true life planet

October 4th. 2008

I’ve been in this city for a few days now.

At first, it seemed so overwhelming, but eventually I had to just leave my hotel room and deal with it.

Calcutta is exactly as I pictured it to be—full of people, full of traffic, full of falling apart buildings, muddy streets, rickshaws and noise.

But the city is also the friendliest large city I have been to on my world travels. The Bengali people are kind, patient and helpful beyond belief.

Walking around the city, it’s easy to get lost–I get disoriented the moment I leave my hotel. Street names and signs are useless here. ( Even if you could find one. ) I have to rely on landmarks or shop signs to figure out how to get home.

After recovering from the worst jet lag I have ever had, I finally felt well rested enough to actually go out and explore some of the city. I also had to buy supplies, such as toilet paper and drinking water

I walked over to the Sudder Street area, which is about two city blocks from my hotel. It’s full of tourists, backpackers, Mother Theresa volunteers and Indians who live there. It’s also full of beggars. Lots and lots of them, all begging not for money but for food, for milk for their baby and so on.

I was standing at a kiosk trying to buy water (or rather, I was examining the bottled water they had to see if it was tampered with or not, as much of the water here is simply Calcutta tap water put into bottles..) when a tiny woman thrust her baby on to my hip and began asking for milk for her baby.

There is always a moment for me, when I am confronted by a  beggar or someone asking for something, that I just want to give whatever they are asking for. I think that happens to everyone.It’s a very emotional response.

But here in Calcutta, within just two days, my response has become much more critical. I intellectually know that giving to a person begging doesn’t solve anything at all. I intellectually know that in all probability the woman doesn’t need the milk and it’s all a scam. It helps to not respond to any request immediately and just watch and observe for a few moments to see if the person asking for help actually needs it or if there is some sort of scam involved.

So I don’t give her anything, but instead keep window shopping while watching what happens when the next tourist walks up to the shopcounter. In minutes, another tourist walks up to the same kiosk, this time to buy toilet paper. The beggar does the same thing to her–thrusts the baby on to the tourist, pleading so loudly the tourist is overwhelmed. The tourist asks the shopkeeper “How much for powered milk?” , and then proceeds to buy it and give it to the woman.

The moment the tourist has left, the packet of milk is returned to the shopkeeper owner by the beggar, who then gives the beggar a few coins.

The scam only makes the beggar woman a few coins, while the shopkeeper makes several dollars, as he’s sold the milk to the tourist at an exorbant rate in the first place.

I am constantly confronted with scams like these, moments like these, thruout the day.

It becomes less of a moral choice (do I help them or not?) than determining intellectually what would be the best way to be of help. And–even though the woman does get a few coins–it’s not an effective solution to a bigger problem. Besides that, it’s continuing a very corrupt practice.

It makes people very uncomfortable to read about or think about having to make decisons like this, but when you’re here in Calcutta, you’ve got no choice but to make decsions like this every 15 minutes.

In addition, finding a reliable retaurant has given me a headache. I would prefer not to eat out, but I haven’t found my way to the large markets yet, and even when I do, cooking is forbidden in my hotel.

I finally had the idea of asking at a pricey hotel where to eat. Brilliant. So when I passed by a very expensive hotel on my way to Sudder street, I simply slipped inside to the front desk, where I asked them for a list of restaurants they suggested their guests eat at.

I choose one off of their list, and it’s called “The Blue Sky Cafe”, and it’s a pleasant enough place. It’s tables are crowded with tourists from around the world, including Indian tourists. It’s easy to strike up a conversation, and find out what people think of the city and why they are here. Most turn out to be passing through–it’s not anyone’s favorite city, by far. A few people are volunteering with Mother Theresa’s organization (this is the slow volunteer season, apparently, and there are only about 70 volunteers total right now), and from them I get a few tips on when to sign up and how to get there. All the long term volunteers are ready with tips on how to live here for an extended period of time;how to stay healthy; how to deal with getting around; and just how to exist here without becoming totally drained from the environment and the volunteer work itself.

