Namaste.

A monsoon of apologies, friends.

But as I let them rain down, I feel a tiny fire suddenly lit. And with this fire, still under the barrage of unrestrained storm and sentiment, I open up my laptop and start typing. Madly typing. Run-on sentences. Exclamation marks. Question marks in triplicate. I start with my conclusion, build upon no foundation, and end with questions. It’s a tirade; a novel; the exhaustive banter of mental extremes you normally and discretely allow only between you and yourself. But it’s on paper. Or rather in email. And with face flushed by this outburst of sentiments finally, if irrationally, expressed, and with a confidence plucked from the entitlement of my emotional rage, I open up the wireless connections and hit, “Send”.

‘I don’t always understand you. But it doesn’t matter. Things will come and pass. I don’t have to understand everything you feel or fear. I only want you to know how much I care for you, that I’ll always be here for you.’

It’s the beginning of a love story. A non-fictional one in which I re-live the depth of emotion, romance, committment, and unconditional love in every moment. It’s personal and perhaps will be the most important story in my life; of course I have to write it. As every love story I’ve ever read in some way contributed to mine, so let this one contribute to others.

As for you. Exactly 1 month, 29 days and many daily declarations later, I will close my eyes, bow low, and thank you for the countless blessings on each monsoon night that you so benevolently shower upon us.

Check-in #9: ‘leaky ear’ edition

Oh boy.

I have no idea what happened because I was pretty much in bed the entire time, trying to recover from an ear infection.

So I’ll pretty much say ‘Oy, what a week!’ …and leave it at that.

No, I’m sure if I sit here and stare at the screen long enough, I’m sure to come up with something.

the hard stuff.

Whiny! Irritable! Fed up with Calcutta!

There was an unfair share of difficult and personal stuck tossed my way this week. Scratch that, there’s been far too much hairy-ness since my arrival. If it is always darkest before the dawn, my clock’s battery must have died a little before 4am.

This place is the pits.

Sure, I could name my feelings and air the long list of grievances since moving here, but no thank you. I’ve got family for that.

I’ve determined that Calcutta is a particularly extra-determined piece of stuck. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a genius bottle of Healthy Boundaries spray. That way, if the spray itself—yes, a real thing, ya’ll—doesn’t work, it could at least be a reminder of this big thing I’m working on. If you see it, or you sell it, please share.

And in the meantime, I have plenty of other fabulous Calcutta breakthroughs to continue processing…

Cal is an opportunity to question my own values and ways of being and (hopefully!) come out on the other end with some new declarations for the future as well as some sense of what I need to keep doing while planted here.

If I can surrender to getting it totally wrong and not really knowing or caring what’s next during the journey, then I can probably do that in my life as well. Down with perfectionism! Down with uber-planning! Up with whatever!

Thinking about awareness. About choice. And about noticing things. And constantly being noticed. And about bringing some of me into the things around me.

Temptation to compare experiences only serve to distract. Find the one thread that keeps you engaged and ignore all the others.

Don’t feel out of the loop if these hardly make sense to you. They are purely time markers.

Stress!

Despite the fact that I practically moved here because of the super deluxe Human Rights course at Cal University, with the postponement of examinations and the three extra weeks of playtime, the first day has completely snuck up on me!

So I’m starting my MA program at 11:30am on Monday and basically only just realized it now.

Eeeeeeeeeeegh. So much to do. Ugh.

Seriously? I’m broken out like a teenager.

It’s charming.

Already feels like a lifetime…

Today marks the twenty second day since my arrival in Calcutta. By US labor standards, I have blasted through a fully used-up annual vacation. And I’m starting to feel like I’ve settled in one place for too long.

When you’re the traveler, you never see the whole picture. Just flashes, glimpses, bits of conversation–and then, just when you’ve ticked off every recommended ‘must-do’ in the guide book—it always happens. You pack up and head out for the newest frontier.

(I do just the same. There’s no taking the moral high ground here.)

My blasted ear!

There’s a big mess of story to share in this story. And Denise claims it’s just coincidental that I landed an ear infection after I left this series of post-it notes around the flat. She also flatly denies contributing to an environment in which I was more likely than not to get an ear infection. Something about Johnson buds and the meticulous cleaning of my ears. And it was the rickshaw man who pedaled me to the hospital in the middle of the night. So if anyone, he’s the hero.

Dear Denise: This bath towel was wet and you left it on the floor and it was the last clean one in the flat.  I’m pretty sure this is how tuberculosis is spread. I’m noting this in case I die because of your carelessness.

Dear Denise: Why is retrieving the newspaper always my job? Was I not here when we picked from the job jar? Is there a job jar at all? Because, I’d like to re-draw.

Dear Denise: Why in God’s name wouldn’t you just put up the empty pizza box when you were done with it?  Are your arms broken?  Do you have some sort of disease I don’t know about that makes you blind to empty pizza boxes?

Dear Denise:  Okay, I just remembered I was the last one to make pizza so I guess I left this box out.  Still, I’m leaving out the note anyway so you can learn from it.

Dear Denise:  I do not appreciate you leaving passive aggressive addendum’s to my helpful post-it notes. In fact, they are the opposite of helpful.  They are just bitter.

