I am terrible at keeping a blog, and I suppose it shouldn't be very surprising, really. Luckily, my personal journal has more details and stories than appear here, and mostly I think it is because I try not to be online too frequently and rather spending my time observing the insanity that is: CALCUTTA. Also, I procrastinate in updating because I want to post the accompanying photos, which unfortunately I am still unable to do.
Here's some quick things I've noticed in Calcutta:
-Summer is fast approaching; I laugh a little when I think about the weather back home. I can't believe my luck for having escaped the winter of the Pacific Northwest.
-People and cats and dogs and goats and birds and bugs and trash are everywhere. And taxis. Taxis are everywhere and always, always honking.
-Begging is considered a legitimate job.
-Mosquitoes love ankles.
Anthony and I have now been in Calcutta for about 10 days. We got in late after a 30+ hour train ride from Chennai to Howrah Station, and including the bus from Pondicherry to Chennai, and the taxi from Howrah to Sudder St., we'd been on the move for about two whole days. Despite the late hour of our arrival, the bridge into Calcutta proper was packed full of traffic and pedestrians. While rules of the road might exist, mostly they are considered silly suggestions, and people drive like madmen in whichever lane they want.
Sudder St. was still lively, and we booked ourselves a room at the Hotel Paragon, until the next day when we were able to get a cheaper room at the Hotel Modern Lodge. After we shuffled our stuff, we ate the first of many meals at the Taj Continental where we later made friends with the proprietor's son, Farid Khan. More on him later.
Our first full day in Calcutta Anthony took me around to various places and attempted to instill a sense of direction in me but to little effect. My complete lack of familiarity with this city, despite Anthony's efforts, saw me just as lost at the end of the day as at the beginning. We wandered through Maidan Park where, because it was Sunday, men had gathered en masse to enjoy each others' company and play cricket. Other activities included organized protests and goat grazing. I love that shepherds exist in such a huge city, that their animals live on the grass of the local parks. Past the Maidan was the Victoria Memorial, a lavish stone building built to honor the former Queen of England/ Empress of India. According to Anthony however, she'd never even been in the country. Personally, though it occurred over two hundred years ago, I still do not understand the audacity of the conquering Europeans in the world. Oh well.
I really shouldn't go 10+ days without blogging here, or else I should refer to my personal notes to beef up these stories. Mostly I want to get my damned pictures up!
Anyways, I don't remember much else about the first day, except that we walked a lot, and at some point in a posh neighborhood, we grabbed a chai and watched as a trio of performers set up their trick in the street. A man and woman sang and banged on a hand drum and a metal serving dish with a hammer, and also hammered in two metal rods right into the road, across which they tied a rope. To hoist the rope into the air, two bamboo exes were set up, and smaller ropes used to tie the rope in place, to create a taut balance beam in between them. This was the stage for the third performer, a little girl who couldn't have been more than 10 years old, but who shimmied and yelled and did backflips and walked across the rope attached to the bamboo polls, taut across the road, while one of the adult performers followed below her in case she lost her balance. I was impressed at the self-assured nature of the young girl, and also at the fact that those performers tore up that road! If they had whacked their half-meter metal rods into the roads of an American neighborhood, they would have been told off quick for ruining the pristine flatness of the road. Of course, this is a completely different place with completely different ways of thinking, so it was no problem to gouge big holes in the ground.
While Calcutta had me sneezing almost nonstop the first few days, Anthony has gotten his guts kicked by something here. Perhaps its the lunch eaten at stalls set up on sidewalks, or because he drinks the water here, but some days he is fine, and on others he is not. Today is one of the quiet days.
Some other things we've seen in Calcutta are the dinosaurs at Science City, as well as the time machine. A model of the White House at the Kolkata Book Fair, where the theme of 2011 was USA (?). Decaying death monuments and enormous billboards set up at the Park Street Cemetery. We ate an overpriced mockery of Italian food at a restaurant that used too much salt. We've visited lots of bookstores, oh man, the book streets out here are packed with people, but the books are predominantly textbooks for computer stuff and medical things. More recently, and so far one of my favorite things we've done this trip, we attended the first International Sufi Music Festival.