The food at Blue Sky is fine, and since I’ve struggled alot with food–and eating it–since I arrived here, it’s nice to have a place that actually makes stuff that I like to eat. It has “Continental” food, which I think translates to bland traveler fare, but I stick to the mildly spicy Indian menu. My appetite has been very adversely affected by the humidity; and just being in such a place where one is constantly confronted by poverty; bbut, it’s also that most places that serve food look incredibly dirty, and I am very concerned about getting sick.

So I’ve made an arrangement with The Blue Sky Cafe to eat one meal a day there, and so far it’s working out pretty well. It’s clean, it’s relatively tasty, It’s cheap and substantial, and it seems to be a great place to meet other travelers.

My waiter, Sam, is incredibly friendly and has explained much about the culture of Calcutta to me during slow moments. He also explained several of the scams people use to get money from the tourists, how much to pay for things, and gave me a list of other restaurants that are safe to eat at.

I also found out alot about the water situation. Much of the water for sale is actually just Calcutta water that is bottled and sealed, and that’s very bad, because the water is full of stuff that will leave you sick for days. Other bottles are tampered with at the bottom–tourists don’t crush their bottles after drinking them, and the bottles are sold by the hotels to people who then refill them with tap water and sell them back to the tourists. I’ve seen this type of transaction happening right out in front of my hotel, too–simply refill with tap water, put on a new seal, and voila!

However, a few restaurants sell good bottled water, and it’s the same price as what you would find on the street (or cheaper, actually).

At the moment, just making my way around the city has been a struggle.

I am trying to just figure out my neighborhood at the moment, staying withi a five city block radius and trying to find everything I need nearby.

The streets are full of everything and anything you can imagine.

A severly deformed man sits crosslegged (or maybe his legs are permanently in that contorted state?) on the pavement, carving a teak armchair.

A woman who lives under a plastic tarp on the corner is doing her laundry.

A dog chews thru a bag of trash.

A well dressed man is shaking hands on the corner and giving a speech.

Women, the tiniest women I have ever seen, carry wooden trays on their heads of wet cement.

Cars constantly honk their horns.

A calf, beautifully pristine and white in the midle of the muddy street, is tied up to a post and sports a flower garland.

Rickshaw drivers laboriously carry loads of passengers, chickens, schoolchildren, bricks..or rest, parked on the side of the road.

Shops, sometimes only two by five feet, sell everything and anything you want. Shopkeepers squat on boards inside these little hovels and do everything from write letters to make phone calls to bottle up medicines.

At first, walking down the street seems difficult, and I think at any moment I will be hit by a large Ambassador cab or a bicycle or a rickshaw. But strangely enough, I get used to it, and soon, like everyone else, I seem to magically know when to step out of the way.

The street is also full of people who want something from me–money, food, business. I quickly learn that not establishing eye contact with anyone is essential, otherwise I am bombarded by requests for to buy something, take a rickshaw ride, give money to a beggar..

I think for most visitors to Calcutta, this is the problem they are confronted with when they arrive here, and since they are rarely here for long, it ends up defining the city for them. A lot of tourists I have spoken with said things like ” Calcutta is hell on Earth” and that it was their least favorite place in all of India.

Long term volunteers tell me that once you’ve been in a neighborhood for awhile, though, the beggars stop asking you for anything. They recognize you, smile, and you go on your way.

Today I was totally lost (as usual on this trip!) and I was looking around, trying to get my bearings, when a woman came over to me and asked me in perfect English where I was going. I told her the name of my street, and she pointed me the right direction, smiled, and ducked back under the tarp that served as her makeshift house on the pavement.

“Come back and see me sometime. This is my house.”, she proudly said, and with a grand sweep of her hand gestured trowards what seemed to be a grey tarp held up by four sticks.

