Kolkata

Wednesday August 13, 2008 - Kolkata

It’s been a week since we arrived in Kolkata, and it is definitely Monsoon season. It had only rained a bit since we first arrived, but yesterday we had the chance to fully acquaint ourselves with what monsoon season means. It started to rain as Erin, my roommate, and I were finishing lunch, just before we were about to leave for our 2:30 class. We were supposed to take the metro rail from Kalighat station, about a 15 minute walk from our house, to Park Street station and then walk about another fifteen minutes to Loretto College for an Ethics, Morality, and Leadership class we will be taking there. But it only took about ten to fifteen minutes after the rain began for the streets to be almost entirely submerged under water. And it took less than a minute after leaving the house for us to become entirely soaked through. We had to wade through water that at points almost reached our knees and kept stopping every hundred feet or so thinking ‘should we really go any further, they can’t expect us to show up for class in this.’ It really was unbelievable. I don’t think I’ve experienced rain like that ever before in my life. It truly was coming down in sheets. Except for a few people hanging out on doorsteps and under overhangs we were basically the only people out, walking around. I guess, yeah we could have taken the hint, but we finally ran into a few of our classmates who had turned around and were headed home. They had reached the Lake Market area, just before the metro station, and it was entirely flooded, they said that there were actually waves in the street. Taxis wouldn’t even take us to where we were trying to go. It didn’t take that long for things to clear up though. The rain, at least this time, had stopped within about an hour and the streets were for the most part clear only a few hours after that. So class ended up being canceled (at least that’s what we were told at first, until we talked with some of our other classmates who had made the entire trip up to Loretto and sat through an entire two hour class soaking wet) and we all just got to hang out, after deep cleaning our feet with this intense antiseptic soap Dettol, and hanging up all of our clothing, that had been drenched even through raincoats, umbrellas, and ponchos.

Around four o’clock this morning we were woken by yet another downpour. This one lasted about two hours and the thunder was even more earth shattering than it had been during yesterday’s monsoon. We hadn’t received a call by the time we were supposed to leave for service, so we headed out into the yet again flooded streets to meet the group, off for my first day of service (everyone else had started on Tuesday when I had to trek out to the airport to pick up my bags). I think it was a bit deeper this morning, but at least it had stopped raining by the time we left the house. We kept trying to walk in areas that weren’t fully covered in water, but had to keep dodging the few cars that were still barreling through the mostly flooded roads. The basement to the apartment building where we are living was probably under about a foot of water. And our host sister, Ahana, told us that last year there had been a storm so bad that it had been entirely flooded, all the way to the ceiling. I can’t even imagine.

I was finally able to get my bags yesterday morning, before the monsoon, but only after about an hour taxi ride out to the airport and having to search through a pile of nearly a hundred other lost and unclaimed bags that had been thrown chaotically into some back room inside the Kolkata Airport International Terminal. Of course I had to obtain all of the proper signatures and passes from the airport manager, various security guards, the man working at the lost luggage office, customs, and Air India agents in order to simply enter the building and find out where my bags were being kept. But getting there and coming back was a whole ordeal in itself. The airport is about 45 minutes from where we are staying, that’s about an hours drive if the traffic is good. It only cost me Rs 450 to get there, but then I got stuck into taking a cab for Rs 900 on the way home, totally ripped off. Then about a block from home on the way back as I was trying to direct the taxi driver to the house, he ran into the back of a motorcycle that had weaved it’s way in front of our car. He didn’t hit it hard, only bumped it. I am sure there was not even a dent, it didn’t even start forward or anything, but the two men on the motorcycle jumped of the bike and started yelling and screaming at the taxi driver. Then they came over to his window and started slapping and punching him in the face, it was crazy. I sort of got out of the car, and people started to come around to see what was going on. The guys finally got back on their bike and I got in the car. Although the taxi driver’s eyes were all blood shot and he was obviously shaken up, he wasn’t bleeding and still helped me get my bags out of the car and to the house. It was pretty frightening.

I think the most terrifying thing so far has been the traffic. It’s even a bit scary to try and cross the street sometimes. Last week we visited all of the possible sites for our service work, and so we got to drive all over the city. IPSL has three main cars that they using to cart us around, and it’s been fun to try and talk with Babloo and Devah our ‘drivers.’ Devah speaks some English but not Babloo they’re real sweet though a funny pair as Devah is almost two feet taller then Babloo. They’re blast the Indian radio for us in the car, but that’s definitely been something to get used to, having drivers and gatekeepers and house helpers. There’s no air conditioning so we have to keep the windows down all the time in the cars and no seatbelts either except for those sitting up front. The driver is on the right side of the car and you drive on the left side of the road here, just like in the UK. But there aren’t really any lanes on the roads here, and even if there are, they don’t mean much. There are a few traffic lights, not really any stop signs or those kinds of road signs or rules, and the roads are full of holes and bumps as well as people walking, bicycles, stray dogs, foot pulled as well as auto-rickshaws, and various carts full of all kinds of things. A lot of Kolkata police direct traffic at large intersections, but other than that most drivers simply honk their horns at cross sections and the various obstacles rather than stopping or even sometimes slowing down.