What a beautiful event. Entitled Sufi Sutra, the music festival showcased Sufi musical groups from various parts of the world. It was an outdoor event, so most people milled around the lawns, sipping chai and eating snacks from the food stalls. A few shops were also set up selling jewelry, scarves, and also CDs, although I couldn't figure out which CD might have been for the band that we found the most enchanting. This group had a female singer whose voice... well, it was just unlike anything I'd ever heard before. Closer to the stage was also a sort of information wall with an brief explanation of Sufi practice in different parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia which was enlightening because I thought that Sufism was considered sort of... heretical by most other Muslims. Regardless, the Sufi music festival was the most fun I've had in India so far. After Anthony and I finished our own snacks and tea and checked out the information, we crept closer to the stage for a better look of the elaborate costumes of the performers and revel in their amazing musical talent. Other members of the audience got more into the spirit of things and clapped along, some even dancing. Their happiness was contagious, really, and eventually Anthony and I started dancing a little bit too, everyone just letting go of their self consciousness and wholly appreciating the music and the ecstasy of the moment. It sounds cliche, but really, it was magical. No one cared about looking silly or anything because everyone was just so happy to be listening to the music together and dancing.
Unfortunately, it was the last night of the festival, which had been going on for the past couple of days. We really should have gone for a few of the other days too, but we wandered and did other things. However, because it was the last day of the festival, the finale was spectacular; all of the performers of the day, and some from the previous days, perhaps, flooded the stage and had one last crazy singing dancing Sufi party, and each of the performers just let everything go. Some young men whirled around, dervishes, twirling for so long, meditatively, that I thought I would drop dizzy just from watching them. The singers took turns with the microphone, launching into elaborate, gorgeous songs, and the audience was teased practically into a frenzy, some of them singing along when they recognized the songs. It felt... like everyone was in love or something, it was so amazing. And I guess that's mostly what Sufism is about, they are expressive not because they are inflating their egos, but because they are portraying their love of God (?), their most beloved, and it's really beautiful.
As previously mentioned in this post, Anthony and I made a friend, a Calcutta man, born and raised named Farid Khan. At 28, he has been in his arranged marriage for 3 years, and his wife if pregnant with their first child. His family owns a series of businesses throughout the city, and properties which they rent out to others, so they are well to do. Farid has a university degree in business, and one of his hobbies is increasing what he has; "If I have one rupee, and I am working, then it should become three rupees." Even as a young child, he was more interested in working than in his studies, but his father wanted him to focus on his studies. Now, however, he is the business man he wants to be, and is able to take care of his family. I think that although his ego is not overly large, he is proud of himself. He is very generous, and for no other reason than he wants us to have had the opportunity to meet someone nice in this city, he has taken it upon himself to show us things that we would perhaps not see on our own. So, the day after the music festival, Anthony and I met with Farid and wandered around Calcutta with him.
Mostly, it was a chatting and building viewing day, but the some of the architecture in Calcutta puts Seattle to shame. Although, Calcutta would probably not have such grand buildings had the British not conquered the city and made it their capital over 200 years ago. We visited the business district of Calcutta and saw the judicial buildings, and Writer's Building, and some other buildings. That sentence would be a lot more interesting if I was able to post the pictures, but oh well for now. Eventually, Farid showed us some of his family's businesses, as well as his family home, where we met his mother, and his personal apartment, where he lives with his wife across the street. The benefits of having a family long established in Calcutta include these apartments, both of which are on about the 4th floor of their respective buildings, and which, because they are situated in the heart of Calcutta, offer excellent views of the city. After tea and dinner at his apartment, Farid took us onto his roof to have a look around.
Farid's family is well to do, by Calcutta standards, and if he was in the USA and his family owned multiple businesses and properties, he would be very well to do, but this is India, and while he lives a nice life, the standard of living here is very different than back home. I loved his home, and his hospitality is undeserved, but back home in the States, his possessions would not be... appreciated as things that befit the higher classes. I feel very lucky to have been able to spend time with someone so kind and generous, however, and because I'm not a person of great means anyways, and perhaps because of my familiarity with living conditions in Mexico (also considered a developing country?) I just felt happy and humbled.
