Two Personal Journeys Offer Glimpse of India’s Soul : Meeting Life’s Ebb and Flow on Calcutta’s Howrah Bridge

When the late Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, asserted a few years ago that “Calcutta is dying,” he couldn’t have been standing anywhere near the Howrah Bridge, the dominant landmark and familiar logo of India’s largest city.

Arching above the swirling waters of the muddy Hooghly River, in the state of West Bengal, the one-third-mile-long, silvery cantilevered span links Calcutta’s central business and administrative district of Barabazar with its industrial twin city of Howrah (in Bengali, Haora ) on the Hooghly’s western bank.

Officially called Rabindra Setu --in honor of India’s immortal poet, Rabindranath Tagore--it is known to all Calcuttans as, simply, Howrah Bridge.

Across this great trunk artery every day pours a tumultuous horde of an estimated 1 million pedestrians jostling for legroom with a thunderous hodgepodge of vehicles--hand-pulled rickshaws, carts, aging taxis, double-decker buses, crammed trams, sputtering trishaws and multi-ton trucks. Add to the crush a menagerie of bullocks, donkeys, cows, goats and stray dogs. Here is traffic like no other on earth. Here is the world’s busiest bridge.

As for Calcutta “dying,” the pulsating flow of humanity surging across the bridge spells out LIFE in letters as towering as the lofty bridge itself.

Along the 72-foot-wide steel span’s eight bustling traffic lanes and on the river below and on the Hooghly banks, the throbbing vitality of Calcutta explodes in a riot of strident sounds, vibrant colors and a bedlam of perpetual motion.

I had been to Calcutta four times previously but had never summoned the courage, until the year before last, to cross the bridge on foot at early morning rush hour.

Only at early dawn, when the commuter trains have just begun to disgorge their thousands of sleepy-eyed workers at the cavernous Howrah station at the western approach to the bridge, is the scene relatively quiet. In the cool morning breeze, early risers of all ages are already at the river for ritual bathing, scrubbing, hanging their clothes out to dry on the broad ghats, the steps leading down to the river landing. Beneath the shade trees, near-naked body builders, muscular torsos smeared with whitish clay, do their fitness stints, often staging wrestling matches to entertain the riverside crowds.

Churning up the waters, plodding ferries, bamboo-poled fishing boats, tiny dinghies, launches and container ships crisscross the river under the mothering steel frame, a riparian brood watched over by an overburdened, yet reassuring presence looming in the sky.

Beneath the bridge at sunrise, the flower market comes to life in a dazzle of colors. Vendors untie and spread out bundles of brilliant marigolds, crimson hibiscus, lavender orchids, fragrant frangipani and jasmine amid a sea of greenery. Early customers, servants of the well-to-do, haggle over the price of wedding decorations and freshly threaded garlands.

At 8 a.m. on a sunstruck day in mid-August, a local friend, Ajay, and I venture onto the bridge from the Calcutta side. Ajay wants to join me in “experiencing” the onrushing peak-hour tide of humanity bound for Barabazar from the Howrah railway station. Struggling to inch forward and keep my footing, I try to scribble notes on what I see. No way. No room to even bend an elbow. Never mind; what I see will be indelibly remembered.

Hawkers, squatting and bellowing, offer an incredible motley of items and services in an almost unbroken line across the bridge on the pedestrian walkways: padlocks, dhoti loincloths, sandals, scissors, lottery tickets, chilies, salted pineapple spears, sweetmeats, roasted corn, sugar cane juice; sadhu holy men sprinkling holy water, cobblers, barbers, ear cleaners, astrologers and beggars, of course.

In the vehicle lanes, traffic crawls forward to the incessant honking of horns and tinkling of bells, as trucks, buses and trolleys battle to reclaim the roadways from insurgent pedestrians.

I stare at the maze of steel girders overhead, feel the rumbling vibrations underfoot and pray that this half-century-old bridge remains as sturdy as its British constructors intended when it replaced an earlier pontoon bridge during World war II. The pontoon bridge had to swing aside to let river traffic through. Unlike most major riverside cities of the world (New York, London, Paris, Rome--each of which has at least a dozen bridges across its river), Calcutta, with 9 million people, has this single major river crossing, its principal road into the city. Ajay points to a nearly completed second bridge a mile downriver. Construction has gone on sporadically for over two decades, plagued by lack of funds, rising costs and a damaging crane accident. (It finally opened last September.) The new bridge is intended to siphon off part of the Howrah Bridge overload in a phased manner. But the Howrah Bridge’s key location between Howrah Station and central Calcutta assures its heavy traffic for years to come.

