Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in kfrost's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, February 26th, 2009
10:23 pm	An address, to the IHS graduating class of 2004 Whenever I have time, I want to rewrite my graduation speech. There are so many things I would change. I just don't quite know what I would write. Current Mood: odd Current Music: None (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
12:24 pm	New pictures added under Kolkata 2 gallery of my day at the races. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
10:38 am	Day 4 Day 4 really has no story to tell. Joel, Mandy and I all had breakfast together. Strangely enough, we had dosas, which I don't think are a breakfast food. I think I've explained before what dosas are, so I won't say again, but I had as usual a butter masala dosa, and it was good, as usual. Then I went back to my room and read "The Life of Pi" and did homework. Oh, I forgot to mention that one day we went out and walked on the Puri beach for a short time, which is where the pictures of the camel on the beach and the "lifeguards" is from. Day 5 was our last day in Puri. We got up, had breakfast at the Pink Hotel Restaurant. This was a great breakfast! I had masala tea, an omelet, and a "coconut pancake." This was not so much a pancake as a crepe that was covered with coconut shavings. The shavings may have been dry, but together it was fabulous! It was great! Which reminds me that somehow I forgot to mention another breakfast, which must have been the Bhubaneshwar breakfast: we had breakfast again at the Honey Bee. I had a chocolate doughnut, which had actual chocolate tasting topping and was just as good as the other doughnut. With it I had muesli and yoghurt. Nothing will ever be as good as the muesli and yoghurt that we had in Bangladesh, but we try. Muesli, for those who don't know, is oats (like, the same that are used for oatmeal) and dried fruit. This muesli was good, but there was too much yoghurt (it was like soup) and not enough oats, which were also brittle rather than soft. Anyway, back to the story. This last day our goal was to go see the dolphins. I admit, I had a fantasy of touching a dolphin. And under torture, I could even be compelled to admit a secret fantasy of...yes...SWIMMING with dolphins. The shame. Anyway, it was about an hour and a half rickshaw ride up there, with Ajit driving. A word about Ajit. Ajit was a pot head. A big pothead. Every half hour he would stop the rickshaw with no warning, pull out some marijuana, crush it up and roll it, then smoke it. While driving. I was so horrified. Anyway, the dolphin thing was sort of silly. And way overpriced. But I'll have to post about it later. Current Mood: happy now (Comment on this)
9:33 am	Day 2 ends, day 3 begins Actually, day two ended with a whimper. I don't even think I had dinner because we ate at about 3 pm. I was at this time reading the excellent novel "The Life of Pi," having finished "The Kite Runner." So I was going along at a good clip for that, and doing some homework as well. The next day we went to Bhubaneshwar. I didn't know anything about it, but we caught a bus that was chock full of Indians and it took two hours to get there. Bhubaneshwar is the capital of the state of Orissa. We got off and took a rickshaw out to some place. I say it that was because that was what it was to me when we arrived: some place that I knew nothing about. There was a giant green pukur--pond--that apparently every single holy river and stream emptied into. Sure they do. And I have a bridge to sell... It's an awful green color, full of thick algae and gunk but people bathe in it anyway. We walked into the first temple enclosure we found, leaving our shoes with some old guy and following a priest in. Since we couldn't actually go IN to the temple, we stood on the outside while the priest talked to Joel and Mandy and I shifted weight from one leg to the other. Then Joel paid the priest the requisite baksheesh and we got our shoes back after paying the requisite baksheesh. I had to buy a Fanta in order to get more small change for the coming baksheeshes, and as it was given to me in a glass bottle, I tried to chug it because I had to give the bottle back. Then we walked ahead a little further and came to the really, really big temple complex that's in the pictures. We went up this platform that had been built specifically so that you could peek into the complex from above, since non-Hindus aren't allowed in. The complex looks as though multiple temples were built and then enclosed. And of course we had to pay baksheesh for that privilege. I'm not actually as embittered about that as I sound, but it's annoying. Like I say, nothing is free in this country. Then we walked around