I am signed up to work at Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity school/orphanage, Shishu Bhavan. I am hoping to switch into another Mother Teresa center, Kalighat or Nirmal Hriday, the center for the destitute and dying. They are both extremely filled with volunteers at the moment as many people are here over their summer break and so hopefully things will sort of calm down within the next few weeks. Shishu Bhavan is home to over one hundred kids. There are two main buildings one in which there is a room for children with special needs as well as very young babies and toddlers. The second building holds the larger group of about seventy little kids; I think they are all mostly under 10 years old. It’s really kind of a surreal place, the rooms are just lined with yellow metal cribs, with a little bit of space in between every other one for the volunteers and sisters to walk through. The room where the older kids live has a classroom on one side and the toilets and wash area on the other side. When we visited they were playing very loud children’s music. When we went to register there were tons of other volunteers there just to register, a whole group of English speakers, from England, the US and Canada, another group of French, Italians, and Chinese. It was kind of an intense process, as they called us up one by one to talk to Sister Karina, who was doing the actual written registration. She asked us where we were interested in volunteering and if we were ‘ready to commit’ to volunteering with them...I guess so. So far it’s been tough, I have been working in the section for children with special needs and sometimes there are just so many other volunteers that it is hard to find things to do. Also, being new, I don’t really know how things should be done and it feels as if we’re almost more in the way of the sisters working there than actually helping them.

I am living with Erin another girl from Kalamazoo and our host family is wonderful. I guess our host mother is kind of a big deal. She runs a Bengali magazine for women and used to be a very well known dancer. She doesn’t dance any more, but she still critiques and covers dance performances and other art exhibitions in the news and in her magazine. She took us to an art exhibition last Saturday. It was a collection of paper collages by this woman named Shakila, who is from a very rural area and has never had any formal training in art. Her collages were like paintings though, the detail was incredible and all the paper had been ripped by hand. We live in a second floor flat, with our host mother Sharmila, her daughter Ahana, and the woman who helps out in their house, Jabba. Our host mother’s brother also lives in the apartment, but we don’t really ever see him. He is an artist - painter, and Ahana told us that he is on a very different schedule than the rest of them, so we’re really around when he tends to be. Sometimes he has friends over to the house and we’ll hear drumming and other music coming from his room. They are all incredibly sweet. Our host mother works a lot, almost everyday except Sunday, but she always has her friends come over, we meet a local fashion designer and this couple who own a big toy store in town. Erin and I share a room and we eat hot food at every meal except for breakfast, the food is wonderful, spicy and so different from home. I can’t tell the difference between all of the dishes, but we eat a lot of fish, rice and chatu (basically the American naan with whole wheat flour) also a lot of okra and potatoes. A lot of the food is fried too, veggies, potatoes and sweets. Our host sister Ahana kind of has a sweet tooth, so we went out for ice cream with her the other night. I guess it was actually gelato, from this place called Mammamia, I think it’s kind of like a more upscale ice cream chain. Our family also has a driver and there is a gatekeeper for the building. It seems as if Jabba cooks for everyone, there are people it seems always coming over to speak with Sharmila or Jabba or to get food or drop off groceries or something else. I feel like we are forever being fed, always a cup of tea in the morning with cereal toast and some fruit, lunch between 12 and 1pm and dinner very late. We usually eat with our host sister between 8:30 and 9pm and our host mother eats even later than that, so she usually just sits with us for a bit while we eat.

Only seen a few cows so far, most of them out by the airport, but we saw a couple wandering the streets by our house the other night. We have geckos on our walls and there are stray dogs all over the streets, just hanging out. One morning the crows woke us up, so many of them, screaming so loudly, it was like nothing I’ve ever heard before. And the other night during one of our IPSL orientations, we got to sit up on the rooftop of the building where we have class and there were bats the size of ravens flying around gobbling up the hoards of monsoon mosquitoes.

This Saturday we are all taking a four-day trip to Puri, Konark and Bhubaneswar in West Bengal’s neighboring state Orissa. Puri is home to an enormous temple for Jagannath, the god of dance (our host family has a statue of Jagannath in their living room), and Konark has an incredible sun temple not far from the beach. It’s supposed to be a very peaceful place.

So much more to come soon...