harrym,
Wonderful !
Welcome to: "The Brightest Jewel in the Crown of Empire !" Having endured three successive wartime Monsoons on the subcontinent, I have herewith appointed myself an Old India Hand, and in that capacity pontificate as follows:
Now you know why the old "trooping season" out there was always in the dry and cooler autumn and early winter months, so that newcomers could play themselves in gradually before the temperature started to rise in February, grew progressively hotter and hotter, and then from April ever more and more humid by the day until you were living in a sort of permanent Turkish Bath, praying for the Monsoon to break (which in Calcutta it did a few days either side of 15th May), when things would be a lot wetter, but also much cooler.
Then the heavens would open, and it would bucket down solidly for a week or so, then tail off into repeated heavy showers which gradually grew fewer until September or so. All the stinking rubbish in Calcutta swirled around, becoming even more fetid and smelly, but did not wash away: the sodden mess just redistributing itself.
Your: "...our C-class boat alighted in the late afternoon on the Hoogly river adjacent to a large girder bridge...."
Don't remember any flying boats near the great Howrah bridge. Probably one of the railway bridges further upstream (whererever it was, I hope they told you to keep your mouth closed if you fell in !)
And your: ".....by occasional wandering cows - which, being holy, had priority over everything else. By all accounts things are not much different sixty years later......"
Seventy almost, surely? - (nor were they a year before !).
And your: "......in tents, in the grounds of what had been a large girl’s school...."
(Sounds like the "La Martinière", not far from Chowringhee).
And your: "..... Chowringhee, the main street...... had a fair selection of shops, restaurants and tea-houses.......perhaps spend some of our slender funds...."
Also in Chowringhee was the Grand Hotel, aka officer and aircrew NCO leave hostel - (Rs10 full board - about 14/-, and you'd be on 13/6 a day pay), and a few doors down the only air-conditioned cinema - or any other a/c building for that matter - within a thousand miles). A short step in the other direction was the lordly Bengal Club, whose magnificent portico was (reputedly) closed to anybody below the rank of full Colonel, or if civilian, earning less than one lakh (Rs 100,000) per annum.
Danny (OIH).