Kolkata: Books, Parks, Vids, and More + Aithal’s Game + Podcast

Teaser: Happiness Between Tails – Happiness Between Tails

The Happiness Between Tails podcast speaks to and from the heart. Like its corresponding blog, HBT also connects book lovers and writers who'll enjoy the novels I’m drafting, which will soon become podcasts I will totally narrate. “Flamenco + the Sitting Cat" and “Tango + the Sitting Cat” are my love letters to all who fear they're too old, too damaged, too whatever to find love and happiness with or without a partner. HappinessBetweenTails.com • ContactdaAL@gmail.com Like what you hear? Buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com/SupportHBT

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Kolkata is regarded as the seat of India’s intellectual creativity. No doubt the rest of India is darned amazing too. That said, Kolkata is home to six Nobel Prize laureates, starting with multi-talented Rabindranath Tagore who I posted about earlier.

Book lover that I am (about the book I’m working on here), I was ecstatic to catch Kolkata’s annual two-week book fair. Since the event’s inception in 1976, it’s grown into the world’s 3rd largest!

Mind you, every single one of the many people I tried to convey my excitement over it clearly stifled yawns. That, my blog friends, is why I appreciate you! If you happened here because I reached out to you, it was because you share my book amor.

My husband enjoys books. Unlike me, he has his limits. Good man that he is, he summoned a car (the driver adding his honk, honk, honks to Kolkata’s honking soundtrack that I blogged about earlier) to whisk us to my dream of nirvana — a football field worth of readers, authors, and publishers of books — albeit in languages neither of us understand…

This year’s theme was Spain. Never mind that the very young flamenco dancers were already unbuckling their shoes when we arrived. Lucky for my honey, an impromptu local musical group sang and strummed flamenco outside of the Spanish Tourism building. That’s fitting, given that flamenco’s long journey of the influences of many countries began in India! Sorry for the lack of photos — I was busy inhaling books…

Whew! Allow me a deep breath to come down from the high of recalling it…

For the sake of continuity, these vendors were across the street as we sought decent cell phone reception to get back home.

Tempting as the street food looked and smelled, we adhered to our doctor’s orders (explained here) to stay away from it. Thanks to fine restaurants and our hotel’s great buffets, it wasn’t too difficult to abstain. For instance breakfast included all sorts of freshly baked sweet and non-sweet breads, assorted nuts, cereals, fresh salads, hummus-type dips, and more…

So, like I was getting to, around the day of the fair, we strolled about a mile of jackhammers and dust from emerging buildings and an extensive overhead subway route. Many workers live on-site, much like how farm workers do in the States. Even trucks are adorned in Kolkata…

A huge roundabout surrounding a colossal spider building, reminiscent of LAX’s long-legged theme building, offered underground passages with some nice artwork…

Within the jet lagged blur of our first few days, we taxied (amid more honking) to downtown Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial.

The building and park echoes the Colonial British India era, when English businessmen shaped Kolkata to look like London.

Several exhibit rooms documented the life of Subhas Chandra Bose, best known by the honorific title of Netaji. An Indian nationalist, he’s revered by many. He’s a complicated hero, however, having sought Hitler’s assistance when he decided, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

India’s independence from England was significantly waged by brave women!

For more of this journey, click here and here and here and here and here and here and here. More next week!

In the meantime, why not play Aithal’s (he’s been a guest here and here and here and here before) Purple Turtle? Aithal in Irvine and his brother in Mumbai coordinated time zones to transcend a popular word game into the international language of numbers.

PurpleTurtle.app: Let’s Play!

1. Enter any 4-digit number using 0-9 without repeating digits. Press Enter.

2. The Clue Box on the right-hand side will display green and/or yellow turtles. How to decipher clue/s in the Clue Box:

• One Green Turtle for every correct digit in its correct place. Please note, Green Turtles merely indicate how many digits and not which digits are in the correct place.
• One Yellow Turtle for every correct digit but in the wrong place. Yellow Turtles merely indicate how many digits are correct but in the wrong place, and not which digits are correct.

3. Using the above clue/s try different combinations and keep solving until you have cracked the hidden number.

4. You will get a maximum of 7 tries to crack the hidden number.

Press the circle with the arrow in the upper right corner to start a new game.
Press the three vertical lines in the upper right corner to know your stats.

Here’s a typical example of an unsolved puzzle (the user was unsuccessful after seven tries. Thus, the puzzle revealed the correct number):

How do you listen to podcasts and audiobooks?