Shock

I’m on my second regiment of antibiotics since my arrival, my stomach bloated from its overly-acidic reaction to the half-banana I could swallow this morning before feeling nauseous. I’ve barely slept in the past two nights due to the bathroom-minded alarm clock my intestines have become. I can no longer deny: culture shock has finally descended.

The worst part about the things that are adding up to make me angry is that they are all stupidly minimal, all things that only illustrate how privileged I am. For example, not having control of when my room’s cooling fan is operating. While I am certainly grateful that I have a cooling fan at least part of the time, I am frustrated every time I walk into my room in the blistering afternoon heat to find it switched off. Without fail, it turns on at 10.00pm, the time of day which it is least needed, and turns off just after I take my cold shower (no hot water) and step back into the cool room.

A few of my shirts have come back from the dhobi (the woman who washes the clothes for the neighborhood) with holes and stains, and I’m helpless to stop the service unless I plan to wash all of my clothes by hand. I’ve already been doing this with my underwear, as it is offensive in Indian culture to expect another person to clean your unmentionables. But due to the cooling fan’s constant stream of cooling humidity at night and the increased humidity during the day, it takes about three days for my boxers to air-dry, and by the time they dry, they all are hard and smell a bit mildewy.

Just as Thoreau, I too have begun sharing my room with a colony of black-ant neighbors. I woke up in the middle of the night to find a line walking straight across the bed, over my arm to get to the gummy bears sent by my mother. I’ve since packaged the sweets soundly and the ants and I have reached a compromise: they get the left side of my desk; I get the rest of the room.

But what has been most irritating is the constant noise — usually car horns — and the incessant smell of rotting garbage when we travel through the city. The pollution is awful and the muggy air forces everything into my nostrils, lungs, and ears. So I return to my also-muggy room and try to clean myself but there is always a film of sweat and particulate matter that I can’t wash away.

By now, my plight as a first-world crybaby should be clear as no such thing. It’s the lack of all the little things that I have control over that are turning me into a Type-A mass of petty grievances. As I said earlier, the most frustrating part is that these things that I miss — mostly being able to control my comfort — are things about which only children of an opulent society can complain. And I’m no longer able to fool myself: by the world’s standards, I am foolishly wealthy. It’s something that people immediately know of me, too — because I’m white and obviously not from India but fiscally able to travel. It’s a scarlet dollar-sign that I want to scrape from my lapel but am too spoiled to do so.

I have so much to learn.

A Twig

Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning!
I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.
I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.
Perhaps you glance at me and think, “What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!

– Rabindranath Tagore, from Playthings

We visited this man’s house on our second full day in Kolkata. It was a palace of sorts, with open air balconies overlooking the multiple courtyards. After his death in the 40s, the house had been converted to a museum dedicated to his poetry, art,  prose — his life. I had limited (read: no) knowledge of this man prior to touring his house, and hence learned much as I wandered the place of his birth and death. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature (the first Indian to win such) in 1913, and toured the world throughout his later years, crossing the paths of G.B. Shaw, Albert Einstein, and Helen Keller. He is one of the most celebrated Bengali scholars, authoring hundreds of poems, short stories, and novels, including both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems.

A big-bellied phulwala at the flower bazaar.

From there, we walked in the direction of the Botanic Garden, but got lost on the way and ended up in a very lively flower bazaar. Clearly not a tourist destination, the place was filled with only Indians and our skin got us a lot of attention. Most, though, seemed excited to see us as they asked us to take photos of them. The bazaar was fragrant with flowers — bright golden marigolds and red carnations, white roses and strings of indigo buds. Some were organized into bouquets and wreaths, others sat in piles as their owners sifted through. This is our twig; these are our playthings — the small, elusive paragons of India that we find only when lost. We grew weak and tired in the midday swelter and found ourselves in the direction of our hotel.

