Week Fourteen (Deus Ex.... Chinese Moonscape)

This week two detached but rather fun anecdotes from the more sundry moments of the recent day to day...

1. Deus ex Machina

Walking to the institute, my roommate noticed several of the cars we were passing had a touch of flair added to their hoods, sitting in stark contrast to the blustery monsoon sky overhead: a garland of marigolds tenderly draped across a gleaming grill or banana leaves tucked behind the ears of a set of headlights, creating a jaunty torch-like effect. Seeing as these decorations were fairly subtle by Indian standards, and rather well dispersed, I thought nothing of it. However his suspicions of a 'machinery' puja taking place were in fact correct. Wednesday and Thursday this past week marked a two-day puja to our leaden cohabitants. As the day wore on more cars plied the streets in similar style, as buses hurtled down busy streets bedecked across the whole of their boxy torsos in a network of garlands and tinsel, like overweight pubescents on the way to prom. Factories big and small closed up, the machinery given a couple days rest while the workers themselves apparently employed themselves with drinking and hollering. Even tiny xerox booths on the street were shuttered, their door-jambs peppered with flower petals, book-ended by tiny green coconuts and terracotta. The neurological scanning clinic on the ground floor of my building was closed, also bedazzled. Pujas have blossomed suddenly on the streets, and the use of a rather friendly, benign, female deity for the representation of this mechanized god is quite interesting. While at first this rather graceful tender figure seemed discordant with the clang and soot of a taxi or a backyard coal hopper, on second thought it makes perfect sense within the common misogynistic perspective. Just as a machine does a man's will under his expectations, never straying save for a malfunction or wear and tear for which he is ultimately responsible, so does this ultra-feminine, delicate goddess represent and fulfill an idealized patriarchal power dynamic. And so man's manifestations of cogs and ball bearings gain something very obviously akin to his desired plunder and domination of the sweetly perfumed bosom. Oh, elbow grease...

2. Chinese Industrial Moonscape with Restaurant (and Bar)

I went the wrong way to get somewhere yesterday. In Kolkata there are a couple 'china-towns', though while I can't speak for the one I have not yet visited, the older 'Tangra' neighborhood Chinatown was nothing like the mixture of sheen and grit that can be found in Amerikan Chinatowns - the familiar strings of alternating fish markets and bubble tea shops spun about a collection of blocks effacing the downtown of most major cities. I'm still not entirely sure if I saw the real 'China-town', though it was where I was pointed to as I asked tea-sipping old-folk on the street for the 'China-lokder jayga', or the 'place of the China people'. (To backtrack for a moment, how I ended up where I did end up...) Rather than asking locals or friends how to get to this part of the city, and where to go within it, I decided that I could simply walk east towards it from a point along the subway route, and sooner or later easilly run into it, red bean buns and paper lanterns announcing my arrival with great pomp. However, Kolkata is not a city of continuity and gradual variation. Rather, through the rather fierce segmentation of the city by railroads, highways and flyovers, government and army installations, and anything else large and imposing, along with social and religious division, what appear to be condensed rural villages suddenly appear along the road leading from a posh inner-city suburb, rice paddies and water tanks interspersed with shopping malls and high-rise condominiums without obvious patterns or planning. Thusly, rather than enjoying a simple walk from downtown Kolkata, from the crowds of shoppers buying their new limes and vermilions for puja, to the golds and maroons of a friendly Chinatown, I first spent an inordinate amount of time walking through neighborhoods of car repair shops and wholesale foam-goods distributors, followed by finding myself caught up in the tumult of the second main train station, Sealdah. I began to cross over the station by way of confusing curving elevated highways with sidewalks, skipping over what momentarily became pastoral below, women in bright saris sauntering about the grass between the railroad tracks below. As I continued, from this point onwards the stares I recieved became more frequent and intense, a mixture of mild hostility and curiosity growing more palpable for the sweaty whitey walking around neighborhoods that have names to very few. Roads gave way to dirt, until suddenly a hollowed skeleton of a partially constructed apartment building thrust from the slowly quieting streets below, a collection of auto-rickshaws at its base. A short ride on one took me through a series of rambling streets as urbanity faded away, dropping me off in an intersection almost identical to that I had come from. With narry a dumpling in sight I asked for the way to 'bhalo chini-khabar' (good Chinese food) and was directed along a road that after a sharp right turn shrank to a 1-lane, yet surprisingly meticulously paved road, winding amongst ever rising window-less walls, laced and fringed by barbed-wire yet unclear in the reason of their state of lockdown.

