Week Three (Preview)

Things take a turn for the worst!
The thrills and chills of the Indian medical system!

Week Two

Rather than things being pretty un-great across the board, this week has definitely been one of ups and downs, leading me to waver on my feelings about staying here for a year.

Firstly, to address the unpleasantries. Primarily insects and black outs, or as they are called here, load shifting or something along those lines. My computer has not once but twice now been host to a cluster of tiny reddish ants who apparently have a reputation of getting inside of computers and eating bits of connective materials and such. The most recent bout was this morning, when my computer would not start for a couple moments, leading me to go into a flurry of muffled 'fuck's and 'shit's and of course 'really?'s while shaking my computer in the air and squishing whatever creatures happen to fall out of it. Not what I would consider a good time, and definitely relatively worse than finding a cockroachish looking creature the size of a thumb intrepidly staking m bathroom and not backing down. Here's hoping the cockroach doesn't return with family and friends and my computer is able to survive the year (doubtful). Oh, and my futile attempts against big bites, fought with an anti-mosquito cream called Odomos are not working to well, especially around the ankles where things just aren't looking great. Good thing I'm on malaria medication!

Then, the black outs... they occur consistently at least twice a day, making homework and things like that particularly hard and just destroys any drive I have to complete the work. Bangla simply is not a fun language to read b candle-light, illuminated by a candle-stick apparently designed to look like an American pilgrim-esque turkey. Worse though, without electricity there are no fans, therefore the temperature begins to rise and the perspiration begins. Apparently in a 'subtropical/tropical' climate such as this, heat and sweat when coupled with the 90%+ monsoon humidity we have here lead to a flu-like cold kind of deal, sniffling and blowing one's nose while sweating and shaking ants out of one's computer. After a particularly warm and regular series of blackouts I ended up falling to the sickness and am currently home from school, experiencing a particularly long blackout in the comfort of my own home. I'm definitely thinking about moving at the end of the summer to a building with a generator... and hot water, considering I've heard this place gets down to the 40s and 50s in the wintertime.

Besides these undercurrents of frustration, I've started to get out more and have been making a few connections in the city. I attended an art opening the other day, leading to a fun mingling with upper class Indians with beer and snacks (this is India of course, this is how art openings are done). I ended up chatting up the owner a bit, who invited me back again later that week to talk about art, see my sketchbook, etc. It was largely pleasant, definitely broke up the monotony of the week, though I'm still trying to find some kids in this city around my age who are interested in things I would be interested in, which so far has not happened.

Though, as an aside, while leaving the gallery I was asked to remind this woman of my name. The name Benjamin has never elicited a reply such as this:

Her: "That's Jewww-ish!" (a squeal of excitement)

Me: "I am Jewish."

Her: "You're Jewww-ish! Isn't that nice."

Me: "Yup."

Her: "Sara, look, he's Jewww-ish! Isn't that nice?"

Sara: "Oh you're Jewww-ish!"

Her: "Isn't that nice."

Apparently, as I've come to learn, Kolkata has a special place in its heart for the Jews, caring about its dwindling population of less than 30 Jews as one would for an old and sickly beloved family pet. A glassy sheen suddenly appearing over normally dry eyes. (Hey the power just want back on, hello fans/pakha/ventilation) This comes from strangely enough from a 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' type of scenario, wherein because of the strong underlying Hindu Muslim antagonism remaining between West and East Bengal, the largely Hindu population of West Bengal/Kolkata and to varying degrees other parts of India have taken on a perhaps misguided affection for the Jews, leading to such strangely warm receptions as these. I was immediately given the number of 'Jo Cohen' with an insist to call her right then and there. I took the number though backed down from the immediate call (I was beginning to feel a cold coming on) though I definitely plan on calling her later this coming week. Here's hoping for an invitation to Shabbat dinner in India. We'll see...

While taking the subway to the Jewish bakery in central Kolkata (good cake, not so good of a reception by Mr. Nahoum... he seemed like he had had a long day) a guy rather uncomfortably invited me to his club/disco where he dj's, standing too close (though India always stands too close) and repeatedly ramming his hand into mine holding a bar running across the ceiling, me inching back precociously, ending up sandwiched rather uncomfortably against the wall. The Indian club scene, having experienced a sample of it in Chandigarh and Delhi, is just not what I am looking for is too expensive and is just not what I would ever call a good time. Though at least I feel like I'm making an effort, getting out quite a bit (until being sequestered by this sweaty cold) and not feeling quite as incompetent as I had been feeling.

I think a different apartment might make a big difference, I need to get away from these bugs which find their way into anything and everything (he says as he squishes a wee ant crawling out of the corner of his computer screen) and find a place that has consistent power, lest I spend the remainder of the monsoon season and autumn (which is another hot season, West Bengal having 6 rather than the normal 4 seasons, allowing room for another hot season, sandwiching the monsoon in relentless sun). And hopefully my recently feverish bout of emailing in order to make some contacts in this city will be successful and I can start to meet some people to compliment the small sundry cadre of my program.