Dear Denise:  If you leave wet towels on the ground again I’ll poison something in the fridge.

Dear Denise: I am so sorry you aren’t feeling well today.  I swear I was just kidding about poisoning things in the fridge.  I mean, I did leave the yogurt out for like a half a day but that was really more by accident because I was so distracted by the wet towel on the floor.

Dear Denise:  You’re the absolute best, but I’m getting kind of weak from hunger and I know you said you didn’t poison anything but every time I take a bite of something you leer and laugh suspiciously and I have to spit it out.

Dear Denise:  Great. Now we’re out of post-it’s.  I’m writing this on the towel you left on the ground this morning since we obviously have no respect for towels anymore.

And then I just happened to wake up with an ear infection the next day.

And all I could manage to do with consistent precision was sleep. But only during the day because of the mounting pressure in the left half of my face and the stiff pillow at night = Ow.Pain.Ow.

So in one week, I consulted with two doctors for a total of four office visits. As it was nearly 10pm before I could arrange an appointment, the first doctor I saw requested that I come to his residence for my examination. Unsure of the patient-doctor relationship in India, I made sure that I came dressed for the part, looking like absolute hell replete with kitty cat house shoes. (Of course I packed them.)

He led me up to his very cramped, non air-conditioned room and with him he lugged one of those old American Tourister hard shelled briefcases. Two clicks of the buckle and it sprung open to reveal disheveled pages, empty prescription bottles, and to my delight, the most antiquated instruments for all infections ENT. We’re talking bloodletting fleems and ear horns here. If I remember the sequence of inspection correctly, he untangled from the stethoscope his blood pressure wrap and advanced towards me to track my vitals. As he rounded the corner of his desk, he queried- ‘Ever had problems with blood pressure?’- And with a slight shake of my head, he crinkled the wrap to its original state and said ‘Alright then. I’ll just put it away.’

I must have already been self-medicating or just been plain confused because I continued to hang about. Weirdly, my internal monologue was something along the lines of ‘awesome, I must not have swine flu’. Why the conflation, I have no clue.

He asked to have a look in my ear. Unable to definitively assess what the inner ear actually looked like with his naked eye, he rummaged through the briefcase and appeared with an old plastic flashlight. I was sure he must have other instruments—you know, like a proper ear scope, light source included—and I was just about to inquire…when I remembered there was an insurance form I needed him to fill out regarding what was seeing, how he intended to treat it, etc. I pulled the page out of my bag and brought it to his attention. Juggling flashlight and form, he took a long hard look at its contents and with meaning and heart-felt sympathy for the inconvenience he was about to cause me, said ‘You’re going to need a real doctor to fill in this form’.

Hold the phone. A what?!

But aren’t you…?!

Apparently the framed certificate on the wall from the Royal College of Surgeons  in Child Health must have been presented to him when he finished the workshop course hours. Not his diploma.

And so when it came time for me to describe what I was feeling, I was so stunned, I actually had a single tear drop run down my face. And it was mostly allergies, but some of it was pain.

I left. And after three loooooong sleep-filled days, when the prescriptions were not reducing the pain and nearly 95% of my hearing was blocked in my left ear, I decided that it might be time for a second opinion. From oh I don’t know… a licensed professional.

So I went to the Apollo. I’ll spare you the leaky ear stuff. But it is here I learn that not only do I have an ear infection, but also both walls of my ear have swollen so closely together because of something about research now proving that over usage of Q-Tips can lead to ingrown hairs in the ear canal.  Yeah riiiiiight. Who doesn’t prefer the feeling of clean canals?

After much probing and stuffing of stuff in my stuffed up ears, I was healed and made whole.

Moving

Bleargh. Landlords.

They can be such pains in the arse sometimes.

Or, all the time, as the case may be.

And money. We’ve got to find another way. I hate money.

Because of some huge-ish skirmishes regarding negotiated rent and a lack of transparency regarding the market, I have decided it would suit me better to find alternate accommodation.

Moving is never easy. Or desired. Especially when you leave a phenomenal roommate behind to hash things out alone.

Perhaps we can locate two bottles of Healthy Boundaries spray—one for each of us!

the good stuff.

Amartya Sen

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (1998 Nobel Prize-Economics) decided to hang out in Kolkata this past week in preparation for the release of his latest book, An Idea of Justice. Born and raised in Kolkata, but presently living and teaching in the United States, he hails from an Indian state (West Bengal) that has major problems—and remains one of the most open critics of these problems.

Every year for the last three years, Penguin Press has sponsored a lecture series in India with the intent of bringing the world’s greatest minds to various locales in the nation to speak on the most pressing issues of our time. Formerly held in Delhi, this year’s lecture was moved to Sen’s hometown as a testament to his ‘roots’ and his deep engagement to injustices affecting the entire strata of Calcutta.