I peered inside and looked at what must be one of the cleanest places in the city. All of the family’s belongings were neatly piled up into little stacks, the outdoor kitchen was well organized, with a pot of something cooking away.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that the woman and her family wouldn’t much rather live somewhere else. Of course they would. The idea of “the happy beggar/family joyfully living on the street” is not an idea I embrace.

It was, however, interesting to see how the woman and her family made the best of what was obviously a trying situation.

One Bengali man at a bookshop told me,” The problem of Calcutta is not that Calcutta doesn’t welcome immigrants/the very poor–it does, in fact warmly accept anyone who choses to live here. We are the most hospitable people on Earth. The problem is that there is no place or resources for these people to live.”

So on one side of things, one gets confronted by pain, suffering, and poverty..and on the other hand one gets embraced by the incredible hospitality of the city itself. It makes for a strange mix, and yet it’s affect is that I have become more comfortable here within a day of walking than I would have imagined I would have been with in a month’s time.

I finally make it back to my hotel, having wandered around the streets of Calcutta for 5 hours.

I decide to try out the internet cafe across the street, and walk over and begin talking to the owner, who is smoking outside. As he is telling me that the power had gone out(again!), a man who had been walking by us suddenly leaned against the wall to our right with a pained expression.

Suddenly he clutched his gut and began throwing up what looked like blood. A lot of blood, bright red, all over the crumbling brick wall and the pavement.

There is blood all over the sidewalk. How can so much blood come from one person, so quickly? What is happening? It’s all a blur.

Everyone stands back, and within a minute or two the man is bent over and staggering into the alley right next to the internet shop.

He then falls down and dies.

He was quickly surrounded by a group of men, who talked amonst themselves about what to do. Soon, a cart was brought and he was carried away.

This all happened within the space of 15 minutes or less.

The power then went back on and I was whisked away from the street scene into the cafe by the owner.

“TB”, he said. “It is a sorrow of the poor.”

I’m reeling and thinking, how can I write anything online at this moment? What to say? How to explain this to anyone else? It’s impossible. I can’t even begin to try.

It is frankly impossible to describe how I feel at the moment. Impossible. I don’t even have words for it, this feeling. It’s a mix of sadness and disbelief, a mix of compassion and pain. It is overwhelming. I can’t even write about it anymore.

And that brings me, here, where I now sit inside the above internet cafe, writing this blog entry.

I am sitting next to young woman from Argentina, who has been traveling around India for some time and is here in Calcutta volunteering with Mother Theresa for one week. One thing I really like about being here is that the volunteers are all so easy going and helpful to one another..just sitting here next to here, she’s already helped me figure out which house I want to volunteer at during my stay.

I had forgotten about the time difference and so find myself having to wait until the day after tomorrow to register to volunteer. That gives me another day to wander around the city and get a little bit more of a sense of place–which I really need.

Still, my mind reels from everything I’ve seen today. The man dying in the street, not more than eight feet away from me; the woman, living in her plastic tarp house, the severely deformed man sitting on the pavement carving beautiful teak furniture…

Somehow it’s all blended into one big mass in my brain. How do i process all of these events and images?

I have never been a place that had so much beauty (delicate saris, colored temples set up for Puja–the big Hindi festival coming up–piles of fruits, incense for sale) and so much want and poverty.

Until the next entry,

gigi

October 2nd, 2008 /Journal Entry

I am writing this from what has to be the tiniest, cramped internet cafe in the entire world.

It’s small, cramped space is just a tinier version of the city itself. Although Calcutta is huge, it full of people, all crammed together. The street is full of people, walking , talking, selling, begging, bathing, sleeping, standing, squatting, praying, and eating.

Journal Entry:

Arriving here was no easy task. I hate airports all over the world. Arriving at an airport is like waking up blindfolded. You have no idea where to go, what to do, where your bags are, what the rules are, how to leave once you’re done…

I followed the advice of my travel guide and used the prepay taxi service, which means you prepay for the taxi . But once I walked out of the airport, I was literally accosted by twenty men all trying to grab my receipt for my prepaid taxi.

