Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, used to be India's capital during colonial British times. You probably knew that. When India gained independence, it changed many of the British names (like Bombay became Mumbai). Kolkata means "City of Joy." Parts of Kolkata remind me of Washington DC, with colonial-period architecture, many trees, and smooth streets with broad sidewalks. There are lots of pretty things about some of the neighborhoods, with their contrasting trim and ironwork on the windows. I took a bunch of pictures which I'll put up later, but I forgot to bring my cord today. [edit: pictures!]
Our trip to Kolkata had many highs and lows, and I'll start with the highs. We stayed with Babloo, who is Uncle's cousin, in his apartment. He lives in a nice neighborhood walking distance from the food market. His wife and daughter live in Ranchi, and he visits them every month or so.
First thing, we got tea at a famous tea joint, and it was easily the best tea I've had here, and possibly the best I've ever had.
Then we went to the fish/meat/vegetable/fruit/flower market, which turned out to be my favorite part of the trip. It was massive, and the setup was very cool.
We also went to a huge Hindu temple where people go to worship the god Shiva's penis (I think?). I don't know much about that, but people put flowers and milk on interestingly-shaped (not especially phallic) shrines. After that, we had coconut water and took family photos, which was really fun.
We saw the Victoria Memorial, which has huge and incredible gardens and a marble palace with a museum about the British colonial period inside. On Saturday, we went to the memorial, but the museum was closing, so we had go back Sunday to see the rest of it. We took a ride in a super glitzy horse-drawn carriage and attracted a lot of stares.
We also went to a "pub with live music," which turned out to be a family restaurant where an air conditioned no-smoking section housed a small stage with a man singing karaoke to old and cliche American rock tunes (think "I Will Survive"). Helen and I had our first wine since arriving in India and enjoyed the surprise of the non-pub-like-ness of the place, but we ended up staying way too long and not getting dinner until it was 11 at night and everyone was grumpy.
The next morning we all went to church. I'm not much of a church-goer (duh. I'm Jewish.) and churches generally make me uncomfortable, and the ushers seated us right in front, so the pastor kept looking at me while he was giving his sermon. I found it pretty awkward, and I was glad to move on with our day.
We went back to the Victoria Memorial to see the beautiful garden nearby and the museum inside the memorial, and that's where Helen and I started to go downhill a bit. It was pretty unbearably hot out. I think the high was only in the high 90s or low 100s, but the humidity was unbelievable. Just standing still in the shade, we were pouring sweat. The Victoria Memorial museum was not air conditioned, though the thick marble walls did make it a little cooler than the outside. Unfortunately, the large and sweaty crowds pretty much counteracted that.
The museum was pretty cool (and pretty much as expected), but I started getting very claustrophobic. I came here knowing that "personal space" is not a thing in India, but the way it was manifesting itself was very hard for me to handle. I would try to find the emptiest part of a room and look at things around there, but inevitably by the time I got to that empty place, there would be tons of people around me all brushing against me as they passed. In the U.S., if you're in a crowded space, you do everything in your power not to touch anyone, and if you do touch someone by accident, you get a little embarrassed and apologize. Here, you just don't care. I got very uncomfortable by the number of people/things brushing by my arms, my butt, my stomach.
I've heard that Indian men will sometimes use situations like that to grope women, but this was nothing like that. It was just a situation where I could not get any space and I was sweaty and everyone around me smelled (because they were sweaty too), and I was tired and in pain (I somehow got a fire ant in my sandal, and it had bitten my toe several times at the park, so my foot was stinging and throbbing still), and then I started to get hungry. We left the Memorial and went to a shopping mall, where Shradha and Auntie looked for shoes, but by then Helen and I were hot and hungry and tired and frustrated, and there was nowhere to sit or to escape the crowds.
Eventually we went home and had lunch and then took naps, but that only made me more upset. I laid down in the room that Helen and Shradha and I were sharing to be in a quiet place and calm myself. It was totally ineffective, because, as I mentioned, the concept of personal space does not exist. So people kept coming in and out of the room, having chats, rummaging through things, sitting near me on the bed, snoring, singing to themselves...eventually I gave up and went to the other room, which turned out to be much quieter. After a long chat with Helen and some long hours of quiet, we were feeling much better.