The lecture, entitled Justice—and India, had great potential to become an exciting and appealing topic for me. His finest moments arrived when he condemned the quiet tolerance of sprawling hunger and the appalling levels of child malnourishment, illiteracy, educational exclusion, gender inequity, bonded employment and medical deprivation that occur without a murmur. However, it was identifiable early on that Dr. Sen’s approach and ‘ideas of justice’ were vastly out of sync with modern-day India. Calling for radical improvements to these injustices to be made through an extension of public discussion and through consultation with others, he offers no rubric for how this constructive partnership can be implemented.  So much of what Indians believe to be settled is remarkably unsettled (caste, gender inequality, religious discrimination). And for Dr. Sen to submit more inclusive public agitation and reasoning as a catalyst for justice in India, he must first no longer ignore the reality that there has yet to be an invitation for everyone to sit at the table. And if we are to believe that all people are, in fact, reasonable beings (only unreasonable because we cannot understand their reasoning) the claim should be made to better facilitate these discussions (with representatives from all strata) rather than make demands for a communal conversation in which things will inevitably remain as they are—top/down, elected few making policy that effects the displaced many—because that is how it has always been.

Best quotation of the evening: You are not doing your duty if you are not thinking about the consequences.—Lord Krishna

The White Tiger

I’m reading the book The White Tiger by Aravida Adiga for…I don’t know, the eighth time.

That’s if you don’t count all the times that I just pick it up and read a page or two.

Remember my personal ad asking for suggestions on reading material? On a whim, my friend Niko recommended the title and even offered to let me borrow the book before she returns to Paris. Yessss! It is the most recent Booker Prize winner.

It’s become one of those ‘lives by my bed’ books—Just seeing the cover gets me excited.

Mr. Jiabao.

Sir.

When you get here, you’ll be told we Indians invented everything from the Internet to hard-boiled eggs to spaceships before the British stole it all from us.

Nonsense. The greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its history is the Rooster Coop.

Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench….On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken…The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.

The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.

It is pretty spectacular. It’s incredibly insightful and incredibly seductive. A thoughtful account about present-day Indian society that you infrequently hear about, The White Tiger, is written through seven ‘truth-telling’ letters from Balram Halwai—the son of a destitute rickshaw puller who works his way up to become an (unconventional) entrepreneur  in Bangalore—to  the Premier of China in anticipation for his first trip to India .(Yay run-ons!) It is through these letters that the underbelly of India is exposed and the reader learns about the treatment of servants, bribery of government officials by the elite, how national elections are rigged and plenty more. There is quite a price to emerge as a “new India” and the brutality of becoming a global power is a thrilling ride that is evidenced through Balram’s ‘miracle’ of breaking free from the Rooster Coop.

So borrow it from a friend or check it out from the library! I would love to compare notes with you.

Performances Galore!

It’s no secret that I’m madly in love with performance and my soul melts into candy and puppies every time I am fortunate enough to attend. The arts and literature hub of India, Calcutta has an abundance of cultural events and fine arts exhibitions.

My latest discoveries, Weaver’s Studio and Theatrician Residential Acting Company, are two phenomenal organizations committed to bringing nothing but full-on badass artistry from abroad into the halls of Calcutta.

This week: Musicology and Folk Songs of Ukraine and Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I like it!

That’s it from this side of the world.

Hooray for happy endings to complex weeks! Have a glorrrrrrrrious weekend and a happy week to come. Remember to fill me in on what’s going on in your lives. Anything good or hard happen this week?

Oh hey, remember when I promised to write about the rotary stuff because-that’s-how-I-even-ended-up-in-Calcutta and then got distracted and I never posted anything about rotary ever again since? That was awesome.

Travel. Words. Images. Story.

In that order, I picked up the elements that have come to define my way of life, my personal culture if you will; or at least that which was left, as the common denominator, in the absence of any other society- or country-based.

Travel. Well that now, is too easy for me; my brier patch. Drop me off in Vientiene, but please not Los Angeles. Let me homestay in a rural village where I know not a word of the language, but don’t make me navigate the foreign language of an extended family reunion. The path of the pilgrim graduates to elevated levels of challenge, and back home, congruently. No one promised it would be the same. Or that I would. It will take years of movement to teach me the profound beauty in the words “compromise” and “contentment,” which are only found in stillness.

Words. I’ve promised myself that I will write a book by the age of 52, the age of enlightenment by the Mayan calendar; the only age at which you are finally allowed to teach and speak as if you actually know something. In the meantime, I promise to practice. To practice stringing words together in ways that glimmer at truth. To compose sentences with notes of harmony. To pick up my pen as would an oil painter his brush. Thank god I am far from 52. For I have, only, so much more practicing to do.

Images. A later addition to my backpack, as evidenced by my work. I have something. But I need help. I’ve learned to photograph purely by experiential education. By trial and error. By tried and trusted intuition. By a few moments of bravery. But I have lost all my greatest shots. I don’t shoot a face unless I know his or her first name. I am afraid. I am afraid to shoot the shot without the story. Yes. To some degree this helps my angle. But I think by many degrees it also hides it. By my nature as a performer, I unearth the character.  Pictures, for me, are poetry. But in neither subject have I ever had any training. None. Blindly I both babble and search through my images for something that speaks better than I do. I know I’ve got it in me somewhere, warming, nesting, waiting for the necessary tension to build up, and crack.

