La vuelta al mundo de un novelista; vol. 3/3

A sprawling hotel in Calcutta dominates the narrative, its endless corridors and towering ceilings forming a maze that the traveler must navigate each day. The building feels more like a military barracks than a place of comfort, its endless rooms filled with bustling bazaars of silk, tiger skins and polished lacquer. Indigenous servants stream through the halls, their dark eyes and bright turbans turning every passage into a living tableau, while the European guests shuffle past, clutching tiny nickel coins for the countless hands that attend them.

Within this cramped world the narrator records vivid encounters with ritual‑obsessed locals, child marriages, and blood‑stained festivals devoted to the goddess Kali. The contrast between the hotel’s oppressive, prison‑like atmosphere and the vivid, sometimes unsettling, cultural practices that spill into its walls creates a tense, almost claustrophobic rhythm. As the traveler strives to find his own footing, the reader is drawn into a richly described portrait of colonial Calcutta, where curiosity and unease walk side by side.