I just reminded myself that this whole discombobulated experience is being paid for by the state department. For some reason, constantly scratching the big bites on my ankles, checking each port of my computer ever few minutes for the emergence of a new ant or two, and sweating under a constant stream of blackouts I don't feel much like a dependent of the grand old government of the US of A. They better be hosting a good party at the embassy this July 4th. Otherwise I no longer believe in the international branches of our government.

Week One

Largely, the thought running through my head this past week has been that of confusion and nihilism. At the end of the day, despite my academic and career-oriented plans that easily incorporate my study abroad into their wordy webs, on an innate level I have absolutely no idea why I am here and its eating at me, weighing down on me like the humidity here and the omnipresent sheen of perspiration and clinging dust it leaves. I'm definitely feeling confined by this feeling of questioning, pacing in my bedroom, staring at my hopelessly trying ceiling fan, watching the pack of wary dogs that stake out the sidewalk below my verandah. I'm hoping this will change, but as of right now I don't feel connected to this place, no real expediency or necessity to my living here or my rather time-consuming language learning. While I question the validity or seriousness of this train of though, I've been considering forfeiting my fellowship for the year, cutting my stay here down to 10 weeks from a much more frightening and ominous number I'm estimating at around 42 weeks. It's only been a week so I'm going to reevaluate my sentiments in another week or two, but I just can't see myself being here that long, especially considering at the end of the summer our cadre cuts itself down to 3 from a relatively crowded 7.

I'm pretty lonely here, isolated from New York and Philadelphia by a 9 and a half hour time difference, several thousand miles and at least one ocean depending on which way you're counting. I walk down the street and am largely ignored but always a trail of stares lies in my wake, often coming early enough to be obvious and glaring, adding an intensity to compliment the sun, its presence hidden by smog and endless towers of verandahs but still indicated by the thick drippy heat. There really are essentially no foreigners here, even east and central Asians are only an occasional abnormality. In the last week I've seen only seven or eight obvious foreigners, a batch of white girls in blue and purple saris descending into the subway in the central part of the city, another errant guy standing on a platform, a couple in the foreign registry office, and an elderly and seemingly disillusioned man walking a major street called Rash Bihari in a frightened expedient shuffle, clutching his red messenger bag to his chest like an only child, a delicate thing to be cradled and shield from the cacophony and dirt of the street. I am so white here, for lack of a better word, still stumbling both in my footing and sense of direction, and also my language, stuttering like a toddler in sentences heavy with pronouns, pauses, and interjected English.

Enough with such kvetching and lonely mutterings...

Kolkata as a city has been a huge surprise, a city far different than what I expected, nowhere near as idealistically ruralist as Chandigarh, as bent on hyper-urbanization as Delhi, as picturesque as Jaipur and its surrounding hills despite its layer of filth and tourist-driven greed. I was expecting a city of sediments, history laid out in horizontal slabs built up to form the canyons than run through it as streets, carrying its ballooning population like a slowly bubbly silty stream, pre-colonial historical buildings crowned by the implants of the British Raj and finally splattered and shot through by modern construction and mushrooming towers. While this kind of sedimentary growth exists at the core of this city, what is more visible and apparent is a different kind of layering, sticky films adhering to all surfaces, roads, walls, cubby holes, and rooftops, growing not only upwards but also inwards, suffocating the streets in a barrage of hawkers, their stalls sporting piles of aluminum dishware or mounds of handkerchiefs, greasy sweets or piles of mangos indicated at a distance by an ensuing cloud of flies. The smaller streets cease to be these pulsating arteries of movement I imagined and become more like seams that mark off the end of one building and its outpour and the beginning of the next, its traffic squeezing along this impossibly narrow space, forcing its edges away momentarily, only to have this footprint of space immediately consumed and reabsorbed into the blurry edges of buildings and city-blocks. On a bad day the soot that hangs in the air adds to this claustrophobia, the thick clouds sitting in the sky seemingly meeting the exhaust trails of gaudily painted trucks and tiny auto-rickshaws, forming a single gray-white mass that also has come to set up residency in the city, competing for a more psychological kind of space in this crowded metropolis.

I intend to take pictures once I have a Ziploc baggy to protect my camera from the constant humidity and threat of a sudden downpour, though I will promise you that each picture taken will be only a tiny piece of this city, an object depicted by a constrained focus because this city has a kind of visual density too cacophonous to accurately capture, to portray in a way that is decipherable and meaningful.

If anyone feels the desire to say hello do email me,
or if you're feeling particularly nice, if you send me a real paper email I'd return the favor and you'd get a nice foreign stamp,

Benjamin Weinryb Grohsgal
C/O AIIS
12/2 Swinhoe Street
Kolkata 700019 India