Story. Oh story. And subject of the sentence that is my life mission statement. Even if my pictures are poor, I bet you can still feel it; my connection to, and profound love for, the story of my subject. The Buddhists have it right on Compassion; which, for me, is nothing less that the spark of recognition of you in me, me in you. Story is that link; the mirror that holds up the reflection. The more stories that can be narrated and seen through the first person, the more lifetimes we can live within this one, and the more momentum our species will have towards its highest evolution. If I am one for whom travel is easy, connecting is fluid, stories feel safe to unravel, and compositions come together, well then I have found my “vocation,” where the term is defined (by Frederick Buechner) as, “the place where your great gladness and the world’s needs meet.” I am diligent to gather the ingredients. Later, I’ll discover how to put them together…

The White Tiger (or the showcase of the Republic of India)

On Roads: All roads look the same, all of them go around and around grassy circles in which men are sleeping or eating or playing cards, and then four roads shoot off from that grassy circle and then you go down one road, and you hit another grassy circle where men are sleeping or playing cards, and then four more roads go off from it. So you just keep getting lost, and lost, and lost in Calcutta.

On Traffic: In a city of nearly 15 million, there are fierce jams on the road round-the-clock. Cars, scooters, motorbikes, black taxis, jostling for space on the road. Every five minutes the traffic trembles—you move a foot—hope rises—then the red lights flash on the cars ahead and you’re stuck again. Everyone honks. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blends into one continuous wail that sounds like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes fill the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glow in front of every headlight; the exhaust grows so fat and thick it cannot rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around you. The pollution is so bad the the men on the motorbikes and scooters have a handkerchief wrapped around their faces—each time you stop at a red light, you see a row of men with black glasses and masks on their faces, as if the whole city were out on a bank heist that morning. They say the air is so bad in Calcutta that it takes ten years off a man’s life.  Matches are continuously being struck—the drivers of buses, taxis, autorickshaws light cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution. People take to spitting and coughing violently because of the acidic air.  Of course, those in the cars don’t have to breathe the outside air—it is just nice, cool, clean, air-conditioned air for them. With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like sealed vessels down the roads of Calcutta. Every now and then a vessel will crack open—a woman’s hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out of an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road—and then the window goes up, and the vessel is resealed. The cars move again—you gain three feet—then the red lights flash and everything stops again.

On Homelessness: Dim streetlights glow down onto the pavement on either side of traffic; and in that orange-hued half light, you can see multitudes of small, thin, grimy people squatting, waiting for a bus to take them somewhere, or with nowhere to go and about to unfurl a mattress and sleep right there. Hundreds of them, there seem to be, on either side of traffic, and their life is entirely unaffected by traffic jams. It’s as if there are two parallel universes, two separate cities: inside and outside the car. A slight turn to the left and there people sit, on the pavement, cooking some rice gruel for dinner and getting ready to lie down and sleep under a streetlamp. Thousands of people live on the sides of roads in Calcutta. Many of which have migrated in from small villages in pursuit of employment. Any Bengali can point them out—you can tell by their thin bodies, filthy faces, by the animal-like way they live under huge bridges and overpasses, making fires and washing and taking lice out of their hair while the cars roar past them.  They pose a particular danger to drivers, as they never wait for a red-light—5 year-old children simply dashing across the road on impulse.  During winter, the rich, to survive the winter, keep electrical heaters, or gas heaters, or even burn logs of wood int heir fireplaces. When the homeless, or servants like night watchmen and drivers who are forced to spend time outside in winter, want to keep warm, they burn whatever they find on the ground. On of the best tings to put in the fire is Cellophane, the kind used to wrap fruits, vegetables, and business books in: inside the flame, it changes it nature and melts into a clear fuel. The only problem is that while burning, it gives off a white smoke thatmakes your stomach churn.

On Servants: In India, the rich don’t have drivers, cooks, maids, barbers and tailors. They simply have servants. Anytime the driver is not driving the car, he must sweep the floor of the courtyard, make tea, clean cobwebs with a long broom, massage his master’s feet, or chase a cow out of the compound. At all times, he must make himself useful. And regarding housing, in India, every apartment block, every house, every hotel is built with servant’s quarters—sometimes at the back, and sometimes underground. Most often it is a warren of interconnected rooms where all the drivers, cooks, sweepers, and chefs of the apartment block can rest, sleep and wait. When masters want them, an electric bell rings throughout the quarters and servants rush to a board to find the red light flashing next to the number of the apartment whose servant is needed upstairs. There are common toilets, common sinks, and common bathrooms—all of which require a servant to wait his turn.

Street Scenes (Photos)

Credit: Frederik, the Belgian

check-in #8: (cont.)

The good stuff

Denise! Deniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!

Oh, how I adore her. Not only is she super genius and wildly exaggerated (even while admonishing me for never learning Italian), she has been indispensable in learning this city and putting me in touch with some fabulous faces. If you are reading this and you are a Niccolai, I’ll let you know now that Denise is from Lecco, a province 50km northeast of Milan in the Lombardi region of Italy. Lombardi shares a border with Piedmont, so she’s practically a near-distant cousin.

I hate to even think about it, but Denise will be returning home to Italy in mid-December. She has spent a good majority of her adult life studying and researching Indian international relations, is fluent in Hindi, Italian, French and English, has already earned her MA and is helping supplement my very limited Italian (even if what I’m retaining best are the most aggressive, crossest of words).