That night, we slept on the train to Jalpaiguri. Once again split due to our late booking, I was on a separate car from the others and made polite conversation with the men in my compartment. From Jalpaiguri, a 2.5 hour bus ride brought us to Darjeeling. One of the more popular hill stations, Darjeeling is a clean, steep city of about 100,000 people. On clear days, four the world’s five highest peaks are visible from this place, including Everest and Kanchenjunga. The monsoon season is the worst time for seeing such things; the city was completely enveloped by white fog. It felt like limbo — this was it, just this drizzly, cool city floating in the ether.

The drying tables in Happy Valley Tea Estate's withering room.

The following day, Tricia and I visited the Happy Valley Tea Estate, one of Darjeeling’s most prolific producers of its namesake tea. As always, we missed the proper turn and were directed through the winding staircases between the houses built into the slopes. Eventually reaching our destination, we learned the process from plant to package. Women, divided by age and marital status into groups that gather varying amounts of crop per day, pick by hand the tea — small growths of two leaves with a bud in the middle — and men carry the crop back to the shop. Once there, the tea is spread on large screens in the withering room and blasted with eight hours of cool air and eight hours of warm air. Then it is sent through chutes to the lower level, where machines sort the leaves from stems, ferment the black tea. Finally, the rollers divide the crop by quality and then package it in bulk for shipment. All workers at the Estate live on the property. They are provided access to health services and a good wage, the tour guide affirmed. Paths were carved throughout the plantation’s growing land, and we meandered through countless bushes and houses, greeting workers clad in bright clothing as we passed. (My pictures from Happy Valley can be found here.)

Darjeeling was more relaxing than thrilling, and at the end of our stay we were rested and chilled — ready again for the humidity of Kolkata and the heat of both there and Jaipur. Our return was stalled by a strike spurred by a fuel price hike, starting the day of our departure. We finally managed to find a taxi willing to wind through the back roads to deliver us to the gates of the Jalpaiguri station, albeit at almost three times the standard fare.

Sleeper train again, this time all in the same compartment. We rented a hotel room in Kolkata for our final day to house Mandy, our sick companion; store our bags; and bathe. Our funds beginning to run low, we opted for the seven-rupee local bus to get to the Indian Botanic Garden. A five-mile hour-long ride took as through the city’s slums, which were being cleared by Kolkata’s newly-elected government. Lines of the low caste watched as uniformed men destroyed their lean-tos with bulldozers and backhoes.

The Botanic Garden (full name Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden) is home to the world’s largest banyan tree, aptly named the Great Banyan. We wandered through the park for a little over an hour before catching the bus back to our neighborhood. The return was not nearly as bearable as the ride there — the monsoon rains finally fell, and my obese seat-mate seemed unbothered by the rain pouring through the window I was pinned against and couldn’t close. I breathed a steady stream of particulate matter from the diesel engines while the sound of car horns evolved from a solo to a small band to a full-blown orchestra, honking away at my ear drums and sanity until I was sure I was on the bus to hell.

The Darjeeling fog cleared briefly one morning, exposing the valley below.

We made it back to the hotel, finally, and ate street food in the afternoon, pasta in the evening; carried our luggage into the train station to start back to Jaipur. We were all on the wait list but were certain that we’d have a spot — after all, we were only WL1, 2, 3, and 4. But Tricia and I couldn’t find our names typed on any of the approved lists posted to the cars, and in a panic rushed to the conductor who looked at our ticket and quickly clarified that we weren’t on the approved list because our tickets were for the train four days prior. He sent us to the ticket counter, who sent us to the station master, who sent us to the T.T. (the train’s ticket checker), who sent us back to the ticket counter to purchase a second-class sleeper ticket to at least make sure we wouldn’t be kicked off the train in the middle of the night. When the T.T. finally came around to check our tickets, he told us that we’d each have to pay 1000 rupees each to sleep in the AC compartment, and if not we’d have to move to the second-class area at the next station. Our wallets empty, we had no choice and walked through the dark station at three o’clock in the morning to the open-air, completely packed second-class car.