At this point things took a turn towards the beautiful surreal, as normal physical spaces and organization gave way to a completely new world that evoked feelings of Utah canyons, a desaturated moonscape, and soviet Russia. This was a neighborhood of tanneries and barracks, many now closed down yet their shells infilled with family apartments, a number of Chinese characters emblazoned on the entrance, perhaps also adorned by an adorable shiny porcelain kitty-cat waving hello and saluting in good luck. These massive structures stood in contrast to the irregular piecemeal jumble of Kolkata architecture that spills itself out upon its streets with little sense of privacy or seclusion. Stark solids with faced eachother across the narrow streets with little perforation or variation, studded by windows nonetheless darkened and masked by screens. While I heard the occasional waft of Chinese verbiage, emanating from an aggravated mother or a television variety program, they remained hidden behind their domestic fortresses, a few spare inhabitants venturing out but strictly atop shiny motorbikes, streaking through these grayed industrial canyons their pale cheeks and cheerfully colored outfits, a smeared memory of color left mingled in their exhaust, bizarre horsemen for this apocalyptic scene. Narrow streets were lined with moat-like gutters, a dark sludgy water idling by, its surface bound by an iridescent membrane, overtones of blue, purple, and silver redundantly driving home these gentle brooks' toxicity. They were wide enough to require a system of tiny bridges - some as simple as a concrete slabs laid across the banks, others more elaborate, feigning Chinese or sometimes orientalized Japanese silhouettes and embellishment.

As I wandered about these endless twisting lanes, I never finally found the 'china-town' I had been hoping to find: lines of stall-sized stores and restaurants, steamed buns and cheap produce. Rather, installed into the sides of these converted tanneries were massive restaurants, announcing their locations deep within the folds of the neighborhood by way of billboards hoisted high above the walled city below. Each proudly touted its bar which, combined with their rather desolate state of emptiness, was an obvious indication that 4 in the afternoon was not the high time to wander about in search of good food and memories of home. After a bowl of rather viscous sweet corn soup at the Hakka House, recommended by a rather jolly man with poor teeth and a plaid lungi wandering about and rather comically upfront about his Muslim background, I stumbled out of the confines of this ghetto, now standing on the edge of a highway, opposite a lush pond fringed with palm trees, traffic whizzing by. Ironically, this was an area I knew, and also knew to be easily traveled and within an hour of my house. A ride on another auto-rickshaw, the electric trolley, and finally a short walk by foot brought me back home in about a third of the time it took to get there originally. However, I'm glad for my solitary errant wander, having gotten a chance to get profoundly lost, feeling a vertigo that has become more unfamiliar each day, grounding myself through the help of many strangers and conversations in surprised Bengali.

As I've gotten more comfortable here, surrounding myself in a small bubble of friends and the familiarity of South Kolkata, this sort of wonderfully confusing wandering has become less frequent, the feeling of truly being in a foreign place fleeting, my life lacking in the novelty and profoundness with which this place is in fact quite richly endowed. As the monsoon ebbs away I hope to get back into this occasional habit, setting out with just enough money to get home in case of emergency, alone, relying on little more than a vague sense of direction and destination, and seeing what happens.

Sadly, I actually took only a single photo to document this particular jaunt... will post when camera works again.

Week Thirteen (Return)

Back. In India.

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.

Week eleven-twelve (amerika)

It seems only proper to continue this little self-examining venture while on my short hiatus back in the United States, since while every day in India is a barrage of new cultural and sensational blasts – coming in staccato in an ether of dust and rosewater – this time away contributed to refocusing my impressions of my two concurrent 'home' cities, Philadelphia and New York, along with the greater Amerikan psyche and stasis. Already, the first moment back on domestic soil I had my first Sartre-esque pang of misanthropic nausea, as nasalized Amerikan voices rang out in pointless complaint in line in the immigration hall. In the USA there is a pervading fear of silence, that a couple moments without words shared between friends or family somehow serve to reveal a fragility and lacking within the relationship, discrediting its very existence. A second without banter irreconcilably results in knots in stomachs and a a fear-ridden wave of boredom strikes itself upon the faces of all those involved. A pallor develops, along with an incessant need to jabber about something, anything, if only to restore the color in one's jowls.