On our own, Anthony and I spend a lot of time reading and wandering no where specific really. We have a list of some things we'd like to see, and have crossed off the ones we've made it to so far. It's spectacular to spend time with Anthony again because it is the easiest thing. I do miss home, and I miss my friends and family, but we're still here for awhile, and then off to France.
Here's some quick things I've noticed in Calcutta:
-Summer is fast approaching; I laugh a little when I think about the weather back home. I can't believe my luck for having escaped the winter of the Pacific Northwest.
-People and cats and dogs and goats and birds and bugs and trash are everywhere. And taxis. Taxis are everywhere and always, always honking.
-Begging is considered a legitimate job.
-Mosquitoes love ankles.
Anthony and I have now been in Calcutta for about 10 days. We got in late after a 30+ hour train ride from Chennai to Howrah Station, and including the bus from Pondicherry to Chennai, and the taxi from Howrah to Sudder St., we'd been on the move for about two whole days. Despite the late hour of our arrival, the bridge into Calcutta proper was packed full of traffic and pedestrians. While rules of the road might exist, mostly they are considered silly suggestions, and people drive like madmen in whichever lane they want.
Sudder St. was still lively, and we booked ourselves a room at the Hotel Paragon, until the next day when we were able to get a cheaper room at the Hotel Modern Lodge. After we shuffled our stuff, we ate the first of many meals at the Taj Continental where we later made friends with the proprietor's son, Farid Khan. More on him later.
Our first full day in Calcutta Anthony took me around to various places and attempted to instill a sense of direction in me but to little effect. My complete lack of familiarity with this city, despite Anthony's efforts, saw me just as lost at the end of the day as at the beginning. We wandered through Maidan Park where, because it was Sunday, men had gathered en masse to enjoy each others' company and play cricket. Other activities included organized protests and goat grazing. I love that shepherds exist in such a huge city, that their animals live on the grass of the local parks. Past the Maidan was the Victoria Memorial, a lavish stone building built to honor the former Queen of England/ Empress of India. According to Anthony however, she'd never even been in the country. Personally, though it occurred over two hundred years ago, I still do not understand the audacity of the conquering Europeans in the world. Oh well.
I really shouldn't go 10+ days without blogging here, or else I should refer to my personal notes to beef up these stories. Mostly I want to get my damned pictures up!
Anyways, I don't remember much else about the first day, except that we walked a lot, and at some point in a posh neighborhood, we grabbed a chai and watched as a trio of performers set up their trick in the street. A man and woman sang and banged on a hand drum and a metal serving dish with a hammer, and also hammered in two metal rods right into the road, across which they tied a rope. To hoist the rope into the air, two bamboo exes were set up, and smaller ropes used to tie the rope in place, to create a taut balance beam in between them. This was the stage for the third performer, a little girl who couldn't have been more than 10 years old, but who shimmied and yelled and did backflips and walked across the rope attached to the bamboo polls, taut across the road, while one of the adult performers followed below her in case she lost her balance. I was impressed at the self-assured nature of the young girl, and also at the fact that those performers tore up that road! If they had whacked their half-meter metal rods into the roads of an American neighborhood, they would have been told off quick for ruining the pristine flatness of the road. Of course, this is a completely different place with completely different ways of thinking, so it was no problem to gouge big holes in the ground.
While Calcutta had me sneezing almost nonstop the first few days, Anthony has gotten his guts kicked by something here. Perhaps its the lunch eaten at stalls set up on sidewalks, or because he drinks the water here, but some days he is fine, and on others he is not. Today is one of the quiet days.
Some other things we've seen in Calcutta are the dinosaurs at Science City, as well as the time machine. A model of the White House at the Kolkata Book Fair, where the theme of 2011 was USA (?). Decaying death monuments and enormous billboards set up at the Park Street Cemetery. We ate an overpriced mockery of Italian food at a restaurant that used too much salt. We've visited lots of bookstores, oh man, the book streets out here are packed with people, but the books are predominantly textbooks for computer stuff and medical things. More recently, and so far one of my favorite things we've done this trip, we attended the first International Sufi Music Festival.