I love her cooking. (We eat 80% Italian, 5% Bengali, 15% yogurt and cheese.) I love coming home to her conversation and her English mispronunciations. I love living with a thoughtful, witty, disarmingly beautiful woman who wants to understand better the American perspective, and who is excited by our fusion recipe inventions that are now commonplace in our humble kitchen.

So she’s quite phenomenal. And her boyfriend, Fiorenzo, is visiting for a month and while his English proficiency is very rudimentary and the only real language we can communicate in is music (Nick Cave, Tom Waits, PJ Harvey), I enjoy his presence for if not for his good looks, then most definitely his legendary traditional Italian cooking.

The people? Oh my goodness.

I genuinely like everyone that I have met here (Which kind of surprised me). Except my landlady. She’s got a touch of the cuckoo. But never mind that, let’s jump around about the good things!

I go completely nuts over meeting new people. And I’ve made so many connections I can hardly stand it! The chai! The mischti doi! Feeling shanti shanti! I never want to leave. (Alright, that’s a slight exaggeration; maybe I should say that I don’t want to leave just yet.)

I love being away from routine. I love sitting around with my right kind of people who have interesting stories, life paths and goals to share. I love the sound of tongues mixing—Italian, French, Bengali, Hindi, English, Chinese and Sanskrit. I love that we are here for different purposes—passing through to the next opportunity, yet so connected to the space we share. I get to share the room with cultural attaches, language teachers, musicians, ambassadors, documentarian filmmakers, Hindustani vocalists, students, activists at NGOs, finance officers, photographers and IT supervisors.

It.Is.Unreal.

The factors are too phenomenal and the people are the coolest ever. In my life, it is one of the most amazing groups of people to come together.

Marco’s Homemade Pesto and Daniele’s Sardinian Cheeses

I could stay in Calcutta forever. Just saying.

Neighborhood

The first week of living in my new ‘hood, I carried my pepper spray everywhere. And just so we’re clear, it was not out of fear for the people, but rather to safeguard myself from the snarling, gnashing, wild dog-beasts that roam the rubbished streets at night on the hunt for food. Because who can feed a dog when you cannot even feed yourself?

I slipped again! Jodhpur Park!

Located in South Calcutta, a significantly more residential (read: wealthy) area of town, Jodhpur Park is a quiet neighborhood with its healthy share of sweet shops, chemists (pharmacies), Xerox stands, rickshaw drivers, ironing hutments, a sizeable produce market, closet-sized snack canteens and of course, day laborers who are bused in daily to manually mix tons of cement, redistribute sand and erect bamboo structures that will eventually become homes.

I absolutely love my roommate, therefore, I love living in Jodhpur Park.

On first glance (and even for a solid four days during the first week), our flat absolutely appalled my senses. Considered posh by Bengali standards, our building has running water (not always, if ever, is it hot), electricity (despite daily city-wide blackouts around 5:30pm), fans (you know, to blow the dust around) and air conditioning (should we wish to use it which will easily double our rent note).  The entire building is four floors—three living flats, one on each floor, with a terrace on the fourth overlooking the neighborhood—originally owned by the parents of our present landlord. She, along with her son, Siddharth, live on the ground floor; Denise and I occupy the second floor; Third floor was occupied by the landlord’s mother until her death this past January; Fourth floor, terrace, is used for drying clothes or hosting senselessly outlandish parties.

Rooms are large with windows that are usually left open throughout the day to allow the breeze, mosquitoes, monsoons and even more dust in. Our living room is modest with a floor mat + pillows to accommodate guests when over for chai. The kitchen is equally as modest with a small fridge, a sink and a four burner gas stove (of which, only two are slightly functional). The bathroom is a large open tiled-room used for a variety of purposes– shower, toilet, a facility for bucket washing, ideal for slipping on your ass, perfectly drafty enough to grow mold—also with windows that act as a portal for lizards, roaches, huge spiders and flies to spend time with me.

But don’t feel too bad for me…we’ve got toilet paper.

Easy Days until School Begins

So there was yet another strike in Calcutta.  But this time it was a transportation strike in response to a proposed bill to clean up Kolkata’s toxic streets and eliminate vehicles that pre-date 1993. As most of the taxis, rickshaws, public and private buses are identifiably early 80s, it was nearly impossible for people to commute to work and school, so the entire city shutdown. Everything was cancelled. Including entrance examinations for more than 200,000 students at Calcutta University. Even though I am not expected to sit for entrance exams, with the indefinite postponement of examinations classes will not commence as originally scheduled, pushing back day one by at least three additional weeks.

So I’m heading South for a week—perhaps Kerala or Chennai—whenever my ear infection is cured and the left half of my head doesn’t feel like throbbing achiness. When in Calcutta…nothing is as promised, time means little, appointments are a passing whim. You make it up as you go.

Just wondering: Is there any other way to make it up?

Beckett on Film

The same day I found my unfortunate flight incident plastered on the front page of the Telegraph, I also came across an oh-so-helpful guide to events going on in Calcutta. Printed everyday in the newspaper, the t2 is the go-to source for performance, art gallery openings, talks, theatre, exhibitions and music activities in the city on any particular day.

