oh, how i love kolkata

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Okay, so I’ve been fighting with the internet connections here in order to upload some pictures and send a very overdue update, but I have given up. I don’t know why the computer imported the above Kolkata skyline picture to be massive, nor do I know why it is now taking approximately eight million years to upload another one. So this will be one long update with only one picture. Which is the worst kind of blog, I know. I apologize in advance…

I’ve been in Calcutta (which is actually called Kolkata here) for almost 2 weeks. It feels like forever, but forever in a good way. I am staying at a guest house where I share a room with 4 other girls. Originally, I thought that sharing space might be awful, but it’s been the best living situation I could have stumbled upon, and I have had a great time getting to know them. It’s so nice to return home after a long day and to have people there to eat or process or vent or laugh with. They’ve been really fun.

The city of Kolkata is unlike any other city I’ve visited in India. There is a warmth and energy here that I have fallen in love with. I walk through the streets to get to the market or the bus stop, and it is forever busy and full of life. There are markets full of fruits and vegetables and odds and ends. There are vendors cooking food or making chai in carts on the side of the road. There are groups of men playing cards on folding tables. There are people bathing in faucets sticking up on the sidewalks. There are cows and dogs and chickens and cats and babies who are never wearing pants. And always so many people! I am woken up every morning by the Muslim call to prayer that is sung over a loudspeaker that wakes the entire neighborhood. I go to sleep to the sounds of the traffic, still honking at any time of night.

But there’s another side to it all as well. In addition to the sights and sounds I have grown to love, the grit and poverty here are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There are people everywhere sitting and asking for money for food as I go by. In the busier areas, they follow me for blocks, grabbing at my arms, mumbling the same plea over and over, no matter how many times I say no. Sometimes they ask for money, and sometimes they are women asking for food or milk for babies. I’ve been told by people who live and work in Kolkata that, like in Delhi, there is a gang culture here, and if you give to these people, it will not actually go to them. Even if you buy milk for a baby, they often will return it to the shop and the shop owners will give money. And even if this wasn’t the case, there are so many people and such overwhelming need that I could spend days running from one person to another, buying milk and food and giving one rupee. I also see people- adults and children- just laying flat on the concrete everywhere, sleeping on the sidewalks. There are little tents set up on the sidewalk outside of my guest house, and there is a family that lives there with their children. It is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. There are cultural differences at play here, and differing concepts as to what it means to have “adequate” living arrangements, but coming from the US, it surely is difficult to process and to see on a daily basis. And I’ll be honest, at times, the constant honking is still unnerving, and I want to smack the hood of a car and shout, “We know you’re here! We all know that you’re here!”…but I don’t.

My experience of this city has been very different than the other places I’ve been, because although I am still very much a tourist, I am also a volunteer. So I have long term volunteers showing me the ins and outs of the city. I am eating street food (carefully) and drinking chai from the chai men. I am getting to know the people who sit outside of my guest house each day. And possibly the most adventurous of all, I am riding the buses to get to my volunteer sites. Which often don’t come to a complete stop to pick up or drop off passengers, so you have to run and jump for it. It’s also impossible for me to learn all the routes, so I’m often shouting my destination to the driver, and if he nods that they are going there, I jump on. It’s fantastic.

While I’m here, I’m volunteering with Missionaries of Charity, or Mother Teresa’s, as it is commonly called here. There are multiple homes where volunteers work around the city. I am spending my mornings at Shanti Dan, which is a home for mentally handicapped women. Three afternoons a week, I work at Kalighat, or Nirmal Hriday, the more well-known “home for the sick and dying destitutes”. The work has been tiring and intense and more than I am able to really process. My fear is that it will be so overwhelming that I won’t be able to really allow it to sink in, and when I leave, it will be as if it never happened- as if the reality of these people’s lives is not actually something that I’ve seen and entered into, even if for a short time. However, in spite of all the intensity, I am really glad to be here. I have had some precious (and hilarious) encounters, and I have built little relationships with some of the ladies at both homes that I will cherish.

I’ll try my best to post more about the work I’m doing and the adventures I’m having soon- I just don’t want this post to get so long that nobody will ever get through it! So for now, that’s the Kolkata overview. It’s intense and crazy and gritty and busy and I really am having a wonderful time. I can’t believe that I leave India in a week and a half. I’ve been here for so long; it’s very weird to leave it behind.

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