In a funny way this return voyage has had an element of symmetry with my short return to Amerikan soil: Strange in and of itself, and also strange in how normal and unpeculiar it all really felt, despite the feeling that all of this should be feeling much more surprising and unusual than it really is. Life picked up where it left off, albeit a little smaller and brighter than it was a few weeks ago. Smaller in a figurative sense, my circle of friends having shrunk considerably (and the current trajectory shows it becoming even tinier), many friends having returned the United States, leaving me a little less entertained than before. Brighter in a literal and definitively non-figurative sense, the tail-end of the monsoon leaving the skies clearer than ever and the sun potently strong, turning the concrete planes of the city into blazingly hot radiation, the outdoors becoming a daunting proposition for most of the day save for a few hours in the very early morning and the evening. The light before I left here was predominantly yellow and red, hot yet sympathetic. Now it's a piercing white, shrinking pupils and inciting groans (at least on my part).
For better or worse it's nice to be back... Palm trees everywhere, piles of trash lining the streets, the occasional cow meandering by, deafening car horns at all hours, that distinctive smell, frustrating and demeaning shouts coming from packs of pubescent boys roaming in packs, religion everywhere and nowhere at once.
The city is getting ready for Durga Puja, in early October, the biggest festival of the year for Kolkata. Temporary temples called pandals are sprouting up all over the city, behemoths of bamboo, tarpaulin, grass, mud, and whatever else is available, subsuming entire parks, streets, and intersections. Every neighborhood collects amongst themselves a ridiculous amount of money to fund these things which stand in their full glory for only a couple weeks. Interestingly, these don't have strictly 'religious' forms, taking on popular motifs and visages - last year's one of the largest in a development called Salt Lake took on the look of the Hogwart's castle, while a fairly revolutionary decentralized design down the street from me is transforming an intersection into what appears to be a pueblo village. I'm attaching a few in-progress photos, but I'm sure things will get more interesting once adornment gets underway.
In other news, while I genuinely do like this place, I'm still often upset by the heteronormativity, pseudo-religiosity, dim-witted 'intellectualism', and hypocrisy that tend to remain under the surface and noninvasive most of the time - relegated to an unfortunate but omnipresent minority - yet also have the tendency to arise in unison...
...That line of thinking was just now interrupted by a rather confusing conversation with my cleaning woman wherein at first I thought she was scolding me for wearing tshirts when I leave my house, saying they're a bad thing to wear for kids my age, though I soon realized she meant I should give her any clothing I don't want when I leave the country for her son who is my age because the clothing he wears is of bad quality. Same words, just with a slightly different arrangement and a hugely different meaning. It happens sometimes... but when things finally make sense it makes me rather pleased. I think I'll give her an extra shirt in addition to the traditional Durga Puja tip.
At one point she said her son has the same body shape as myself, albeit a few inches shorter, yet for the first second it sounded like she was calling me fat.
Oh the joys of foreign language.
My mind has derailed.
See you in a week, internet friends.
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