Among the classical sitar performances, spiritual talks at the Ramakrishna mission and various indigenous ceramics exhibitions, I spotted a week-long film festival of Beckett’s works sponsored by the Seagull Institute. Feeling a bit glum and out of the arts scene since my departure from Texas, I managed to get a ticket, witness some of Beckett’s phenomenal plays that I had never seen before and locate an organization who is committed to providing a space for debate/dialogue on the arts and its culture and politics can take place.

The objectives of the centre include:

• provide resources towards education, research, training and appreciation in the field of the arts and creative communication and
• demonstrate that the arts and media have a vital social responsibility, especially in the areas of tolerance, social development, humanitarian and human rights concerns, social justice, and integration; and in practicing and upholding the pluralist approach

I have since become a member of the Institute and look forward to finding ways to strengthen their initiatives within Calcutta and abroad.

–

Well, that about does it for me. What has been going on in your lives? Feel free to share as it makes the distance between me and you seem that much shorter. Or come visit.  Either way, check in with me and let me know that you are well.

Red-faced Rebellion (Naxalism in West Bengal)

There is, at the moment, a big red fire blazing away in West Bengal (the eastern most state in India), home to Calcutta and India’s long-neglected and impoverished poor. No doubt, there are large pockets of socio-economically backward populations throughout much of India, however, what sets West Bengal apart from the rest is the ironically grim reality of being the most underfed state, yet most resource-rich often inviting exploitation and loss of livelihood/culture from outside investors. The so-called new global economy is being granted platforms in the state—the opening of natural resources to multinationals and national big industry, the creation of SEZs (special economic zones), the allowance to outside interests to prospect for profit, pillaging and plundering without consulting with local interests. Displacement is at the center of much of the poor’s agitation and resistance to these development initiatives. If (and because) the state of West Bengal stands in opposition to and fails to respond in the interest of the people, they will—and have—find solutions through radical political groups that offer them—in this region, the Naxalites.

No roads, no power, no water, no promise even of an effort made. What was once a global city, a city on a hill, Calcutta has withered to remnants. In the more distant regions of West Bengal (someplace tribal, someplace remote), natives of the land are forced to eke out their existence in dehumanizing conditions. Literacy begins at nil with nearly 700 of the 1200 villages having no schools. Where there are schools, they are shuttered. Only 59 villages have primary health centres, but only in name. Disease and malnutrition are rampant. Largely an agricultural state, many in south West Bengal live an essentially pre-modern existence.  The arterial roads are excellent, and there is surplus power, which deepens the ironies as they are used by outsiders to exploit and extract the resources of the area. And so with a need for an egalitarian revolution, the Naxalites’ ascent to power was inevitable, inspiring sympathy and support, running on zeal. Where they couldn’t inspire and reform politically, they dominated by the gun. As they still do in large parts of West Bengal.

A few points about Naxalism: Though they united recently under the Communist Party of India (Maoist) banner, Naxalites remain a many-splintered phenomenon, locked in dogmatic hair-splitting, in polemical and personal disputes, also in fratricidal violence. Rather than pursuing the cause of the rural proletariat as they once sought to do, they have spent the better part of the last decade hunting each other down. The intellectual vanguard of Naxalites look to break out the narrow agrarian armed-struggle mold and seek to fight for gender and caste equality, a battle against communalism and globalization. Armed jungle groups of Naxalites are resisting, working toward irrigation and land-renewals schemes. Naxalism has far from proved itself as a sustainable solution the problems in which it tears. Not powerful enough to overthrow the government and equally ill-equipped to carve out its own constitution—a parallel government—the Naxalites have grievously lost their way. Grand in end and principle—the call for an egalitarian society—the project has run into roadblocks it cannot negotiate.

In Adivasis, for example, Naxalites stopped workers from picking tendu leaves, a key occupation, because contractors would not up the wages. Naxalites stopped Adivasis from picking contract jobs—roads, bridges, public buildings—because, again, the wages were not good enough. Eventually, there were no wages coming in at all and the Adivasis were left more impoverished than earlier.

The police and law-enforcement are equally as ill-equipped to combat the threat of Naxalism.  Touting the group as simply a law-and-order problem, the police often highlight the symptoms without bothering to investigate the disease. The Naxalites are a force to contend with. Their ever-expanding constituency is directly proportional to the number of disaffected populations. At any rate, the Naxalites will remain for who can they turn to if their local government continues to make false promises and their livelihoods are forcible taken? The national government? The elitist uninvolved few who remain better at talking local-level welfare than doing anything more about it. Or the Naxalites? An assembly of the poor whose grassroots ways continue to backfire and whose strategies come against avowed intentions signaling how fractious, confused and misdirected this entirely withered state is?

Check-in #8: the ‘change is a bear, but better than death’ edition

Oh look. I’m at a full week of living in Kolkata. Which means that I’m sharing the news with everybody on the street and celebrating like a maniac so that I am able to make it through the second week.

There was sort of an unfair amount of hard this week. Not so similar to anywhere else I’ve been, this place. Lots of adjusting, lots of letting go of expectations. But I also received an immense amount of good help and everything’s getting better. My stomach included.

There was a lot of week this week, is all I’m saying.

The hard stuff

Jet Lag

Falling asleep mid-afternoon and waking up at just about dawn. Three days in a row.

Being invited to house parties where I slouch too comfortably into the floor mat and eventually end up F.O.B. while pipes are passed and drinks are sloshed over my corpse-like self.