the green pond and saw a little local temple, then took a rickshaw to a restaurant that was in the Lonely Planet. It was fine. Mandy didn't want the Indian food that we have all the time, so she ordered something "Chinese" and we also got another dish that we shared all together along with egg roll. It was the other dish that was fabulous. One of the best things I've had here. I could taste the coconut milk, the sauce was creamy and thick, and there was paneer in it. And for the life of me, I'll never remember what it was. I think it was kohlipuri. It was a K...something, and Joel said it was a city in the south. I think it was Kohlipuri because I just googled "Indian food +" and that word popped into my head and something actually came up. But, the problem is that Joel said it was supposed to be spicy and this wasn't, so whatever they gave us wasn't what a google recipe would be. Sad day. But it was absolutely delicious. After using the most horrid (safe perhaps the bathroom after seeing the dolphins) bathroom ever, we went to yet another temple and I didn't go in because I didn't feel like paying the 150 taka foreigner price (it's 10 taka for Indian citizens). After that we went, after some searching, to a tiny art gallery that had many naked women before finally going home on another two hour bus ride. I picked up a small loaf of white bread and a thing of butter, because though Joel and Mandy had decided to go back to Bhubaneshwar the next day, I didn't want to spend another 4 hours on the bus. I wanted one day to just do homework, so I knew that I would be spending the day inside and so wanted to have some food with me. And so starts day 4... Current Mood: bored (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
8:57 am	Day 2 On day 2 we went to Konark. That's a mispost on my last posting, we arranged to go with the rickshawala to Konark, not to Bhubaneshwar. I didn't know anything about Konark. It was a bit over an hour in the rickshaw to get there. We stopped once on the way so that Joel could play on a beach. The rickshawala liked to run and grab crabs before they dived into the sand. A fisher went past us. I don't know how his thing worked, I only know that he was holding a thick line that went far into the surf and he was moving down the beach. We stayed there for perhaps 10 minutes, then feet all sandy got back into the rickshaw (CNG) and arrived at Konark. Konark isn't a town. It is a temple. It is the Sun Temple, which I call The Porn Temple. It was a temple devoted to the sun and tantrism. It is covered with every sexual pose you can possibly care to imagine, including some lesbianism and, apparently, bestiality. It is massive. We wandered around, then went to two more beaches to stand with our feet in the water, and went to two Hindu temples that were just small local ones. The first they wouldn't let us in, the second apparently they were "tricked?" by the fact that Joel was speaking Bangla into thinking we were Hindu non-foreigners. Ajit, the rickshawala, bought some stuff that he then made Joel pay for, like candle things that we lit and waved around in front of the statue deep inside. I was NOT happy. I hate faking a religion. I copied Joel's movements with the candle and then refused to go into any more Hindu temples. Breakfast that morning, by the way, had been great. We ate at the Honey Bee again, and I had a doughnut, which was fabulous. It was almost exactly like what we have in America, but it was slightly less dense and less fried. It was great and felt healthier than our doughnuts. So we had lunch on the way home, some place covered in sand, and shared two curries among the three of us and got Ajit whatever he wanted. Oops, time to go for our "party" (Comment on this)
8:31 am	Part 2 We arrived and stepped out to be hounded by rickshawalas. They were asking 50 Rupees (which are called Taka, though the Taka is the Bangladeshi currency name and technically here means "money"), which to us was far too much, so we ended up walking. To make a long story short, we turned down the Gandhara Hotel as being exorbitantly overpriced for what we wanted to pay (we could have had the roof rooms (a double and a single with a fabulous view and tvs, etc) for about $20 a night) and the Hotel Z as being ugly and not nice. We stopped into the cute looking Honey Bee cafe for lunch. This was the best stroke of luck of our entire trip. I ordered the banana honey pancake, which was unbelievably delicious, and we ended up talking to a Spanish ex-patriot, a British ex-patriot, and a Bengali who were sitting next to us. The British woman was staying at the hotel of the Bengali. She recommended his hotel, so after lunch we went with him back to his hotel, which for a double was just under $10 a night and