CALCUTTA

The end of September is also the end of the monsoon in Calcutta. The rains become sparse, and the dark clouds are frequently followed by vast stretches of deep-blue sky dappled with milk-white clouds. Suddenly, the air in this perennially polluted city seems to take on a drier, more spirited scent, marking the beginning of Durga Puja, by far the biggest festival in this part of India.

Although a religious festival of Hindu Bengalis, Durga Puja over the years has assumed the quality of an ardently inclusive and egalitarian sociocultural event. For all its ritualistic complexity (it is a five-day affair, with specific hours and days assigned to distinctive forms of worship of the Goddess Durga), the emphasis is on festivity. Even to the average Hindu Bengali, Durga Puja is more about fun than "religion," and it is this particular aspect of the festival that attracts non-Bengalis as well as non-Hindus, making it nearly as popular as Christmas. (Although Christians are a minority in India, Christmas continues to be an important event in most urban areas of the country; in places like Calcutta, it is observed almost as fervently by non-Christians as it is by Christians.)

Clay idols of Goddess Durga and her two sons and two daughters are housed in tabernacle-like structures called pandals. The neighborhoods where the pandals are located are painstakingly decorated with intricate and often quite spectacular forms of illumination. After five days of worship, the idols are immersed either in the Ganges or in the city's numerous ponds and lakes. These days, organizers of community pujas often commission artists to design their pandals (and sometimes even the idols). With the art market in doldrums, this provides a welcome opportunity for painters and sculptors to make some extra money. Some will even tell you that they enjoy doing this kind of work because it allows them to experiment; to them, designing pandals and idols is akin to creating installation art. There is a noticeable trend, also, toward the "traditional" and the "ethnic." This year, some organizers brought in village artisans from as far away as Gujarat and Kerala to embellish their pandals, and some design themes drew inspiration from places further afield, like Egypt and Latin America.

Looking good is what individuals as well as institutions seem to put a premium on during Durga Puja. The result is an overwhelming surge in collective consumerism and ostentatious display. The streets of this city of four and a half million become virtually unnavigable, with people pouring out of their houses to see images and pandals, while at the same time showing off their own spanking-new clothes. The pandals and images, in their turn, vie for attention. These days, there are corporate-sponsored awards for the best of them, making Durga Puja possibly the most commercialized religious festival in the world. To most natives of the city, however, the commercialization is hardly a cause for concern.

A much-talked-about film, Chokher Bali (Eyesore), premiered in Calcutta amidst the fanfare of the festival. Directed by Rituparno Ghosh, the film is based on a novel of the same name by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. Ostensibly, it is the name of Aishwarya Raithe glitziest Bombay starlet and former Miss Worldin the cast that has caused the media hype. What the hype seems to have done, in turn, is push up sales of the novel. In response to popular demand, a local publisher is allegedly contemplating an English translation of the book. What all this means is that, whether the film flies or flops, it will have made its contribution to a resurgence of popular interest, albeit a fleeting one, in Tagore's fiction.

Eugene Datta

HONG KONG

Since the end of the SARS crisis, political events have been on everyone's mind here. Tung Chi Hwa's government has come under extraordinary pressure since July 1, the annual holiday to commemorate the handover of Hong Kong to China, when an unprecedented 500,000 people participated in a march organized to protest the provisions in the proposed National Security legislation that the government wished to bulldoze through the Legislative Council. The march became a rallying point for widespread anti-Tung feeling and led, in the weeks that followed, to the indefinite shelving of the legislation, the resignations of two key government ministers, and judicial decisions against the government's harbor reclamation projects and public housing rental policies. Criticism from a wide range of business, political, and media commentators has seen the Tung government reach an all-time low in popularity ratings.

