A verandah in Calcutta

To believe the lepers, and not so much Christopher Hitchens, Teresa of Calcutta was a being of light or an angel of goodness: something so rare that it is surprising that the computer does not mark the words in red as errors.

And without a doubt, being interested in the agonies of others, although it will rarely lead us to emulation, almost always summons something between respect and astonishment.

Having made these caveats, however, what is really striking is that the Calcutta municipal chamber missed the opportunity to sue the saint, since since passing through Bengal it is impossible to mention her capital without someone rolling their eyes to solemnly utter the common place: that "it is not poverty, it is misery".

It is not the only cliché that afflicts India —and we Spaniards know something about such condescension—,

: “They have nothing, but what little they have they give to you”.

And one understands that Mother Teresa was more interested in the sick than in city diplomacy, but Calcutta is not the open-air hospital, the endless pesthouse that we have all been told.

And you can visit.

Just as the Indians can visit Madrid or Barcelona without fear of a robbery, although Pujol and Nacho González did their thing here.

Even so, the guidebooks still refer to Calcutta with a point of view, perhaps to imply that if a traveler visits it, he visits it at his own risk.

Even among fans or residents of India, planning a trip to Calcutta seems as far-fetched as planning a Sunday at the Valdemingómez incinerator.

Perhaps, in fact, I have never experienced such a gap between what I expected in a city and what I found in it.

And I have come to wonder if it was not precisely because of Calcutta's determination to prosper: to prosper despite poverty, despite its bad image, despite its punishments in the imperial era —the British took away its capital status in 1911— or its difficult alignment in independent India, where it was to be neither an economic head nor an administrative fortress.

Not even, as throughout history,

Yes: Calcutta should have died several times, but it is still alive, apparently very comfortable with its fame as a talkative city for some and an intellectual city for others: the people I met there — editors, journalists — did nothing to deny such fame .

This is not Delhi, where the fledgling non-aligned republic made the architecture of colonial power its own.

This is not Bangalore, where the Indian cyber economy looks to the world.

And, of course, this is not Varanasi, where cows graze in the streets and where our most sensitive scholars—the Sanskritist Óscar Pujol, the editor Álvaro Enterría—were subjugated by a tradition of the spirit.

Among other things, in Calcutta there are bars, and from the fifties.

Coffee shops, from the twenties.

And a Chinese kitchen of its own.

There are also clubs, a sign of peace in coexistence with a problematic colonial legacy, which at the same time brought things as Indian as trains, post offices and parliamentary democracy.

There are remains of that Anglo-Indian romance here and there: a bust of George V in the Bengal Club, the seal of Lord Mountbatten —the last viceroy— in the Oxford bookstore and what are perhaps the most beautiful taxis in this world: the Hindustan Ambassador, a monsoon rebadged Mini.

Could it be that Great Britain conquered the land but was conquered by India, like that Queen Victoria who, guided by her favorite servant, spoke Urdu, or a Duke of Windsor who fatigued the grounds of the Tollygunge club on horseback,

for initiates.

From its veranda, green and white, I finish this article, and it is worth saying that this beauty that is "veranda" is one of the few Indian words we have.

Oh Calcutta!

In times of misery they called it "the city of joy".

It was also, and we did not know it, of the joy of living.

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