However it seems that in India these moments are accepted and perfectly allowed, the silence able to permeate the air and hang thickly for several minutes, broken by little more than a cough or the patient chewing of (perhaps) a lukewarm dosa or clump of dal-soaked rice. It is not that Amerikans are somehow magically blessed with an innate knack for witty conversation; rather lulls in conversation are filled with frivolous complaint and often audaciously self-interested and subconsciously prideful pronouncements. There is no passivity, no acceptance, no realization of the minuscule nature of our self-engineered universes of thought and action. While I thought the drone of familiar Amerikan accents might be a welcome sound, instead I stood there largely disappointed in the situation, in 'my people', wistfully wishing myself into the complicated but generally - on a macrocosmic level – more humble and passive culture I had momentarily left behind in India.

'I am on vacation for two weeks in the United States' - A phrase I have pronounced jokingly many times but slowly am realizing the queasy truth to it. I frankly feel like a tourist - not in that I've really been out of country for a hugely long time, but rather that I feel completely untied from this place. I have no obligations, no relationships in flux or requiring of transformation, modulation, moderation. It's rather akin to the same depressing melancholy I experienced when I first got to Kolkata. But now these two places, cultures, spheres are reversed in my mind and my relationship to them. This is novel, of course, but simultaneously oddly exhilarating and alarming. I suddenly feel as if the tourist in the place I've grown up in for so many years (and I repeat this sentiment not so much due to weak or redundant writing, but rather to suggest the ridiculous frequency with which this thought and creeping fear skitters about my mind).

I come back to this city, to New York, yet I feel as if I am floating above, under, and through the crowds, separate and distinct - albeit a feeling inhabiting my own mind and probably not felt or observed by others, who most probably see me as just another face in the crowd rather than an aberrant 'stranger'. (Unlike the case as the rare whitey in Kolkata) I go back to old haunts and new - my brownstone of 2 years, gay bars and clubs, diners and subway cars - each cultural condition now obviously so Amerikan, so unique to this place, blindly stumbling along assuming of their own right of existence and validity without realizing their cultural exceptionalness, the amazing circumstances that have allowed for their formation and continued existence. A mixture of stomach churning brash audaciousness... things so worthy of celebration, parades, sociological texts!

Twinky 20-somethings gyrating on the dance floor to remixed Beyonce, skin sticky with weak vodka tonics, sweat, and probably the saliva of at least a couple of their compatriots, blissfully unaware of the very different circumstances this lifestyle might confront throughout the rest of the world over. And yet, this blissful unawareness, eyelids half closed from the bright lights scooping arcs over the crowd, is in fact a championing of our modern/western social liberalism, an achievement. One can dance with abandon without worry of violating a constitutional amendment (as in India) and ironclad expectations of family and society. My feelings are scrambled and confused, momentarily I want to condemn these people and their narrow perspectives, yet at the same time I want to cheer this brazenness, this thrilling unawareness and the leaps and bounds our society had to have made to allow for this display of ironically basic and instinctual expression, left unencumbered by concern and the potential of real, loaded condemnation.

(NB: To explain the now rather standardized use of the word 'Amerikan' in my posts, seeing as American in truth does not in fact only imply the United States, yet United States-y seems a bit cumbersome to use as an adjective or for citizenry, I've substituted in Amerika/Amerikan, also making a bit of a conscious reference to the ideologies and discussions of the YIPpies back in the day. Though I suppose it's a bit hypocritical of me to make this kind of allusion, considering this whole jaunt is being funded by the good ol' Amerikan gubberment... ha?)

Week Eight-Ten (Retrograde)

I apologize for my apparent disappearance from the world these past few weeks, though on the advice of a number of people, I'll return to my regular weekly entries upon my return to India in a few days (And also will be posting a special Amerika addition touching on my momentary re-immersion back 'home', written primarily on street corners and in public transportation in the dual orbiting satellites of New York and Philly).