a single was $5 a night. Joel's double was great. My single had no sink and no blanket (or sheets), but it was fine. For $5, you really don't expect much, but as a student you love to only being paying that little. Puri is famous for two things: the fact that it's on the beach and the fact that every year the Jaganath statue is taken out of the Jaganath Temple along with his sister and brother statues and taken to Bhubaneshwar for ten days and then back again. This is when the people throw themselves under the wheels of the carts as religious suicide. Anyway, the carts were still out and the statues were still out, so we decided to go see them. The hotel owner (The Dog and Duck Hotel) knew a rickshawala, so he took us and dropped us off and we arranged to go to Bhubaneshwar the next day with him. About the statues: the way to the statues was lined with people selling things. Women selling coconuts, men selling religious bead necklaces. And the cows. What is it with cows in this country? They're everywhere. They must outnumber humans. There were cows in the street, just wandering around everywhere, pooping. There was cow poop everywhere. So what? You're thinking. So what? So you have to take your shoes off. Because this is a holy place. Because this is a holy place you must walk barefoot on a road where cars go and cows poop. The line was very long and we stood in it for awhile. Beggars kept coming past. Dozens of them. Almost no one gives to them that I can see. So we finally were getting close, but random men would tell us that we couldn't go in. "Foreign, no go in." "No Hindu, no Hindu! No go in!" We finally made it inside the fenced area when this young priest-looking guy started to go nuts and was yelling that we were foreigners who couldn't go in. And police had come to surround the place, maybe in anticipation of having to close it for the evening, so finally the cop right in front of us told us we had to go. We stood in that line for maybe 45 minutes and we had to go right when we were close. I was super mad. The guy was then telling us to follow him, and I remembered hearing how sometimes priests won't let you in but ask for a bribe, in which case they will let you in. So we walked away. Then Joel wanted to go into a temple that ended up being filled with what I call Hare Krishnas but may have been some variant of it. We were talking in Bangla with them, because they did understand that, and one guy offered to show us the statues. He said, "No one can prevent you from seeing God." So we walked all the way from this temple to the statue place (a quarter mile at least) barefoot. He then led us to the OTHER side of the cart, where yes, you could when the crowd surged and waved, occasionally see a glimse of these silly statues. Jaganath has no arms, by the way. The god has no arms. Then walking back the Hare Krishna guy asked for some baksheesh. Not a bribe, exactly, just money. So Joel gave him money, but that's something I HATE about India. No one does anything for free. Can you imagine a priest charging you to look around his church? Anyway, we then tried to walk back, but ended up having to take a rickshaw for the end of it because we were a bit lost, and had a fantastic dinner at a place called Accha! Each table was under a little thatch roof with a lamp hanging down. I had my first cha (tea) masala in a coffee mug and had thala, which means a little sampling of everything: rice, a ruti (bread like a tortilla), daal, some paneer (cheese), etc. It was delicious. Then, because the rickshawala was ALWAYS hanging around town, he saw us and ended up driving us home. And so ended Day 1 in Puri. Current Mood: still bored (Comment on this)
8:11 am	Okay, I guess I sort of do have time to post about Puri. Well, to start with Ben got sick on that Wednesday, and so he couldn't go, so it was only me, Joel, and Mandy. Mandy, if I haven't mentioned before, has been with Joel for the past 6 years, though they're not married. Joel is probably 5'7, Mandy is probably close to 6'. It's a bit funny size-wise, but then again she runs a feminist blog and he studies Sanskrit. So there you go. Anyway, I was all packed and ready to go, so I went over to their apartment and from there we were going to the Howrah station. As we were getting into the elevator to leave Joel's apartment I said, "You have the tickets, right Joel?" He joked, "No, they're inside." We took a cab to Howrah, and that's when Joel discovered that he had left the tickets at home. Not so funny anymore. Luckily, they were electronic tickets and there was one single internet cafe in the station where we were able to reprint them. We were in the new part of Howrah station, and needed to get to the old part. They two parts are connected by a bridge. This bridge