Not cool. On both accounts.

A horrifying introduction to Kolkata

And it’s actually worse because now it’s a horrifying introduction to Kolkata that requires me to appear in court. Gah! Drunken seatmates!

Anyway, I’m not sure that complaining is going to help. But it’s less bloody than an animal sacrifice. And if that doesn’t appease the gods, at least it might make me feel better.

Kolkata

Somehow it completely escaped me how Kolkata is a city full of everything I don’t come from—potholes, hutments everywhere, incessant announcements clogging loudspeakers, tummies swollen in anticipation of a meal, sticky monsoon-y days, toxic exhaust lingering in the air, tiny begging hands through taxi windows, chaotic currents of running men and women, pilgrims, plundered monuments, Kali devotees, benevolent painter of signs (keep Kolkata clean; small family, happy family; pox and polio cripple; HIV kills), food that has taste and [insert stream of expletives here] drivers who are just plain crazy.

Completely, irrevocably [insert more cussing] crazy.

This city! It’s all kinds of intense. And! The sheer number of people who are…hungry and at your door.

Sometimes it’s eerie-alarming-overwhelming-mind numbing hunger and sometimes it’s ‘this problem is more complicated than my giving a handout, so I’ll roll up my window and keep looking forward’ hunger. It’s a lot to take.

A great deal of mental and emotional energy goes into just processing it through.  Challenging.

Definitely not at the “articulating my weird-ass realizations” point yet, but I thought when I am, I’d like to come here and share some of the things I’m noticing and recognizing with you.

Feeling anxious

Admittedly, the flight incident seriously spooked me and left me feeling lonely, doubtful, bummed and uncertain about my decision to move to Kolkata. I know this is just slight turbulence, so I am reminding myself of the time thing: taking as much time as I need to feel comfortable where I am and trying to be understanding if my timetable for assimilation is not as quick as I originally expected it to be. Patience is still a virtue, even if being virtuous kind of sucks.

And I know this is just the start. But at the same time, starting is where it all happens. So wish for me a good start. For sanctuary and continued useful insights.

If you have kind thoughts, you are absolutely welcome to leave them. Please no ‘shoulds’ and remember, we don’t throw shoes.

Registration for Calcutta University

Sure, it is mildly backward for a student of the United States to be enrolling in an Indian institution, in Calcutta, when the migration pattern trends overwhelmingly trek west. However, international students happily study here (I’ve yet to hear of any Americans, but lots of Italians and Swiss, a few Uzbeks, some Tajikis and Nepalese, many Australians) and the process of registering them for classes should be one that is fairly simple to follow assuming it has been done a gazillion times before.

This is not so.

If they had not, in fact, lost my entire application file that was submitted in March and had received unconditional approval from the Vice-Chancellor or could definitively say if I was or was not expected to sit for examinations that were in two days or had the wherewithal to share with me that the department head I was in communication with (and who I was required to submit my application materials to) had recently aged-out of the Indian Higher Education system and was no longer the coordinator for the Human Rights program and at the time of inquiry into his whereabouts was traveling to China…my day at Ballygunge Science College might not have caused my nervous system to fail.

If my notes of the day serve me correctly, the secretariat of the department assured me that no, my papers did not make it there, and that Professor Chaudhuri (the former human rights head) was a very busy man, but that if all was lost, there would no problem. Say what!?

Throughout the day, because I could not adequately string together Bengali or Hindi with any single administrator, I was banished to either the library (where the librarian laughed in my face when I asked if I could check a particular book out and where the books were shelved in tall glass enclosures with locks on the handles) or one of the classrooms in the Human Rights department  festooned with indigenous fishing instruments of the Rava and Toto peoples (where before me on a bench were stacks of graded final student dissertations on human rights issues in regard to pebble collectors, stone crushers, tea gardeners, Ko tribes, child trafficking and prostitution, Oraon tribes, child care, dalits, hijras, Karen tribes of Thailand, brick makers and gender discrimination in slums to name a few). Clearly very different issues than in the West.

In the end, I am tentatively accepted and do not have to sit for the examinations that were ultimately postponed to early August because of a transportation bandh or strike that made it undeniably impossible for commuter students to travel to the university on test day. As it stands, testing  will be August 3-6^th and admission postings will be up on the 10^th. Classes are slated to begin on the 17^th of August, a solid three weeks behind schedule.

Taking an interest in the new girl

Just look at that schweet little face.

I had forgotten what it was like to cause traffic jams. To roll heads. For the nearness of my footsteps to quiet conversation. To know that they know exactly where I am at all times. Should someone come looking for me at home, they may not know to where I have gone, but they know that I am not where I should be.

Eventually you stop looking for their looks and start spontaneously whipping your head around to catch them in their stare. Some rarely flinch. So you give unmoving eyes right back to ‘em and then crack a smile until both your dentals are gleaming in the bright summer day. You both laugh.

You willing give your arm to small children to inspect. It is always the wrists they ask for. They turn the arms over and examine the fair skin with pulsing blue veins. Here, whiteness is purity and purity is perfection. Bleaching wands, cold creams and melatonin inhibitors. Women tell me they cannot see what lies underneath their own skin. So I am the beautiful one I am a princess.