My experience with such was limited to the spectacle of its boarding — young men crawling in through windows, over other people to get the best seats, which are all unreserved. We clearly looked out of place and people mostly stared, although a few told us that the AC cars were further up. A few kind gentlemen took pity and adjusted their luggage to accommodate our tired bodies. We tried to sleep, but I was sitting on a three-foot span of luggage rack and Tricia was allotted nine inches on the edge of a seat while the adjacent man’s sleeping head rested on her shoulder. Thankfully, at seven o’clock the train emptied for the most part, and we managed to snag full seats and sleep peacefully until noon, at which time we snuck back into the AC compartment to escape the midday heat. Certainly another twig; another game that probably I didn’t win, but one that I did play.

We arrived in Jaipur at just before midnight, exhausted and sore from sitting the entire day. But when we walked out of the train station, we all felt relieved to be back in Jaipur. It’s nice to know a city, to be able to negotiate transportation back to your room no matter where you are, to have people sense on you that you aren’t simply passing through for a few days. The rickshaw didn’t attempt to overcharge us, and within an hour I was happily asleep in my bed.

To See Your Mutta

I have many memories of my grandfather hooking us into his favorite mantra. “Alright, I’m going,” he’d say as he’d make a motion to get up and leave.

“Where are you going, grandpa?” we’d ask excitedly. We want to come!

“I’m going to Calcutta to see your mutta, and your fatta, and your brutta, and your sista.”

I’m almost certain he coined this himself; who else but an old German (chermin) could craft such a rhyme? Although we eventually grew wise of the saying, it has stuck with me. When discussing with other CLS participants where we’d be going for our midterm break, I couldn’t resist telling them that I’d be in search of their parents and siblings.

The morning of arrival via sleeper train.

We chose to travel via sleeper train since it was barely a quarter the cost of airfare. The 26.5-hour ride was not nearly as miserable as expected, in fact it was quite enjoyable. I’m traveling with the three girls I live with — but due to our last-minute ticket reservation, we were split between two cars. One of the girls and I slept in 3AC, an air-conditioned box split into compartments for six people. Our compart-mates were a family from Kolkata, returning home from a trip to Agra.

The Kolkatan boy from the train.

They didn’t speak English but were very eager to talk with us in the limited Hindi we knew. They showed us the ropes of ordering the train food (a garlicky paneer and onion dish, rice, and roti), told us all about their friend who lives in Los Angeles (everyone in India has a friend in New York or L.A.) and snapped a picture of their two-year-old son sitting with us.

Kolkata, renamed from the British Calcutta in 2001, is a massive, thriving city, which was immediately apparent when we stepped off the train into the crowded station. Outside of Sealdah, the rail terminal, were rows and rows of yellow Ambassador Classic taxis. We bartered in the usual way to get to the tourist hotel neighborhood. The heat, humidity, and rain render this the off-season for tourism, so we were in sparse white company. After a few price-checks, we bathed our bodies of the train-sweat, ate a lovely dinner at Gaylord Restaurant, and called it a day.

The next morning, I awoke early to roam the neighborhood before we’d head to the Victoria Memorial. Not twenty paces from the door of the hotel, a beggar woman latched onto me and refused to yield to my attempted stone-cold indifference. She carried an infant in her arms; he was wearing only a cloth diaper and looked very malnourished, he was missing patches of hair and had sores on his body. “Please sir, only milk for my baby.” She led me to a store down the road, where I eventually bought her two large cylinders of powdered milk, spending my own daily allotment for food. She was not yet satisfied though, and continued to follow me for another block and ask for rice, lentils, fruit.

Another woman walked next to me for a couple blocks — she spoke very good, clear English and talked about her family and aspirations as I played with her friend’s son. Gita asked me to buy her rice and lentils to feed her family, but I told her I didn’t have money with me and would return later. On my way back to the hotel, I was swept with privileged guilt and took a detour through the food market to get her a kilo of each. I talked with the shopkeeper in broken Hindi for a while, explaining why I was in Kokata, learning Hindi, and buying raw rice and lentils. He told me that a lot of the beggar women will ask tourists to buy them food and then sell it back to the shopkeeper at a slightly reduced price to make an income. Feeling slightly cheated (but not wanting to doubt Gita), I still purchased the items and dropped them off with her before leaving the neighborhood for the day.