goes over a no man's land of human excrement and garbage. I can't hold my breath long, and the bridge was longer than that. Our train left at 10:35, and we made it to the train at 10:15 or so. This was good. The train was almost entirely full already by the time we made it there. I don't know how early the people got there, but probably an hour early. Luckily, we were on the top bunks, because the middle bunk folded down and people were sitting on the bottom bunks until they went to bed, meaning that you would have to wait to sleep on any other bed. The train was arranged like this: on one side was a row of three bunks that paralleled the wall. On the other wall were two sets of bunks that ran perpendicular to the wall. Each set of bunks had a fan pointed at it, and the windows were open (as in, there was no glass, only bars). The bunks were blue and made likely of wood covered over by not-even-pleather. I pulled out Marija's pillowcase (long story. Or short but irrelevant) and put it over my backpack, which I used as a pillow, and pulled my eye cover over my eyes, not interested in doing anything on the train. I fell asleep probably in an hour, and slept with intermittent periods of waking up until the early morning, when I was out. We were supposed to arrive at 8 am. Actually, I had thought we were going to arrive at 5 am, but at any rate when I woke up at 9 and saw that we weren't there yet I decided to keep my eyes closed for another hour. At 10 I popped down from my bed and joined Joel and Mandy on an unoccupied lower bunk looking out of the window. Actually, by now the train was rapidly depopulating as more and more people were getting off at the stops before Puri. Joel had heard that we would be five hours late. And so we sat. After awhile, beggars started to get on at the stops, beg, and then get off at the next stop. It was annoying, sadly enough. An old widow was more than insistent and absolutely wouldn't go away. Then the usual assortment of blind people, mangled people, limbless people, etc. I must say, later on in the trip when a man with elephantitis in his leg begged I wanted to yell, "You can still work! I don't care that your leg is huge! That does not disbar you from doing anything but begging!" Anyway. Exactly five hours late, at almost 1 pm in the afternoon, we arrived in Puri. The ride in wasn't terribly new to me. It was perhaps a bit more mountainous, a little wetter than other areas that we had seen in India, but not spectacular. I should here note that Puri is in the state of Orissa, which is the state directly south of West Bengal. Part 2 next. Current Mood: bored (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
6:13 am	Apologies I do apologize, but I don't think that the story of Puri will ever be posted. I never have time anymore. This weekend I spent doing homework, so I didn't get to to it, and I don't foresee much time in the future either. Oh well, I'm starting to forget all the little details anyway. Nor do I really have time to write right now, though I had a fascination conversation with Proshenjit about what motivates Indians (I say greed in a general sense, he says the desire for reputation, which I say is an extension of greed. A form of greed. Jillian says the desire for economic stability. A good debate). Instead, I have just a quick story from today. Today a scroll painter came to class. We didn't ask him many questions, nor was there much talking. His scrolls have many themes, but many of the really long ones have religious themes. But when he goes through villages selling his scrolls, he sings the stories and then people buy the scrolls that go with the stories. So he sang us some of the Ramayana, which was the first scroll he showed us, then one about a drunk guy who eventually beats his wife to death (that is its own weird thing). Anyway, all the scrolls were for sale and they were super cheap (from our point of view. I told Bijoy how much I paid and he was amazed) so we all just stopped listening and rifled through all the scrolls. He didn't mind--he brought dozens of them just for that purpose. There was the coolest painting ever of fish, but long story short I couldn't get it, though I Jedi-mindtricked like hell to try to maneuver it into my clutches. So I'm posting pictures of the two things I did get. Altogether $20 and now I have two paintings for my apartment. Both are hand done, and the human one is in the Kalighat style, which is early 1900s, apparently. Okay, back to homework, but if I have time I have a terribly, horribly sketchy story about our landlord and his penchant for male "masseurs." Oh yes. Rach, I'm thinking I have something to send you when I get home, by the way. Current Mood: HAPPY! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