Perspiring freely, we push on, skirting the outer edges of the Calcutta-bound throngs. Ajay asks if I know that the bridge, made of high tensile steel, expands about four feet in the torrid heat of a summer’s day. “Great,” I reply, “room for lots more!”

I wonder what indeed happens when the traffic “freezes” to a dead halt under the blazing Bengal sun. Ajay has the answer. “A half-hour tie-up on the bridge is felt all over Calcutta for the rest of the day. But even if tempers get out of hand,” he adds, “there’s no room for a decent riot, and it’s virtually impossible for the police to reach the scene.”

Ajay and I press ahead against the tidal wave and ultimately reach the bridge’s halfway mark. It has taken us 30 minutes to cover 250 yards. We squeeze into a cramped space along the parapet to look down on the river.

In the turbid waters marigold garlands, ashes and debris are drifting down from the upriver ghats used for cremation ceremonies. A flock of crows circles overhead.

They call it the Hooghly. Far upstream, north of the city, it branches out as a western arm of the holy Ganges, winds its way down through West Bengal, past the “golden fibre” jute mills, the huge shipbuilding docks, the spewing chimneys of Howrah’s factories, the wharves stacked high with crates of tea, the smoking funeral ghats and ancient temples, twisting southwest to finally descend into the vast Bay of Bengal.

We resume our snail’s pace to the Howrah side. “The second half will be easier,” says Ajay with a laugh. “It’s downhill.” But it is nearly 9 a.m., office-opening time, and the air is growing hotter and stickier. From our elevated midway position we can see the far end of the bridge and beyond. Swarms of people and vehicles stream from the Howrah rail terminal onto the span. A human deluge. A scene Calcutta-watchers have described as “a giant anthill,” “an infernal hallucinating maelstrom,” “a colossal refugee movement fleeing imminent disaster.”

It is all that. But something more. Somewhere in the “anthill” is Johnny the Market Boy, a man of 35, with a family of six, who, with wicker basket on his arm waits for hours outside tourist hotels to earn a few rupees escorting visitors to shops in the central New Market or the more elegant stores on the bustling, historic Chowringhee, now called Jawaharlal Nehru Road. And somewhere in the throng is Shanta Chowdhury, a widow with an M.A. degree, a researcher at a Calcutta newspaper who worries how she’ll pay for her children’s education. Shanta dreams of selling the short stories she sits up half the night writing. ORAnd Sister Josie Benton, a young nun in a blue-bordered white sari, who fulfills her life caring for sick and abandoned waifs at Mother Teresa’s children’s shelter on Lower Circular Road. These are Calcuttans I know who daily trek across the bridge that is so much a part of their lives.

But nameless myriad faces on the bridge can haunt one’s memory too. The gaunt, angular faces of rickshaw drivers; the tender, ingenuous features of school children; the dripping brows of porters hauling enormous bundles, oil drums, machinery; the pleading looks of beggars; the kohl-rimmed, luring eyes of prostitutes; the serene, mystical countenances of yogis and fakirs. . . .

Like the river, the flow is eternal. The bridge, they say, has never been empty. The lifeblood of Calcutta pours through it forever.

Ajay and I touch down in Howrah. Outside the rail station we queue up for a yellow-topped taxi and brace ourselves for the ride back.

GUIDEBOOK

How to Do the Howrah

Bridge directions and etiquette: From central Calcutta, the best starting point for a “stroll” across the Howrah Bridge is the square known as B.B.D. Bagh (Calcuttans still use its old name, Dalhousie Square) in the heart of the city’s administrative district. From the square, walk north on Brabourne Road a few blocks and turn left at the approach to the bridge. For a riverside route, leave the park and walk west on Hare Street; turn right (north) on Strand Road, which leads straight onto the bridge.

From the Howrah side, stand in front of Howrah Railway Station, and just follow the crowds as they flow up onto the span.

Taking photos of the bridge is allowed, or not allowed, depending on whom you ask. If you want to be sure, check with local police authorities or the Calcutta Port Trust.