The men in the back left of this picture were bathing outside our hotel every morning.

I met up with the girls and we walked through the city’s largest park on our way to the Victoria Memorial. The week before our arrival, the city hosted what appeared to be a massive Hindu festival. Booths and circus tents were being torn down on either side of the path, but some of the signs were still hung:

Instead of thinking that man is the center of the universe, the idea should be to understand that man is part of the universe… Therefore we should take care of the environment because man will ultimately kill himself if he doesn’t.

Root cause of Pollution in the world is the pollution in the ecology of the human heart, pollution caused by toxic greed, egotism, and selfish exploitation of nature. Whatever change we make in outward world, only has sustainability only to the degree those changes are paralleled within our hearts.

A few soccer teams played in the field just past the fairgrounds while goat-herders pushed their flock through the tall grass and horses roamed freely.

Upon reaching the end of the park, we were approached by two Nigerian men who claimed to play for the Goa soccer team. They seemed excited to see white people, and insisted we exchange phone numbers so we could smoke hash with their “homiez” (qtd. from a text I later received). I attempted to give them a fake number, but they called it so I would have their number and were relentless to get my real number. They texted me frequently in the evening, and called about ten times the next morning until I blocked their number.

The photo the old man from Varanasi insisted on taking.

We finally reached the memorial; unfortunately the interior was closed for the day, so we were confined to the massive, well-kept palace grounds. We wandered for a while, and I ended up talking with an old man from Varanasi about the best places to see in Kolkata and Darjeeling. He gave me hand-written slips of paper detailing the must-see locales and how to get to them via local transportation. His English was exceptional, his understanding of American culture was not. After explaining to him that we indeed do not have a caste system, he gave up on trying to understand how our backwards society functioned. He told me that no matter what American society was like, my mother would surely want to see a picture of me in front of the palace, and took my camera from my hands and directed me to stand near the gate. We talked for a little while longer, and I snapped a picture of him and handed a few American $1 bills as tokens for his daughters.

The projection machinery at Birla Planetarium.

Our next stop was to be the Academy of Fine Arts — this was also closed for the day (I guess Monday is not the day for tourism), so we continued down the road in search of a restaurant. We passed the Birla Planetarium, something I had already wanted to see, just in time for their Hindi showing. Everyone around us was concerned that we were in the wrong line and we were repeatedly told, “The English showing is at 1.30, this showing is in Hindi.” We’d respond, “Yes, we want to see this one. We are learning Hindi,” at which point their eyes would grow and they’d say, “Oooh, good, good, good, good” in Hindi. The content was portrayed slowly enough and simply enough for us to understood a fair amount.

After severely overeating at Marco Polo, the girls were too rotund to continue in the afternoon and opted for a nap. I roamed through the streets, eventually making it to a market near our hotel. A man began talking to me about his friend in Los Angeles and after a few minutes asked me to visit his shop, which just opened that day. I was not only their first sale of the day, but their first sale in the new shop, which meant that my happiness was absolutely crucial to their future success. I had in mind that I wanted small statues of Durga and Kali, who both represent female empowerment, for some friends, and they showed me their inventory of such at length. After making my purchase, they insisted I smoke a cigarette with them for “auspiciousness,” and then I returned to the hotel.

The first day in Kolkata ended with us at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city. Kolkata has completely surprised me in its cleanliness, organization, and vibrance. I’m sad to say that I have yet to find your mutta, but Granda, in the future you may have to come to Kolkata to find me.

*I’ve also uploaded selected pictures from our days in Kolkata to my Flickr account.

Models and Motorcycles

”Do you like going fast?” Manish asked me as I rode on the back of his purple, not-in-the-best-condition motorcycle. The horn doesn’t work, he told me, due to the faulty battery; the gauges had also gone the way of the horn. I was mildly concerned as we headed to the outskirts of Jaipur when I spotted his gas tank was very much in the red.

