Sir Tony Beckham

On rereading my entry from yesterday I realised I was a little mean on the Indian Museum. I did fail to mention that they have a collection of very fine fossils some of mammoths and dinosaurs. Also they have lots of BC statues of Indian artifacts like religious figures of Buddha and elephant gods. The main attraction for me though was as the famed "hall of minerals" where they displayed thousands of rocks like sand stone and slate. My personal favourite was a Lime Phosphate called Apatite which to my surprise contained a whopping 18% phosphorous and even more surprising was that it also had a smidgen of Fluoride in it too.
Ca5(PO4)3(OH,F,Cl)
An irony of the name apatite is that apatite is the mineral that makes up the teeth in all vertebrate animals as well as their bones. Get it? Apatite - teeth! There is a picture of Apatite at the top.

Anyway I would recommend a visit to Calcutta, the roads are very wide and it has a good feel to it. I imagine it is because the city was founded during the Imperial times, so more planning was involved. There is a shocking lack of cows wondering around, but these seem to have been replaced by hundreds of stray dogs. Now it is my second day and I have started to notice the tie-dye brigade are in town. Quite a few fat, spotty ugly English girls in Saris with dirty dreadlocks and tie-dye hair bands. WHY?
I got into my routine of rising, washing my clothes hanging them and moving on to breakfast while catching up on the days events with a copy of the Indian Times.
I decided to walk to the Fort, but the path was closed, so moved on to Eden Garden. It was very well laid out but appeared to be very unpopular for there was no one around. I went in anyway and had a snooze on a bench only to be woken by a security officer telling me the garden has been closed for two years. Bad rough guide bad, so out of date.
I visited the Calcutta football and cricket grounds on the way to the river dodging the trains across the track. I hung out with some caste-less fellas for a bit as they "washed" their clothes and "bathed". There I saw the busiest bridge in the world (that's official), about the same size as the one in Sydney I am told, but I'll let you know in a few months. The conversation with the super-poor was mainly around "Tony Blair", "Bobby Charlton" and "David Beckham" but I felt we connected. Amazingly they did not ask me for any money and when I gave a legless man Rs10 he proclaimed that I was his personal Mother Teressa. It was emotional.
I walked along the river bank, looking at the floating straw effigies of numerous gods and watch the people bathing in the holy river, was very ritualistic.
I made my way back and had lunch with two Spanish girls that were working for the real Mother Teressa foundation.
Last night I almost went into the most kicking club in Calcutta, but judging from the the bearded lady statue outside I'm glad I did not. Looks a bit like Scott in drag.