On Sunday evening, we tried to go shopping, but Babloo took us to a posh shopping mall with expensive clothes that we were not interested in buying. We told him we wanted something cheaper, so he took us to the shop next door, which was only marginally cheaper and much lower quality. We said we wanted cheaper, so we went to a market that I think had not a single pretty thing. Then we went to a garden pub type place that was part of a hotel called Fairlawn that is popular with foreigners. Helen and I needed a snack, so we ordered the baked potato with cheese. Cheese! I haven't had cheese since I got here, and I miss it terribly. And the menu said cheese, not paneer. Cheese.
So even though we specifically talked about how we shouldn't expect what we were expecting, we were still disappointed when they brought us French fries. Not baked potato. No cheese. It was a sad moment. We went to dinner at a restaurant called the Bhoj Company, which had fantastic Bengali cuisine. It tasted home-cooked: light, meat that fell right off the bone, sauces that were not too heavy but were packed with flavor.
On Monday, we were told to get up by 8 so we could get going by 10, but we ended up not leaving the house until after 2, because we were dependent on Babloo for transportation and he had to work for a while. We went to the market, which was finally what we were looking for! Helen bought a gorgeous bed cover with elephants on it, and I bought 4 new dresses (for a total of $21, which is not cheap for here, but not bad for the quality). After feeling like I've been wearing the same three outfits for a month, it's refreshing to have some new things to wear, even though most of them need some tailoring.
After the market, we looked for a place that my guidebook had mentioned, called the Marble Palace. We eventually found it, but it was closed, and photos were prohibited. We had some chai and then went to a flower market, where Auntie and Helen and I got lost (and hot and hungry and claustrophobic...again). Eventually we found the others, but we didn't get back to the house for dinner until 7, and we had to leave at 8 for our bus, so Auntie had to rush like mad to get dinner ready in time for us to leave. I felt really bad for her.
The bus ride back was comfortable, but less so than the ride to Kolkata. I had trouble sleeping because the curtain that gives privacy to my berth would not stay closed and the wind from the open windows on the bus kept blowing it into my face. The berth was right next to the bathroom, so it smelled vile and I had to keep my window at least partially open, but that made the other curtain blow into my face as well. It was not so fun.
Other lows came from being on a family trip with a family that is not my own. I adore the family, but miscommunications and lack of communication caused a lot of frustration for me. We would get into the car and no one would tell us where we were going. We would make a list of places to go and would inexplicably end up somewhere completely different. Obviously, when traveling with a group, you have to make concessions so everyone can see/do what they want. It's just easier to understand that when the rest of the people in the group are discussing it in your native language and including you in the discussion.
I already mentioned the troubles with personal space, especially around the bedroom. People would come in during the early morning and seemed to have no regard for the fact that we were trying to sleep. Auntie would say something in moderately loud Hindi to Shradha, Yesh would want to borrow her phone, Babloo would come in singing to retrieve something from the bedroom, the maid would slam doors and slosh water to clean the adjoining bathroom, etc. I am a very light sleeper, so I've always been highly conscientious about waking other people up, and even though I know it's just a cultural difference, my sleepy self had no patience for what seemed to me at the time to be brazen lack of consideration for others. Obviously, that's not what was going on, but I had a hard time remembering that sometimes.
There was also the ever-present issue of waiting. I'm a patient person, but it was clear that we were wasting precious time waiting for Babloo to get off work. We could have taken a taxi and seen some things on our own, but I guess that it would have been inappropriate culturally? I still don't know about that.
This post is super long. Sorry about that. I'll wrap it up. Kolkata is pretty cool. There is lots to see. We saw some of it, but I wish we could have seen more and that the weather would have been cooler.