What a beautiful event. Entitled Sufi Sutra, the music festival showcased Sufi musical groups from various parts of the world. It was an outdoor event, so most people milled around the lawns, sipping chai and eating snacks from the food stalls. A few shops were also set up selling jewelry, scarves, and also CDs, although I couldn't figure out which CD might have been for the band that we found the most enchanting. This group had a female singer whose voice... well, it was just unlike anything I'd ever heard before. Closer to the stage was also a sort of information wall with an brief explanation of Sufi practice in different parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia which was enlightening because I thought that Sufism was considered sort of... heretical by most other Muslims. Regardless, the Sufi music festival was the most fun I've had in India so far. After Anthony and I finished our own snacks and tea and checked out the information, we crept closer to the stage for a better look of the elaborate costumes of the performers and revel in their amazing musical talent. Other members of the audience got more into the spirit of things and clapped along, some even dancing. Their happiness was contagious, really, and eventually Anthony and I started dancing a little bit too, everyone just letting go of their self consciousness and wholly appreciating the music and the ecstasy of the moment. It sounds cliche, but really, it was magical. No one cared about looking silly or anything because everyone was just so happy to be listening to the music together and dancing.
Unfortunately, it was the last night of the festival, which had been going on for the past couple of days. We really should have gone for a few of the other days too, but we wandered and did other things. However, because it was the last day of the festival, the finale was spectacular; all of the performers of the day, and some from the previous days, perhaps, flooded the stage and had one last crazy singing dancing Sufi party, and each of the performers just let everything go. Some young men whirled around, dervishes, twirling for so long, meditatively, that I thought I would drop dizzy just from watching them. The singers took turns with the microphone, launching into elaborate, gorgeous songs, and the audience was teased practically into a frenzy, some of them singing along when they recognized the songs. It felt... like everyone was in love or something, it was so amazing. And I guess that's mostly what Sufism is about, they are expressive not because they are inflating their egos, but because they are portraying their love of God (?), their most beloved, and it's really beautiful.
As previously mentioned in this post, Anthony and I made a friend, a Calcutta man, born and raised named Farid Khan. At 28, he has been in his arranged marriage for 3 years, and his wife if pregnant with their first child. His family owns a series of businesses throughout the city, and properties which they rent out to others, so they are well to do. Farid has a university degree in business, and one of his hobbies is increasing what he has; "If I have one rupee, and I am working, then it should become three rupees." Even as a young child, he was more interested in working than in his studies, but his father wanted him to focus on his studies. Now, however, he is the business man he wants to be, and is able to take care of his family. I think that although his ego is not overly large, he is proud of himself. He is very generous, and for no other reason than he wants us to have had the opportunity to meet someone nice in this city, he has taken it upon himself to show us things that we would perhaps not see on our own. So, the day after the music festival, Anthony and I met with Farid and wandered around Calcutta with him.
Mostly, it was a chatting and building viewing day, but the some of the architecture in Calcutta puts Seattle to shame. Although, Calcutta would probably not have such grand buildings had the British not conquered the city and made it their capital over 200 years ago. We visited the business district of Calcutta and saw the judicial buildings, and Writer's Building, and some other buildings. That sentence would be a lot more interesting if I was able to post the pictures, but oh well for now. Eventually, Farid showed us some of his family's businesses, as well as his family home, where we met his mother, and his personal apartment, where he lives with his wife across the street. The benefits of having a family long established in Calcutta include these apartments, both of which are on about the 4th floor of their respective buildings, and which, because they are situated in the heart of Calcutta, offer excellent views of the city. After tea and dinner at his apartment, Farid took us onto his roof to have a look around.
Farid's family is well to do, by Calcutta standards, and if he was in the USA and his family owned multiple businesses and properties, he would be very well to do, but this is India, and while he lives a nice life, the standard of living here is very different than back home. I loved his home, and his hospitality is undeserved, but back home in the States, his possessions would not be... appreciated as things that befit the higher classes. I feel very lucky to have been able to spend time with someone so kind and generous, however, and because I'm not a person of great means anyways, and perhaps because of my familiarity with living conditions in Mexico (also considered a developing country?) I just felt happy and humbled.
On our own, Anthony and I spend a lot of time reading and wandering no where specific really. We have a list of some things we'd like to see, and have crossed off the ones we've made it to so far. It's spectacular to spend time with Anthony again because it is the easiest thing. I do miss home, and I miss my friends and family, but we're still here for awhile, and then off to France.
