The first destination on our month's travel in Asia was Kolkata, India. It was our second visit with Sharad Ghai, who we met through Michael Hathaway. Sharad is a gifted networker and administrator. Michael (who died at Soundcliff, our Vashon house, on 1/2/19) brought Sharad to one of the Thanksgiving events for which Soundcliff had become (a bit too!) famous some decades ago. [Ah, so many stories!]
Our first day, while Sharad had a working day, we made a tour of this old capitol city's historic core. We found a coffee in a part of the Post Office, whimsically furnished with refinished old desks in bright colors catching my eyes. Notice the red furniture above.
We were interested to find something & although there were places we passed set-up to serve folks along one sidewalk, making temping choices, we were wisely chary of eating such street food.
We had become curious about the Hindu poet and educator Rabindranath Tagore (Stephen had read some of his metaphysical prose when he was in high school...) who we quickly were made aware Sharad had some connection... in geography, if nothing else. Sharad's father had built a second home near Shantiniketan, Tagore's family home, which became a college. Sharad took us first to the Tagor families
Rabindranath was never a traditional scholar, but became a polymath: scholar, poet, musician, painter, philosopher... acquainted with Einstein & Gandhi. I was happy to take an unexpected education for a day or two... being even now slowly enriched. Exotic & mysterious as it is, Mother India continues to be a deeper, broader, depository of knowledge than I was ever exposed to in my past... yet another gap in my education.
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