Last thing: I am past the halfway point of my trip, as of Monday. As much as I'm enjoying being here (and I really really am!), I feel like life when I go back is really too good to be true. I'll be teaching a circus PE class, taking a class with my favorite professor, visiting my family soon (I MISS THEM SO MUCH), going camping, and generally having a ball. So even though I'm not eager to leave Hazaribag behind, I am almost unbearably eager to go back to the States. And now, I can count down.
I still have not worked a single six-day work week, due to the site visits and travels I've been doing. I think that's really cool, and it seems likely that the pattern will continue. I think the annual report will be done by the end of the week, and then there will be two weeks left of June (and we plan to spend one of those weeks traveling), and then two weeks of July, and then Kalamazoo. Life is good.
There's so much more I could say right now, but this is really too long already. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :P
Our trip to Kolkata had many highs and lows, and I'll start with the highs. We stayed with Babloo, who is Uncle's cousin, in his apartment. He lives in a nice neighborhood walking distance from the food market. His wife and daughter live in Ranchi, and he visits them every month or so.
First thing, we got tea at a famous tea joint, and it was easily the best tea I've had here, and possibly the best I've ever had.
Then we went to the fish/meat/vegetable/fruit/flower market, which turned out to be my favorite part of the trip. It was massive, and the setup was very cool.
These are men mixing concrete for a construction project.
We also went to a "pub with live music," which turned out to be a family restaurant where an air conditioned no-smoking section housed a small stage with a man singing karaoke to old and cliche American rock tunes (think "I Will Survive"). Helen and I had our first wine since arriving in India and enjoyed the surprise of the non-pub-like-ness of the place, but we ended up staying way too long and not getting dinner until it was 11 at night and everyone was grumpy.
The museum was pretty cool (and pretty much as expected), but I started getting very claustrophobic. I came here knowing that "personal space" is not a thing in India, but the way it was manifesting itself was very hard for me to handle. I would try to find the emptiest part of a room and look at things around there, but inevitably by the time I got to that empty place, there would be tons of people around me all brushing against me as they passed. In the U.S., if you're in a crowded space, you do everything in your power not to touch anyone, and if you do touch someone by accident, you get a little embarrassed and apologize. Here, you just don't care. I got very uncomfortable by the number of people/things brushing by my arms, my butt, my stomach.
I've heard that Indian men will sometimes use situations like that to grope women, but this was nothing like that. It was just a situation where I could not get any space and I was sweaty and everyone around me smelled (because they were sweaty too), and I was tired and in pain (I somehow got a fire ant in my sandal, and it had bitten my toe several times at the park, so my foot was stinging and throbbing still), and then I started to get hungry. We left the Memorial and went to a shopping mall, where Shradha and Auntie looked for shoes, but by then Helen and I were hot and hungry and tired and frustrated, and there was nowhere to sit or to escape the crowds.
Eventually we went home and had lunch and then took naps, but that only made me more upset. I laid down in the room that Helen and Shradha and I were sharing to be in a quiet place and calm myself. It was totally ineffective, because, as I mentioned, the concept of personal space does not exist. So people kept coming in and out of the room, having chats, rummaging through things, sitting near me on the bed, snoring, singing to themselves...eventually I gave up and went to the other room, which turned out to be much quieter. After a long chat with Helen and some long hours of quiet, we were feeling much better.
On Sunday evening, we tried to go shopping, but Babloo took us to a posh shopping mall with expensive clothes that we were not interested in buying. We told him we wanted something cheaper, so he took us to the shop next door, which was only marginally cheaper and much lower quality. We said we wanted cheaper, so we went to a market that I think had not a single pretty thing. Then we went to a garden pub type place that was part of a hotel called Fairlawn that is popular with foreigners. Helen and I needed a snack, so we ordered the baked potato with cheese. Cheese! I haven't had cheese since I got here, and I miss it terribly. And the menu said cheese, not paneer. Cheese.
So even though we specifically talked about how we shouldn't expect what we were expecting, we were still disappointed when they brought us French fries. Not baked potato. No cheese. It was a sad moment. We went to dinner at a restaurant called the Bhoj Company, which had fantastic Bengali cuisine. It tasted home-cooked: light, meat that fell right off the bone, sauces that were not too heavy but were packed with flavor.