” Now look, you give it me! You must give it to me, ma’am!”

” Ma’am, ma’am ..Give the paper to me. I will take care of you!”

I don’t know what to do, so I just stand there for a minute. There does not seem to be a stand for prepaid taxis as I was told when I paid for my ride at the prepay office a few moments ago.

Additionally, I am drenched. In sweat. The humid air has hit me like a tidal wave, and sweat pours down my face and legs. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. This is the most humid and uncomfortable place I have ever been in my life. Even the buildings and pavement seem to sweat.
I finally end up walking over to a bunch of taxis, and the taxi drivers there grab at my bags and try to take them and put them in their cabs. I hold on tight and keep asking for the prepay taxis.

“There are no prepay taxis, ma’am. They lied to you inside. Our government is very corrupt. You only paid the TAX for the taxi ride inside. That tax goes to the government. Now you must pay us separately for the taxi ride.”

Is he lying? I am so tired and sweaty and hungry that I can’t think clearly. I decide to ask him one question to see if he is telling the truth.

“How much does a hotel room cost in Calcutta?”, I ask.

” 2000 rupees, ma’am. It is terrible, but that is how much it costs here. Now let me take your bags, I will take you to a very nice place.” (a room can cost as little as 200 rupees, so I know he is lying).

He and his friends now have a tight hold on my bags, but so do I.

I decide to leave and go to a group of taxis I can see in the distance. They’re hopefully the prepay taxis I need.

They don’t let go ogf my bags, and I’m trying to move away from them. I’m 6’3 and weigh more than all of them put together, but this doesn’t deter them. They want me to pay them for a taxi. Period,

” I need to go ask the advice of my military friend that I know in the airport.”, I say.

At the mention of the word “military” they let go of my bags and walk away.

I walk over the the other group of taxis, and it turns out these are the taxis that I want.

I have no idea where I’m going, because I didn’t reserve anything. The taxi driver doesn’t speak any English, but his boss does, and his boss gives him some instructions to take me to Sudder street (an area where all the gringo hostels are).

My taxi driver drives like a maniac. He butts in front of anyone of anyone and anything, including other taxis, rickshaw drivers, people, children, a herd of goats, bicycles…his hand never leaves the horn. We crawl along through the city streets, blaring the horn and causing near accidents every few minutes.

I don’t have time to notice that I am being driven by an insane person because I am looking out of the windows. What I see there is so visually arresting that I am entirely distracted from the man who holds my life in his hands and from the pool of sweat that is rapidly soaking me and my car seat.

Beggars constantly run up to the car windows, putting their hands inside, touching me, groping, asking for money, for food.

A woman shoves a tiny baby into the car window, and it looks at me calm, unruffled, as though it is used to this sort of thing.

A very filthy, old man, wearing only a cloth around his privates, touches my head and then bows and gives the “namaste” greeting.

A child runs up, soon joined by five other children, all calling out,” Auntie. Auntie. Auntie.”, and pointing to their mouths, gesturing that they are hungry.

I give no one anything, since I don’t believe that kind of giving to be effective. But what do I do? I don’t know how to handle it..I sink into my seat and close my eyes for a moment, and then remember that this is what I came here to see.

Still, after awhile, the beggars get so bad that my driver rolls all the windows up, but this doesn’t stop them. As we crawl along at a snail’s pace, they press their faces and hands against the glass.

From inside my glass prison I get a view of the streets: it’s pouring rain and it’s 9:30 at night, but everyone in the city seems to be outside. People pour out of every alleyway and crowd the road and sidewalks, some which seem to have turned into pure mud. People lay in the rain, sleeping under cardboard and fabric makeshift tents. Children stare out from their small piece of cardboard with a dazed, glazed over expression. People are pulling everything from rocks to chubby, well-dressed women loaded with purchases in bicycle rickshaws. The famous human powered rickshaw–a cart with a seat for the passenger, pulled by a man who carries it on his upper body and walks through the streets–are everywhere. The men who pull them are the thinnest people I have ever seen.