An Anecdote on Marriage

Marriage is the biggest deal in Indian society.

One evening last week, my roommate went out with a few girlfriends to see a movie and grab a bite to eat. The movie was scheduled for a 9pm showing and naturally, did not let out until a little after 11pm. One friend, for the sake of the story I’ll call her Adrija, is a 27-year-old woman from Calcutta, in the final stages of selecting a husband. At 27 years of age, she is culturally considered to be on the brink of aging out of the option to marry so this is her last chance to find an arrangement. Like many traditional women in India, she lives at home with her parents until she marries and is then required to forsake her own family and join her husband’s.

After the movie, it was decided that the four friends would catch a cab to a restaurant (Indians do not eat until 10:30 or 11 at night anyways) to discuss the movie and to catch up on the particulars of their lives.  As it was getting late, Adrija called her parents to check in with them, letting them know that she would be going out for dinner with her friends, but that she would come home immediately afterward. When she got off the phone, it was clear that Adrija did not have permission to go out to dinner. Her mother answered the line and told her that if she had any hope of finding a husband that she would return home alone immediately. The neighbors will talk she said. For the last few nights, you have been coming home in a different car and when the husband’s family comes to get references, the neighbors will say to them that you have been going out and they see you coming home late with many different people.

Adrija hails a taxi and returns home alone.

*There are many consequences to the reality that the neighbors will talk. From being denied college admission (for siblings as well) to being passed over for marriage, Indian women walk a very fine line of appropriateness and acceptable visibility.

Midsummer Night Heat

These are sticky days, indeed. It is way too hot for comfort. I notice that I am blowing through two sets of clothes a day—giving one set a chance to dry mid-day—and bucket-washing and line-drying like I’ve gone out of my mind. Unless you are ultra-wealthy, washing machines and dryers are a thing of the future.

…the good stuff and the rotary stuff is to follow

It is possible.

Si es posible.

C’est possible.

That which comes upon us as An Imperative.

A personal ad.

I was completely knocked over by the way some of my fearless friends are finding what they need while using the technique of the personal ad, an extremely unlikely, non-invasive and seemingly ‘soft’ medium.

Houses. Relationships. Jobs.

But also smaller things…like a home for a puppy. Or someone to help organize a game closet.

So I’ve decided to write my own itty-bitty personal ad for things I need and want that aren’t crazy, ridiculously big things to ask for.

Just to see if the process of finding them can be made that much easier.

A tiny personal ad for a good book (or more) to read on the plane and day-to-day transit.

I am a person with a very long flight ahead of her.

Here’s what I want:

Suggestions of book titles (or authors), preferably fiction as I will stand witness to plenty of non-fictional circumstances while traveling. ‘Yes’ books are engaging, thought-provoking and perhaps, even, whimsical. ‘No’ books include those with intricate familial connections and as much as I (usually) prefer them, non-linear plotlines.

Here’s how I want to get them:

I am more than happy to pay for them. In fact, I would prefer it to borrowing a book I would probably lose or spill a glass of wine on. And I would prefer digital, to not have to be part of that endless cycle of more crap being created. I just don’t want to have to go look for them.

Ways they could come to me:

A friend or neighbor could read this and immediately suggest books for my reading pleasure.

Someone might read a blog or book review and tell me about it.

I could happen upon them somehow.

Any other possibility. I’m willing to be surprised.

My commitment:

If you recommend a book and I read it throughout my travels, I will pass on the recommendation (giving credit, of course!) to other potential readers. And I will appreciate you. And think of you each time the Kindle loads my digitally bookmarked page.

A tiny personal ad for a vocal coach.

I am a seriously out-of-practice, self-sabotaging mezzo-soprano who thinks she desires to work her way back into finding her voice.

I’ve gone through my repertoire and asked myself, “Is this a song worth revisiting?” For many, the answer is of course, yes! So now, I have a stack of sheet music that is packed and begs to be sung again (or for the first time, as the case may be) but requires an accompanist to play their melodies and add nuance to the piece.

Here’s what I want:

I want to know where to locate this musical genius, without having to call everyone I know. Which, when I think about it, everyone I know in Calcutta, India, is either my landlord, the department chair of Anthropology or my Indian-American-friend’s-mother’s-former-co-worker-who-lives-in-Delhi-but-has-a-daughter-living-in-Kolkata. In short, all dead ends.

I need a classically-trained, vocal pedagogy coach who is respectful, persistent and sensitive to where I am and what I want to explore. I need someone who can learn to openly communicate with me, a teacher and collaborator who is invested in the work we create together.

Here’s how I want to find them:

Someone reading this could leave a comment here with a useful suggestion as to the most efficient way of locating this person.

The next time I’m hanging out with my Indian-American friend, I just remember to ask her and she has the right person in mind.

I type “Kolkata” and “voice teacher” into a search engine and the first thing that comes up is perfect.

The right answer just comes to me.

Any other possibility. I’m willing to be surprised.

My commitment: I will schedule a consultation with this elusive musician once I find them. I will give of my time, money and voice most joyfully. I will do my best to check my personal hang ups about my body, my voice and my potential at the door.

 
I could also spring for some more hand-holding.

 Personal enough for ya?