Week Six (Still in India)

So, rather surprisingly this week flew by without much notice at all. I sort of knew this would happen, considering how fast the second half of my last summer in Chandigarh went by, but I wasn't expecting the time warp to be as extreme as I've perceived it. A big part has definitely been this intensifying self-confidence and feeling (and more importantly ability) of knowing this city. My wandering down back roads and purposely walking new routes each time I need to get somewhere is starting to pay off, as more and more often I can visualize this city as a continuum of streets, landmarks, and directions rather than isolated shops and intersections reached by auto-rickshaw or metro. While of course I still get lost upon occasion and am often completely unassisted by Google maps when looking for a new address (The Google Maps system just doesn't cope well with a city as jumbled as Calcutta, with numerous twisting alleyways and self-determined addresses such as 52D Hindustan Park, 16/8 Goriahat, etc... This is a city where a building might claim an address tied to a street it's not even on, usually around the corner, but sometimes a good block away, It doesn't quite make sense). Also, It definitely helps that my Bengali seems to be improving rather consistently, meaning I can actually get answers from most people to questions I need answered and can get by with my day to day less shrouded in a mysterious haziness brought on by a lack of language. Of course, just as I still get lost in this city despite my increasing mental almanac of streets and places, There are definitely a constant stream of moments, and sometimes days where I feel like I know absolutely nothing once again, and I'm a completely new transplant into this language and culture, bumbling misunderstood replies and losing whatever is being said to me in a heavy cloud of the Bengali vowels and consonants, buzzing about but meaning nothing. Or sometimes perhaps I know every word being said to me in isolation, but due to idiom or an unexpected context, they make absolutely no sense to me. Oh well.

Another helping factor these days of late has been the fact that I actually have been doing things to fill my days besides going to class, wandering around in the heat, and eating snacks (though these are all fine activities in their own right). I've been frequenting the apparently rather large collection of art galleries in Calcutta, which instead of being collected into one particular district lie scattered throughout residential neighborhoods, including many in my own or in other areas close by in Southern Calcutta. So now while I go to class in the mornings, I wander to an art gallery, and have a snack on the way home. Four activities rather than three! It fills up a day! Also, Bengali's seem to be rather fond of art films (defined loosely as any film that doesn't progress its plot forward with dance and singing breaks every 10 minutes... cough... Bollywood) and there are free screenings amazingly often. I've now been to three of varying quality, but it makes for pretty good language practice while being entertained and getting out of the house. Also, there's something to be said for the amount of culture one comes to understand a little better through the lens of a camera... values, ideas, beliefs, and desires all being directed towards fulfilling a plot but free to be gleaned and understood as greater patterns and facets of the greater society that produced these films. One of the most constant undertones in all these films is this huge ongoing struggle of identity and change, of facing the realities of modernity and the loss of the past, an overwhelming melancholy than seems to seep out of the ubiquitous concrete walls and nests of quivering telephone wires that have come to define the modern/urban space of India and West Bengal. The allusion to the ancestral home is constant, particularly if it is a rural village home under bluer skies and date palms, moored in a sea of rice paddies. There is a distrust of the currently developing Indian identity, bound up in individuals but also particularly in these physical spaces they inhabit, the urban modernity versus the rural traditionality.

Also, It looks like my streak of relative social isolation might be coming to an end, as I'm hoping that the number of a friend of a friend living in Calcutta might provide me with that first link into a social life in this city. If not, if it doesn't deliver these high expectations I'll be alright with it, but I'm definitely hoping these parts of my life begin to change just as much as the other bits and pieces. Also, through a party this last weekend I've met a few people who by my guesses constitute that majority of the South Calcutta expat community, including a guy who It turns out I had eaten pizza with along with a mutual friend just over a year ago, up in Northern Manhattan near the cloisters before sneaking in and taking in some fine views of the Hudson. (Small word). Another hope is that these contacts might lead to a slight widening of my social circle here... though we'll see.

As an aside, and in reference to this weekend's gathering, Lately, I've been increasingly amused by this strange lifestyle I and my fellow students have come to hold over these past six weeks, becoming more obvious as time goes on and we become more acclimated to this city and its culture. It's this funny way of life that is a weird kind of equilibrium formed by our own cultural sensibilities that we have less fear of expressing and exerting, and the culture that indeed creates the context and parameters for all of our decisions and actions. We are living a very western life simultaneous and superimposed on Indian circumstance, leading to some beautiful cultural mish-mashes that from one step back are pretty consistently hilarious.

For example, we needed to get some whiskey last night and the following conversation took place via text-message between my friend and myself, perfectly encapsulating this great (at least mostly) peaceful clash of cultures, of our experiences and normatives pushed into an Indian context and its limitations. I have provided some contextual notes in parentheses:

Friend: Hey ben – do you have whiskey or will we need to pick some up?

Me: We need to buy some. I can do it or you can send your kajer lok. (basically a house servant, of a pretty low status and occupational connotation, translating literally as 'man of work') Tell me what you would rather. Yea! Whiskey! Friends!

Friend: Our kajer lok is on chuti (vacation/break) and his sub is a thread wearing brahmin (this caste-level doesn't drink by a rule, a rule that is occasionally broken or ignored though is a rule nonetheless) so if you're willing, I may take you up on your offer-i will pay though since i don't think i did for bishnupur. (Remember Bishnupur? Rural West Bengal...)

And of course while buying my whiskey from the liquor store, a barred-up window affair that requires you to stand in the street as you buy your sinful beverages, open to any judgment from a passerby, a guy who spoke terrible English but insisted upon it over the use of Bengali came up to me and (I think) was demanding to know if I drank Vodka, and if not why I didn't like it, all the while claiming himself a threaded Brahmin and thus not a drinker. However, he seemed rather fond of Vodka and was loitering outside a liquor store, so who knows what he was really up to. Point being, as exhibited in both that texted back and forth, and my altercation with the 'brahmin' on the street, there's a huge novelty, at least for me, in these hilarious juxtapositions of Amerikan style drinkin' on the weekend with the ubiquity of house 'help' for anyone of a certain class her in India and the mores of thread-wearing brahmnical social divisions.

In other news, still failing gloriously in my search for an urban planning ngo to work with here. While I've found information for a handful online, every email I send either bounces back immediately as a defunct address, or flies off into the bowels of Indian cyberspace without so much as a disinterested reply. Though in general I've been doing good here and don't feel quite as lost or bored, I really need to do something at least mildly useful with myself. We'll see. I'll hope.