A Hundred Different Lives’ — an interesting study of the intersection between the dispossessed and the dispassionate — is marred by sloppy editing. Celebrated Irish author Colm Toibin’s ‘Mercy’ is masterfully written and well researched, but his analysis of the city’s paradoxes ends up reinforcing every stereotype the westerner nurtures about Calcutta.

Best-selling novelist Jenny Colgan (‘An Indian Marriage’) underlines all the ills of parachute journalism: cues from billboards, generalised conclusions from overheard conversations, superficial hilarity, pop analysis… enthusiasm instead of understanding.

The anthology obviously required some heavy-duty lifting from this morass of mediocrity, and luckily for the publishers, it comes in the form of Monica Ali’s gut-wrenching short story ‘Knife’. Set in a railway station that may or may not be Howrah or Sealdah, it is a coming-of-age story told with the same circumspect subtlety that made Brick Lane such a delight to ead. Not as effortless, but almost as nuanced is Michael Atherton — yes, the Cambridge-educated former England cricket captain — in his first attempt at fiction, ‘Waking Up from Your Father’s Dreams’.

Slightly away from the beaten track, and therefore more equipped to portray a Calcutta that didn’t stop in the Seventies, are journalists Simon Garfield and Sam Miller’s contributions. Garfield’s tool of five real-life voices (‘The Hotel Calcutta’) veers a bit too close to magazine journalism at times, but successfully depicts a city that the other contributors ignore completely. Miller, former head of the South Asian region for BBC World Service, provides one of the few moments of unadulterated Calcutta-style humour in recounting his interrogation by Metro securitymen.

Miller, of course, has the advantage of long years in India. Ali has Bangladeshi roots and an instinctive appreciation of local ethos. Welsh has sheer talent on his side. The others may have all the enthusiasm in the world, even an awed respect for their subject, but they lack the insight that distinguishes great travel writing from the mundane. A pity, because this is a subject that still has its benchmark in Geoffrey Moorhouse’s Calcutta, 1971.