Another critical reaction occurred recently, when the government, with great fanfare, unveiled a proposal for the development of a new cultural precinctthe West Kowloon Cultural Districton reclaimed land adjacent to the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. The proposal leaves the ultimate design to the developers who wish to win the contract for the US$3 billion project. In addition to the commercial property, shops, and residential housing that will be the main motivation for a developer to undertake the project is the government's prerequisite that four museums and three performance spaces be provided in the final design (all to be operated without any ongoing government financial support). This is yet another example of the government's recent rhetoric about making Hong Kong one of the leading cultural centers in Asia. To the amazement of many of the public servants involved in the development of the proposal, the project has been met with almost universal scorn: critics cite the lack of public consultation, the top-down approach to cultural development, the emphasis on "hardware" rather than "software," and the demand that a twenty-hectare roof be used in the final design. They also point to the need to improve the myriad existing government-run museums and express scepticism about property developers with no experience in building and running museums and performance spaces being invited to spearhead such a high-profile development.

On the other side of the harbor, the Hong Kong Art Centre and Para/Site Art Space co-organized a one-month residency for Chan Yuk-keung, and then an exhibition of the work

he created. The forty-four-year-old Chan, an associate professor in the Fine Arts Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is both an outstanding artist and an influential teacher. Although he has had only a couple of solo exhibitions, his work regularly appears in group shows. His work combines aspects of sculpture, site-specific installation, and the use of found and commercially manufactured objects, and it has an ironic, cutting, political and social edge. Chan turned the Art Centre's Pao Gallery into an artist's workshop and within one month

Chan Yuk-keung, Island (courtesy of the artist)

John Batten

OSAKA

Summer is the season of festivals in Japan, and one of the biggest and most exciting takes place in downtown Osaka. The Tenjin Festival, sponsored by the Kitano-Temmangu Shrine, features traditional drumming and dancing, as well as an evening procession of a hundred lantern boats that carry portable shrines down the Okawa River while fireworks light up the sky. It is a truly romantic spectacle. And the crowds are interesting to watch, too, since both women and men often dress in yukata, the colorful, light summer kimono. Booths selling just about anything you could ever want in the way of refreshments are everywhereand lots of things for children, too.

Although Osaka is not as well-known as Tokyo as a hub of popular culture, it does have its moments. During last year's soccer World Cup, fans were much more rowdy here than in the Kanto area, scores of them jumping naked into the Dotombori River, which runs through the city's entertainment district. Perhaps a bit toned down since then, weekend partyers in Shinsaibashi or Namba can take in a wide assortment of clubs and restaurants. One of the most popular is Bar Isn't It?, a disco/singles-bar chain. Though not as well-known as Shibuya or Harajuku in Tokyo, both Namba and the America Mura area of Shinsaibashi have become youth magnets and generators of "cool."

Hanshin Tiger fever has gripped Osaka lately. Despite not winning the pennant for the past seventeen years, the professional baseball team (named after the Hanshin Railway, which owns it) has perhaps the most loyal fans in Japan; they have their own litany of chant-cheers, and even their own team song. Many locals think the team's failure to win the pennant for so long has to do with the "curse of Colonel Sanders." A promotional statue of the old gent, commonly placed in front of KFC's Japan outlets, was dumped in the same Dotombori River when the team last won, in 1985, and things have gone downhill ever sinceuntil this season. There must be something about that narrow, concrete-lined river that makes people a little crazy. With a lead over the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants, their traditional rivals, the Tigers might just make it all the way to the championship this year.

That other Japanese sport, judo, has recently captured people's attention here. The World Judo Championships took place in Osaka Castle Park in September, the first time in eight years that they had been held in Japan. Some sixty thousand spectators flocked to watch athletes from nearly a hundred different countries engage in this traditional Japanese sport. Japanese athletes won the under-100-kilogram, over-100- kilogram, and open category for men; Korean men led in the under-90-kilogram, under-73-kilogram, and under-60-kilogram matches; and China took the lead in the open category for women.

Jazz is popular here. Now in its thirty-seventh year, the Kokusai Jazz Festival, held at the end of July, is a Dixieland festival that features some of the best players from both Kanto and Kansai regions. But during the rest of the year, jazz fans patronize New Suntory 5, which hosts some of the most outstanding traditional jazz ensembles in Japan. Japan's second region it may be, but the Kansai area still has a great deal to offer, and most of us who live here wouldn't think of trading it for Tokyo.

Joel R. Campbell