The Cauliflower Read Free Page A

directed and he will not be exposed. Uncle will expose himself in his own good time. He is very particular in that way. He will not be controlled. He will not be pushed. He will never be rushed.
    Kalikata/Calcutta/Kolkata
    In the beginning was the word. And the word was Calcutta. And the word was a place. And people disagreed about the origin of the word. In 1690, a man called Job Charnock—a dour and morose administrator for the English East India Company—anglicized the name of one of the three small villages already established in this swampy, malarial, and deeply inhospitable location (Kalikata), believing (correctly) that it would one day become India’s great colonial trading city.
    Three hundred eleven years later, in A.D. 2001, it was renamed Kolkata, in line with the Bengali pronunciation of the word. Some speculate that the name originally came from the Bengali root kilkila (or “flat place”). Others say that the area was known for its production of quicklime, or kolikata . Still others argue that the word might have its origins in the conjoining of khal (or “canal”) and kata (meaning “dug”). But the general consensus is that it means “field of Kali.” Kalikata is Kali’s place. Kali: the fearsome, fearless Black Goddess of Destruction and Creation—mistress of Shakti , or primordial, cosmic energy; wife of dreadlocked, ash-covered Shiva, God of Renunciation—whose devotees traditionally call her Ma .
    In the beginning there was nothing. Then there was a sound. The hungry, howling aaaa of Maaaa : Aaaaa  … That was something. And that sound, that something, was somehow—quite miraculously—sustained: Aaaaa-uuuuu .… And then it concluded, in a throatily dynamic, busy-bee hummmm: Aaaaauuuummmm . Finally it stopped. Or did it stop? How could it? How could such deep, primordial hunger, such yearning, ever be truly satisfied?
    This strange Aum , this sound, this process, is embedded and celebrated in the Hindu faith by dint of its mystical triumvirate—its holy trinity—of three Gods: Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer).
    In the beginning there was a piece of land and a stretch of river. Then there were three villages. Then there was Job Charnock. And Job Charnock was a dour and morose administrator royally despised by virtually all of his contemporaries.
    In the beginning there was a man called Job Charnock, a dour and morose administrator, a jobsworth, a company man, who was feared and hated by his contemporaries because of his inflexible stance around issues of smuggling and corporate corruption (endemic in Anglo-Indian trading at that time). His contemporaries (all happily accustomed to the long-established tradition of receiving kickbacks) had nothing good to say about him. He was a man of stern and unbending moral character. He was universally loathed.
    In the beginning was the word and the word was “Calcutta” and in 2001 it became Kolkata. And in 2003 a Kolkata high court ruled that long before Job Charnock (that colonial lickspittle, that dour and morose and intensely unpopular administrator) had sailed down the Hooghly, a “highly civilized society” had already existed there, it was a thriving religious hub, an “important trading center”: Kalikata. The court therefore ruled that Job Charnock’s name be summarily removed from all official histories of the city. This great city. Kolkata.
    In the beginning (if there ever was a beginning—was there ever a beginning?) there were three powerful forces: creation, preservation, and destruction. Over millennia these three competing and often complementary powers or concepts were deftly sewn into an exquisite weave of ornate characters and stories in four of Hinduism’s principal religious texts, the Veda s. The creator is Brahma, Vishnu is the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer. Shiva has a wife. Her name