During the Doorgha Pooja and other great religious festivities, which in November keep the whole of India—but more particularly Calcutta and other cities on the banks of the sacred rivers—in a state of excitement and gorgeous displays, we had a pretty lively time of it. Day and night we had to attend processions, Nautch dances, fireworks, and gatherings the description of which would cast into the shade tales from the “Arabian Nights.” No one but those who have visited India during the period I am alluding to, can have the least conception of the scenes we witnessed. A city of upwards of a million of inhabitants—with an increase of more than double that number—all clad in gay colours, thronging the thoroughfares day and night in such dense crowds that one could almost walk on their heads; bands of music, heading hundreds of glittering pagodas; images of gods and goddesses of huge proportions being carried and paraded through the streets, followed by dancers, mimes, imps, and devils, elaborately painted and going on with the most extraordinary antics; balconies and windows being loaded with people, gaily adorned in costly silks, and glittering with jewels, gold and silver lace, spangled banners, &c. For a whole fortnight this carnival continues incessantly, all business is stopped, the whole population perambulates the streets night and day, until at last the costly pagodas, the images of gods and goddesses, wend their way to the river, where, in the midst of the clanging noise of hundreds of bands of music, they are cast into the waters of the sacred river, and Calcutta once more resumes its every-day style of life.
Why Calcutta is called the city of palaces I never could realise. Truly the houses in Chowringhee and in the European portion of the city are large, lofty, and pretentious, but not in any way palatial. The Residence of the Viceroy, or that of the Governor of Bengal at Alipore—and, for the matter of that, all and every one of the public or private buildings—have a clean, gay appearance during the “cold season”: that is, from December till March; but as soon as the rains begin they all assume a dingy, woe-begone appearance, which casts quite a gloom over the whole place.
Calcutta, during the four months above-named, is bright, lively, enchanting—the climate most charming.
The Strand, after 4 P.M., thronged with carriages and horsemen—a gay crowd, which, with the gay trappings of the four-in-hands and the Oriental costume of many of the native princes quite eclipses even Rotten Row or Longchamps.
But when the season is over—when vice-royalty and its cumbersome personnel have gone to Simla and Darjeeling—the gay butterfly loses its bright colouring; nothing is left but the unsightly chrysalis. The heat, the damp, with the ills which follow, renders the city anything but a desirable place of residence.
British enterprise has got over the difficulty in some measure, and for those who have to stay in the plains it is now an easy matter to take an occasional run up into the hills—a truly wonderful piece of engineering having conquered the most inaccessible perpendicular walls of the Himalaya ranges. The Darjeeling railway—a 2ft. 6in. guage zig-zag line, carries a mail and passenger traffic daily from Calcutta to that sanatorium, 7000 feet above the sea level. This trip can be accomplished in sixteen hours, and is full of incidents which make it attractive. The first stage is on the broad guage railway to the banks of the Ganges, which is crossed by a large steamer, on board which dinner is served. On the other side begins the narrow guage line, which runs through tea plantations as far as Kurseong.