I'm not going to recount everything that finished up my last few weeks of summer in India, though I will post a couple more fruit pictures I valiantly took, but explain away my disappearance in a summarizing manner. Mostly, I suppose I stopped writing because we got an internet connection in our apartment so instead of doing more useful things I endlessly browsed the New York Times website, excusing my laziness as a requisite 'need to stay connected' to 'issues in the United States'. Reading articles on new restaurants and little old women traipsing through the upper west side do not however qualify as pertinent issues. Right now the internet is disconnected and it might stay that way.

More importantly however, my lapse stems from the recent development of a bona fide 'life' developing for me in India, meaning I'm living a little less in my head and more in the world, with people and new acquaintances (both local and foreign) and have recently found myself occasionally busy, a strange change in the mindset of my day to day. This means less time blatantly set aside for staring at ceilings, sweating, and thinking, and more time doing and seeing and thinking as a side effect in between. Also this means some more private and less PG things happening in my life that I don't quite feel comfortable posting on a general 'travel' blog. I want to write about these things but might figure out a way to divvy them out privately. A new small notebook now rests at my side so that I might blog on paper and then type it in later, a tactic that served me well whilst in the United States.

Long story short: a promised return, a more interesting and less redundant line of thought, exciting adventures (one hopes), and eight more months ahead of me back in India.

Week Seven (Fruit, Culture, Etc)

I guess I've gotten to a point these days living here in Calcutta that drastic mood shifts and daunting new perspectives no longer dominate my life. Instead I feel like I'm acclimating to the point of being able to see and experience the smaller things, the actual bits and pieces that are all ticking away to form this city and thereby shaping my experiences here. Because I feel like I can cope with most things this place decides to through at me, errant incidents become amusing rather than disappointing and mind-numbing, the daily dealings become something I can control and shape rather than something I'm simply subjected to. I must say, It's kind of neat. Though, as a consequence, the sort of thesis-bound blogging I've been doing these past few weeks doesn't seem to work to well for my current state of things and mind, thusly instead I'll be sharing a few bits and pieces of things of late, and if there is some ideology or sentiment in fact binding them all together, I suppose I'll see it by the end.

Produce:

Vegetables and fruit here are immensely cheap and abundantly sundry, thus lending themselves to a lot of experimentation on my behalf. While eating a vegetable without quite knowing its name or purpose is always a bit problematic, as improperly prepared it might adhere to all the surfaces of one's mouth in a sticky-sandpapery kind of way, or just taste like chlorophyll-y poo, the purchase and consumption of mysterious fruit has become a bit of a hobby of mine. All you need to is buy a kilo of whatever “for today” rather than “for tomorrow” to ensure ripeness, haggle the guy down 25-50% of his original price (the longer the pause and distracted gaze away from your direction upon asking the price, the more it's being jacked up, an observation that has become a fine component of my haggling methodology), maybe get it's name in at least Bengali and Hindi, and a new fruity adventure is yours! While guavas, ripe to the point of becoming like an odd custard with seeds, have become a larger component of my diet than I had ever expected them to, lots of strange fruits with names I may or may not know abound, and while I'm coming at this a bit late, having already not photographed the yields of the short seasons of some of the more obscure fruits, I'll begin my fruit-phlog now with the Sitaphal (Hindi) or A(t/d?)aphal (Bengali?):

This odd fruit has been deemed the 'custard apple' by the British, a proper name to express its rather giving texture. When ripe the fruit can be simply broken apart along the seams of its scales, each scale on the outside reflecting a big black seed on the inside surrounded by a layer of fruit a bit like lychee's but more giving, and tasting more of pear and apple, mild and kind of funny. While maybe not mind-bogglingly delicious, falling short of such delicacies as fine blushed mangoes, the sitaphal is good fun, I must say, and the sound of seed after seed hitting my plate is oddly reassuring of good things to come, that perhaps life will go on improving with every fulfilling plink. (This may be quite an exaggeration, and I don't think I actually gain personal restitution through eating this fruit, but I like the idea of being able to do so.)

