Eli

Or professor eli lancman, honorary chairman of the Israel - Japan friendship society...to offer a portion of his full title...and exactly the person I needed to meet: a most kind, gentle and beautiful man. His last day here, for half an hour over coffee at the street cafe on Sudder Street at 0730. Sometimes you just find the right person to deflect you slightly, to pause in unrelated conversation, to offer a glimpse into joyous existence...so we talked about the beauty of books, he called me a cynic, i smiled, he smiled...he carries a photo of a bookshelf and offered up this approximate phrase, "sometimes I took the food from my mouth to buy a book." and how can you not adore someone who thinks like that? He first came to India in 1960 the youngest of his group and now he's like everybody's grandfather...I think I accepted him as my honorary uncle:-) and so, in some odd way my day got off to the most wonderful start. I only wish we'd met earlier, I would have loved more time to chat with him. But I guess that it's enough to have met once and a different day occurred because of it.

One week in Kolkata...a daily donation of phlegm and snot upon the fractured streets as the pollution seeps into each and every crevice, a coating of gak upon tongue and the realisation that grime encrusted air is your daily bread...and this is before the build up of congestion (traffic) begins...the calcutta cough becomes endemic, a symbol of this place...heat building daily, fierce morning risen sun burning, North soonish, too soon, and now the first victim of holi returned to the hotel in a mismatched collection of reds and greens...happy holi...but I have no powder nor water pistols, no balloons or protection and only three days to build my armoury, to find protective projectiles...it's going to be messy...but that's the point and the joy of it I suppose...can it be quite as insane as varanasi last year?