On Monday, we were told to get up by 8 so we could get going by 10, but we ended up not leaving the house until after 2, because we were dependent on Babloo for transportation and he had to work for a while. We went to the market, which was finally what we were looking for! Helen bought a gorgeous bed cover with elephants on it, and I bought 4 new dresses (for a total of $21, which is not cheap for here, but not bad for the quality). After feeling like I've been wearing the same three outfits for a month, it's refreshing to have some new things to wear, even though most of them need some tailoring.
After the market, we looked for a place that my guidebook had mentioned, called the Marble Palace. We eventually found it, but it was closed, and photos were prohibited. We had some chai and then went to a flower market, where Auntie and Helen and I got lost (and hot and hungry and claustrophobic...again). Eventually we found the others, but we didn't get back to the house for dinner until 7, and we had to leave at 8 for our bus, so Auntie had to rush like mad to get dinner ready in time for us to leave. I felt really bad for her.
The bus ride back was comfortable, but less so than the ride to Kolkata. I had trouble sleeping because the curtain that gives privacy to my berth would not stay closed and the wind from the open windows on the bus kept blowing it into my face. The berth was right next to the bathroom, so it smelled vile and I had to keep my window at least partially open, but that made the other curtain blow into my face as well. It was not so fun.
Other lows came from being on a family trip with a family that is not my own. I adore the family, but miscommunications and lack of communication caused a lot of frustration for me. We would get into the car and no one would tell us where we were going. We would make a list of places to go and would inexplicably end up somewhere completely different. Obviously, when traveling with a group, you have to make concessions so everyone can see/do what they want. It's just easier to understand that when the rest of the people in the group are discussing it in your native language and including you in the discussion.
I already mentioned the troubles with personal space, especially around the bedroom. People would come in during the early morning and seemed to have no regard for the fact that we were trying to sleep. Auntie would say something in moderately loud Hindi to Shradha, Yesh would want to borrow her phone, Babloo would come in singing to retrieve something from the bedroom, the maid would slam doors and slosh water to clean the adjoining bathroom, etc. I am a very light sleeper, so I've always been highly conscientious about waking other people up, and even though I know it's just a cultural difference, my sleepy self had no patience for what seemed to me at the time to be brazen lack of consideration for others. Obviously, that's not what was going on, but I had a hard time remembering that sometimes.
There was also the ever-present issue of waiting. I'm a patient person, but it was clear that we were wasting precious time waiting for Babloo to get off work. We could have taken a taxi and seen some things on our own, but I guess that it would have been inappropriate culturally? I still don't know about that.
This post is super long. Sorry about that. I'll wrap it up. Kolkata is pretty cool. There is lots to see. We saw some of it, but I wish we could have seen more and that the weather would have been cooler.
Last thing: I am past the halfway point of my trip, as of Monday. As much as I'm enjoying being here (and I really really am!), I feel like life when I go back is really too good to be true. I'll be teaching a circus PE class, taking a class with my favorite professor, visiting my family soon (I MISS THEM SO MUCH), going camping, and generally having a ball. So even though I'm not eager to leave Hazaribag behind, I am almost unbearably eager to go back to the States. And now, I can count down.
I still have not worked a single six-day work week, due to the site visits and travels I've been doing. I think that's really cool, and it seems likely that the pattern will continue. I think the annual report will be done by the end of the week, and then there will be two weeks left of June (and we plan to spend one of those weeks traveling), and then two weeks of July, and then Kalamazoo. Life is good.
There's so much more I could say right now, but this is really too long already. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :P
Wow - what a weekend! So glad you're experiencing so much of what's available, even if you don't feel like you're doing enough of that. I like that you're able to keep present to the cultural differences, rather than resenting everything for not being like it is at home :)... can't wait to see you!!
ReplyDeleteI love reading about your adventures! And you have some great pictures. I'm very jealous of your new indian clothes. I wish that I had some. :D
ReplyDelete