The Mish Mash:

One of the neat parts of having been here for a while, especially in a city that really is relatively metropolitan and cosmopolitan, is starting to see the parts for the whole, no longer just experiencing this place as “India” but rather as a rather special condition within a larger Indian culture, and made up of a huge number of influences, but local and from abroad. Especially comparing this place to my experience in Chandigarh, a city of a very strong Panjabi and Sikh culture with many fewer complexities and aberrations thrown into the mix, I've definitely come to appreciate what a neat mixed up place this is. I also feel like I'm a part of it all, an Amerikan Bideshi here for long enough to pick up a number of local customs, habits, and cultural tid-bits, while decidedly preserving and projecting huge bits of my own cultural perspective and exuding it through my thoughts and actions. There's a certain giddy thrill that comes from recollecting a particular night or day, realizing what a funny mixture of things have all cooperated or contested to form whatever experience might have just occurred. For instance, last night I had a couple of other Amerikans over for dinner, a celebration of raw foods over the generally over-cooked squishiness of Indian food, but tinged yellow with turmeric and eaten with lemons and onions in big hunks, a very Indian culinary habit. After, we went to the house of a Bengali friend they had made at a Baul concert, a rather spaced-out man nearing 50 with a son in his low teens, and a French live-in (lover?) of 29 years who's been here for a few months, bearing stories of Europe and acidic fly-bites from the Sudan. The concept of the 'third culture' came up in conversation, the idea of identities and cultures emerging out of mixed contexts and contributions which got me wondering if in fact I'm slowly becoming part of this third culture. Do you have to be born into it, its ambiguity developing from a geographically contorted childhood and a confused sense of nationality, or can the third culture be developed and appropriated through a mix of preserving one's own culture while adapting and settling into a new one, neither remaining fully separate or really assimilating, but straddling the line, contributing while simultaneously absorbing and filtering? At least I have been developing this pleasing ambiguous feeling that surges up whenever (usually grammatically poor) Bengali dribbles out of my mouth without me noticing, or I understand bits of Hindi being shouted across the street mixed up with popular English – all of these linguistic aspects tied up into cultural and geographical activities and identities of those speaking them. But I'm digressing...

The rickshaw ride over was complicated by the late hour and the fact that our directions were given in terms of a sweet shop (Bengali: Mishti Dokan) by the name of Mithai, which literally means sweet in Hindi, leading to the rickshaw-wallah thinking we were looking for any ol' sweet shop at 11 at night, when of course they were all closed. The situation was rectified with a little bit of Bengali that the guy understood, though I think the lesson from this and many other experiences I've had these past few weeks is that I really need to reinforce what little Hindi I know from last year and build upon it over this next year, because nobody is ever really speaking only Bengali or Hindi or English, but rather a mash of all of them, and it's come in handy when I've known both the Bengali and the Hindi of certain words, and always a bit embarrassing when I only know the Bengali, or detrimental and problematic when I only know the English. So, in addition to my goal of getting good at the harmonica, I now have the goal of learning Hindi. See, it's a cultural mish-mash! It's great!

A pleasing cap to the evening took the form of strange late night religiosity. While walking through my neighborhood on my way home, aside from rickshaw-wallahs sleeping beside their carriages and the packs of dogs dozing nearby, the only other people out at that hour were small packs of young men and the occasional woman, jingling away with some kind of religious accoutrement for whatever holiday it apparently is. They were mostly dressed in a strong orange-saffron, strips tied around their heads and wider strips forming lungis for down below. Slightly flexible sticks with weights and bells on each end sat upon their shoulders, so that the bells would chime and clang with each step. Chants of unfamiliar words reverberated against the barren canyon-walls and a light tinkling silence was left in their wake. I could still hear them in the shower.

Week Seven (Miniature)

Strange lumps and a swollen left hand (spider bites?) have come and gone in less than 24 hours. Maybe this means my immune system is getting stronger. I think I had an argument the other day and essentially dissed the other party (my neighbor) in a coy and roundabout, but definitely obvious way, all in Bengali. This, to me, is a sign that I am perhaps actually becoming more able in this language. Perhaps. In other news, hoping that Lufthansa doesn't decide to go on strike when I'm supposed to be going home, because that would be quite annoying. Though I guess being stuck in a foreign country is best done when under the jurisdiction of the US State Department, right?

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.