“Of course!” I responded. He had given me his spare helmet to wear and it slipped down my forehead as we rode. We had gone out sans-helmet a few nights prior and ended up having to run from the police. The fine is only 50-200 rupees “depending on their mood,” but Manish didn’t want to deal with the hassle at that time and sped by them. But today, on the long, straight stretch of bustling roadway, he was itching to cruise and I would not complain. He sped up, weaving in between vehicles in the standard Indian fashion of motorcycling until we reached our destination.

In front of Jal Mahal

Among the hills that have erupted in greenery since the monsoon’s arrival lay a moderately sized lake. In the middle — not on an island, no ground around the base, simply there, in the middle — stood a giant maharaja fort. Arches near the water were reminiscent of Venice, while the staircases leading up from the water and the domed roofs were distinctly Indian. This place — Jal Mahal — is one of the most pleasant places I’ve seen so far in Jaipur. The walkway next to the lake is filled with food vendors and playing children, yet the place is distinctly calm and peaceful, which is hard to find in India.

Manish and I wandered the path a few times while talking about cigarettes, our lives, India/the U.S. In his early twenties, he walked on the runway as a model for Levi’s and a few high-fashion brands in Mumbai. A few of his former peers have made it big; he dropped a few names that, due to my ignorance of Indian cinema, I did not know. He showed me a few scars he earned from his multiple motorcycle crashes and street-fighting days, and told me a story of getting kicked repeatedly by a gang of five men until he lying on the ground in the fetal position, covered in blood. (The scar from this incident I could not see due to his thick, well-groomed, black hair.) “Then I was beautiful on the outside, Nicholas, but I was not beautiful on the inside.”

His heart was broken after his girlfriend of four years married the other man she had been seeing the entire time. This spurred a year-long journey of punching walls while crying, Hindu pilgrimages, and eventually inner peace. He told me I would not recognize the person he was then, and I don’t doubt him. I was shocked to hear a lot of this — he has demonstrated nothing but calm, caring hospitality and has become one of my closest Indian friends.

Because He Doesn’t Understand Hindi

So the learning continues, at all times of the day and from all directions — whether I’m exhausted and only half listening as my pencil wanders over my creme-colored paper to the sounds of imperfect participle construction or actively inquiring about the purity of the antique “silver” floral-patterened ring on my index finger. I finally reached a point this week when I realized that my language skills are sufficient for many of the menial day-to-day tasks I’d been neglecting. My pride is no longer harmed by having to repeat “dhire dhire boliye” (please speak slowly) while talking to most people, and overall I’ve found most people to be enthused by my effort.

Today I made my way back to Soni Hospital in hopes of getting a chest x-ray and accompanying doctor’s note to prove to the SIT program that I indeed do not have tuberculosis. My first visit to the hospital was not as successful as I had hoped, having been able only to get results for two of the three required pre-program tests. One of the administrative assistants at AIIS escorted me through the process of Indian hospitals. With his help, I navigated through the strange facility. It felt very much like a hospital, but in each room a surreal something reminded me that I was not in the U.S. Each wing was its separate building, and one walked through the bustling courtyard to get to the various areas: laboratory, surgery, long term care, etc.

The waiting lounge of the laboratory section was more akin to an airport than a hospital, and the actual laboratory was merely a ten-by-ten cubicle with yellow-curtained glass walls. They handed me a small cup for my urinalysis and directed me to the facilities. The lavatory was disgusting. Completely free of a western toilet, the room’s back section was slightly raised and and tiled in red squares, with an inset white basin. A constant stream of water accompanied human waste down the three-inch hole. After filling the small plastic cup, I had my blood drawn in the cubicle and was on my way. Four hours later, I returned to pick up my results.

My return to the hospital today, however, was essentially purposeless. I struggled for a while to explain to a few different receptionists what I needed: a chest x-ray for tuberculosis. Finally, a nurse seemingly fluent in English was found to assist me. The scene is roughly as follows.