The city doesn’t seem to sleep. Everyone is out shopping, working…the entire city is lit up by electric lights, including the kind one lights up Christmas trees with. Work of all kinds is taking place, from loading up of cement (onto the platters which then get placed on woman’s heads) to trashpickers, squatting on the roadside, going through heaps of trash.

I am most surprised to see a barefoot man, wearing only a few rags, carrying a ladder through the city street. He stops at each stoplight, and taking out a dirty rag, he carefully wipes down the traffic light with a very dirty rag. As he stands precariously on his wooden ladder, cars and bikes and rickshaws zoom around him. He looks entirely unperturbed.

We arrive at a hotel I have randomly chosen out of my guidebook, and it’s on the famous Sudder street. I ask the driver to wait, and even though he doesn’t understand English, he knows what I’m asking him to do.

I go inside the hotel, a well advertised cheapie on the backpacker circuit, and it is filthy. It is the dirtiest place I have ever seen–cockroaches everywhere, flooding on the first floor, and the room is small, cramped and dank, with no window, all for 2500 rupees! (That’s about 5 usd.)

It’s late. I have no where to stay. I’m in a huge city and know no one. But I can’t stay there. I decide to try a different one, and get back into the taxi again.

The second hotel, called the Hotel Neelam, turns out to be much nicer. It’s two blocks or so away from the Sudder street area, so it’s close to things I need access to, like safe food to eat and internet–but it’s far enough a way to make it a little less touristy. The room is fine for the price, 330 rupees a night–but, it’s also filthy, and looks as though it has never been cleaned. Ever.

But it does have it’s own bathroom, with a bucket shower and cold water.

It’s got a nice view of the street below, a locking cabinet for my things,and a huge padlock for the door. It also has a tv, which seems to have 2 channels only, featuring Indian soap operas and Indian news.

And best of all, it seems pretty safe–there is a twenty four hour attendant at the office, which is right outside my door.

I pay for a few days’ stay and go into my room–the room that will be mine for the next 5 months. As I sit on the bed, I notice how disgusting the bedding and mattress are. There are insects on the pillow case. I realize that I was right to bring alot of lice shampoo to India…

I am so exhausted that I can hardly move. I want to just lie down and sleep.

But first things first. I begin to clean the room, stripping the bed, getting rid of the disgusting pillow, vputting my new sheets on it, hang my mosquito net, unpack…I check the room for rat holes(one), peepholes(none), and cockroaches(none).

By the time I am reasonably set up, I’m so tired I think I am going to faint. I rummage through my bag and come up with a bag of almonds and a jar of Marmite. Almonds dipped into Marmite turn out to not be all that bad…

I lay on my bed, lathered with mosquito repellent and eating my Marmite/almond concoction, thinking about the city I’m in. What I’ve seen so far doesn’t invite me to explore it much–in fact, it makes he want to get the hell out of here.

But I guess I was expecting that. It’s just natural culture shock. It will wear off, I reason with myself.

I try to imagine figuring out how to get around the city on my own and am at a loss. I can’t imagine it. But I have to figure out so many things tomorrow, like where to eat, where to buy clean water, how to get to the Motherhouse..

I get up and look out a window. An entire family is camping out on the sidewalk. It’s lightly raining, and they only have piece of cardboard for shelter. Another man is setting up his home for the night right next door to them, and his son is bathing in the street, wearing only a small piece of cloth.

I look around my room, feeling pretty grateful to have it.

I fall asleep, waking up through out the night by dogs barking, car horns , babies crying, Indian music, and people yelling. I’m so tired that none of it bothers me, and I just blissfully fall back asleep. I’m so grateful to just finally have a place to rest and be alone after this long journey here.

gigi