Calcutta

Theatergoers said they were cheated when the cast of "Oh! Calcutta!" was forced to cover up what it's been showing off for 20 years. Actors wore bras, flesh-colored underwear and G-strings during Wednesday night's show, their first clad performance since the show opened in June, 1969. It has been seen by about 5,000 audiences since then. "We've never had this problem before," said producer Barry Singer. "There's nothing perverse about it.

Nearly 1 million people live on the sidewalks of India's two biggest cities, and others lucky enough to find shelter have little access to drinking water or toilets, according to a survey released this week. About 800,000 people live on the pavements of Calcutta and 100,000 sleep on the streets of Bombay, said the study by the All-India Slum Dwellers' Welfare Assn.

Deep beneath the cruel and fetid streets of Calcutta is another world, where none of this city's countless miseries can be found--no legless beggars tugging at trousers or saris, no steaming garbage, no crumbling, haunting vestiges of abandoned empire. The new Calcutta subway system--the Calcutta Metro Railway--glistens. Its walkways are spotless. Escalators hum efficiently, uninterrupted by Calcutta's chronic power failures.

A government censorship board reversed itself and tentatively decided to permit the nude theatrical revue "Oh! Calcutta!" to open in Israel, its producer said Tuesday. The board had earlier rejected a request to let the play be performed in Israel, saying the nudity would offend religious Jews and Arabs. "I'm ecstatic," said the producer, Norman Kean, who defended the long-running Broadway musical Monday before the Public Council for Theater and Movies.

The owner of an apartment building and an associate were arrested Wednesday in connection with the explosion in Calcutta early Wednesday that killed 50 people and injured 92. Calcutta's police chief, Tushar Talukdar, said forensic experts will decide whether the explosion, which ripped through the buildings shortly after midnight, was caused by a bomb or the careless handling of stored explosives.

It's already hot and steamy at 6 a.m. as Calcutta goes through its morning rituals. Joggers trot past the marble Victoria Monument and the members-only Mohammadan Sports Club. The trimmed grass of the nearby Calcutta Race Course is wet from the overnight monsoon rains. Sheltered under the Hooghly Bridge a mile away, women cook a meager breakfast over a fire of dried cow dung for a group of children, some naked, some in rags.

A huge bomb explosion killed at least 50 people in Calcutta early today, five days after bombs killed about 300 people in Bombay in western India. Most people were in their beds in Calcutta when the bomb exploded in the middle-class district of Bowbazaar shortly after midnight, city officials said. Two apartment buildings collapsed, trapping scores of people in the rubble, they said.

What hamburger is to Americans, cheese to the French and potatoes to the Irish, mustard oil is to India's 55 million Bengalis. The lack of it has plunged Calcutta and most of surrounding West Bengal state into a "kitchen crisis." The shortage, brought on by a yearlong drought and subsequent hoarding, has triggered riots, police raids and political wrangling. It has provoked debates in the national Parliament in New Delhi.

Ali Hussain goes to school by candlelight. He works all day punching holes in tin for toy harmonicas, and daylight has faded before he gets to his books. Electricity is in short supply. So are schools. Until six years ago Tikea Para, one of the poorest areas in a city notorious for its slums, had no elementary school. The predominantly Muslim residents took matters into their own hands, chipping in manpower and a few rupees.

Dave Risher couldn't believe what he heard that afternoon at an orphanage outside Calcutta. The speaker was Mother Teresa, at a retreat for workers at her missions for the destitute and dying. She told the foreign volunteers there that when they returned home, they should look for the "little Calcuttas" in their own countries. "We said there was nothing at home this bad," said Risher, a bearded, heavy-set social worker who lives in Torrance.