Thursday August 28th 2008 – Kolkata

It’s been quite an exhausting week. This is really our first full week of service and classes, after almost a full month of being here…it almost feels like the first week all over again, getting used to the schedule and rhythm of everything. We usually have Thursdays off, but we had a class this morning at the Tagore Gandhi Institute for cultural learning and service (TGI), where all of our IPSL classes are held. It’s a pretty sweet little building just down the road from our house. All eleven of us pile into this tiny room almost everyday for our classes on Indian religions, culture and Bengali language. It’s so hot and tiny that I am almost completely drenched in sweat by the time our two-hour classes are over with, but it’s interesting stuff all the same. We’ve been going through the major religions of India, discussing (more listening to lectures really) on Hinduism and Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism and today Sikhism. We are supposed to have our class on Ethics, Leadership and Morality at Loreto College tomorrow, but many of the Catholic schools and organizations are going on a sort of strike tomorrow because of some recent violence against a Catholic school in Orissa.

And we’ve still been trying to explore the city bit by bit. There is are two parks very near our house, and one has a small lake and stadium where people go to jog and walk in the mornings before it gets too hot and sunny. It’s sill really hot, humid and sunny at 5:30 AM, so we haven’t been able to make much use of it yet, hopefully when it cools down it will be nice to run around a little. So mostly we’ve been checking out good places to go shopping…and we’ve found that there seems to be a never-ending amount of them. We’ve seen Sudder Street, where most of the tourists and a lot of the volunteers working at missionaries of charity stay…and buy things. Right off of Sudder Street is an indoor type market called New Market full of all kinds of shops and people. Even before we entered the building where New Market is located people were ushering us inside telling us to come to their shops, offering us deals on various items, asking us what we were looking for. It didn’t stop there. For the entire hour we looked around, vendors and salesmen were following us around trying to get us to come to their shops and to buy all sorts of different things. It felt impossible to breathe let alone look at a shirt or necklace or pair of earrings. Even just a glance in the direction of an item hanging from a window would grant a call from the nearest shop owner or salesman. Even when we told people that we didn’t need help, that we really just wanted to look around and find things on our own they continued to follow us around trying to make sales offers or point us in some direction they thought we should go. I think we learned not to go to New Market with anymore than two people unless you’re actually looking for a whole lot of attention.

Buying biscuits and tea from street vendors is something I think that will never get old. There must be a man on every corner who is boiling a hot kettle of tea and has an assortment of different biscuits that he’ll pick for you out of glass jars. There are all sorts of markets along the streets too, as well as vendors selling hot vegetable and egg rolls, sweet shops with all kinds of different Indian cookie type treats and more. There is a market not far from our house, Lake Market where people sell vegetables, fruits, nuts, flowers and various household necessities (water bottles and clothespins) by candle light every night after seven when the sun has gone down. The nearest metro station is right in the middle of this market. We take can catch it there at Kalighat and take it to Park Street station where we can get to Loreto College as well as an array of nice restaurants, shopping mall type places and other larger main stores. There’s a Bose store and a music store called music world, as well as a huge dessert and cake restaurant type place called Flurries that our host family raves about.

We can’t stop hearing about the upcoming Pujas. They actually don’t happen for another six weeks or so, the middle of October, but apparently they’re THE time to be in Kolkata. We’ve even seen a few places where people are constructing stage like buildings for the fairs and parades that happen when they begin. Our host sister todl us that we will get sarees and all kinds of new clothes for the festivities, go out to dinner. She said it is like a week long party.....I can't wait!