(Nicholas sits in a chair SR facing a reception desk, SL. An Indian man in a white lab coat is seated at the desk and picks up the phone regularly, talking excitedly for brief moments while staring at Nicholas. A young Nurse enters, also wearing a calf-length white lab coat. She talks to the man for a minute in subdued Hindi while they both look across the stage at the pale twenty-something. Eventually, she approaches the foreigner expectantly.)

Nicholas: I need to get a chest x-ray for tuberculosis and to have a doctor write a note saying that I don’t have tuberculosis.
Nurse: You need to know if you have tuberculosis?
Nicholas: No, I don’t have tuberculosis. I just need a doctor to write a note saying that.

(The nurse walks back to the reception desk, presumably tells the man what Nicholas has just said. They talk for a moment while staring at Nicholas. Beat. She walks back to Nicholas.)

Nurse: So you have a prescription for tuberculosis and you need to talk to a doctor.
Nicholas. No, I don’t have tuberculosis. I need to get a chest x-ray so a doctor can say that I don’t have tuberculosis.

(The nurse once again returns to the reception desk. Same as before: talk, stare at Nicholas, beat, return.)

Nurse: You want to see if you have tuberculosis.
Nicholas. I do not have tuberculosis.
Nurse: So you want to know for sure that you don’t have tuberculosis.
Nicholas: I am almost certain that I do not have tuberculosis.

(Walk, talk, stare, beat, return.)

Nurse: You need a prescription for your tuberculosis.
Nicholas. No. I do not have tuberculosis.
Nurse: You want a chest x-ray.
Nicholas: Yes.
Nurse: To see if you have tuberculosis.
Nicholas: No. I do not have tuberculosis. I am studying here in the fall and I need a note from a doctor saying that I don’t have tuberculosis so that they will let me into the program.

(Once more.)

Nurse: You do not have tuberculosis, and you need a chest x-ray to receive a confirmation from a doctor.
Nicholas: Yes.

(She walks to the reception, explains in length to the man with the telephone. He picks up his phone and calls someone as she looks at him. He seems to be amused. About a minute of talking and listening, then he looks up at her and does the Indian nod and she returns to Nicholas on SR.)

Nurse: Our hospital is closed for the day. Please come back at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.

(Black.)

I picked up my backpack and started back to the program center. The program house is located in Bapu Nagar, about two kilometers from the hospital, so I was not planning on walking back during the afternoon’s peak temperature of 110F. However, I had little choice after realizing that aside from knowing the neighborhood, I knew no way of telling a rickshaw where to take me. I had an hour to spare so I decided I might as well walk.

On the way, I passed by the samosa stand I had visited a few times prior. The young boy who usually manages the counter is amused by the Hindi I try to use, and although today his father packaged my samosa, the boy still stared. I also attracted the attention of a short Indian man in a white button-up shirt who was ordering the same. He asked me — “Kya tum Hindi sun sakta ho?” (lit. Can you listen to Hindi?), and after telling him that I understand some and that I was in Jaipur to learn Hindi, he grew excited and kept asking me questions. “What does this say?” “Do you have a wife?” “Why are you learning Hindi?”

After talking to him for a few minutes, the man behind the counter handed me my samosa and charged me seven rupees. My new friend asked the man, “Why did you charge him more?” I overhead his price was only five rupees, but we are always charged the “videshi” price so it didn’t cross my mind. The man behind the counter answered, “Because he doesn’t understand Hindi.” I chuckled as my friend in the white shirt smirked at me. I thanked them for the conversation and finished the remaining ten-minute walk back to the program house.

Getting over the hurdle of embarrassment is one of the hardest parts of living in a foreign language, I was told. Rickshaw-walas and shopkeepers will continue to correct my sentences, but they visibly appreciate my effort and it’s an amazing learning tool. The immersion is exhausting, but thrilling, and in the end I don’t really have a choice anyway so I’ve stopped fighting it. Bharat, main aa raha hoon.