8:22 am	Puri Pictures Added!! If I ever have time, I'll write about Puri, but until then, pictures added in the new "Puri" gallery. Current Mood: hot (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
7:23 am	Part Three (aka Day 2) Today begins the longest day ever. We got to sleep until 8:30 and then had breakfast and left by 9:30. We were going to Chhondok's home. This was an event, because he was from the "gram." The village. However, after the four hour train ride yesterday, another 3 hours in the car each way was not very appetizing. We set off and I did flashcards for about an hour and a half before I just looked out of the window. There's only so much staring at flashcards that you can realistically do. And the view out the car window is great. Fields stretch out for miles, punctuated by tall palm trees. The rice fields are being plowed by farmers with either oxen or water buffalows, while women gather the rice into bundles. We stopped for tea, then kept going. One problem is the smell. As the car has no AC, we travel with all the windows open. This is nice, but India in general is so polluted, even out in the village that you end up eating the exhaust of passing buses, the thick black smoke of coal being used to make food at roadside stalls, and probably burning cow dung, which is also used as a fuel. You know how black your lungs are becoming by marking how much brown dust is accumulating upon your body and everything that you're wearing. It's amazing that even out in the middle of nowhere it's so polluted that you don't want to inhale. We stopped on the way at a temple. Whose--that is, which god--I don't know, because there were many statues there, some very ancient, the kind I've seen in museums. There was a ceremony going on. A blessing perhaps. The priest who was doing it came right up to us and offered us milk, which Joel took, sipped, and flipped over his head (hair, but Joel shaves his head), which is apparently the proper thing to do. I declined it, and Andy, not knowing what to do, took it and chucked it over his hair. Then we hiked up a very large hill that they call a mountain. But the temperature was probably 90 degrees, and more importantly, there was no trail. Eventually we had to stop, because there simply was no trail, and so we went down again. Then we finished our trip out to Chhondok's village, but first we had to go an alternate route because the road was shut down apparently. So we offroaded a bit, which was bad for the Geo Metro, which kept getting stuck. Scott and Proshenjit kept having to get out and push. In fact, as we were going through a village the car totally bottomed out on something and we were stuck fast. The driver couldn't move the stickshift, and the car was definitely beached on something. So 6 guys pushed the car backward and we went over again and made it. At Cchondok's we sat awkwardly for about 30 minutes, then we were fed. That's the one thing about visiting village places. There is a TON of food. We ate on plates made of leaves. Which was fabulously biodegradable and began to degrade as I ate. We had rice, daal, fried fish eggs (eew), fish (bones! Aaaagh! Tiny bones!), mango, shondesh (Indian sweet things, one of which is covered with a really thin layer of silver that you eat), payesh (milk and rice that's really sweet. Delicious!) and some other stuff. I gorged, because who knows when you will ever eat this kind of food again. Then Ben and I went exploring, and were followed by a gaggle of giggling children. Some of the mud hut pictures are from his "village" though he lived in a normal (by Indian standards) house. But it makes you wonder how he could possibly have made it to Kolkata. 4 hours by train and 3 by car is simply a measure of time. In fact, here is a place that's in the middle of nowhere, where cars are rare and computers, internet, cell phones, etc. absolutely unheard of. How strange it must have been for him to go from village life to the university as a young man. Then we went to a neighboring village (where our Metro bottomed out, actually) and this is where the Adibashi tribe lives, but we didn't talk to them or anything. They look normal, wear normal clothes, but I guess their dialect is a bit different. There I saw more pigs, baby goats, etc. We walked until we reached a pond where the guys skipped rocks, then we went back. Another 3 hours, but actually it took longer. And it was black out and it looked like we were always a hair's breadth away from killing someone or ourselves dying. It was terrifying. I wasn't going to eat dinner, but I ended up having some roti and a vegetable curry. Bad Karen, I'm just getting fatter. The next day we slept in, and at 9:30 or so we went to a village an hour away (are you sensing a trend?) were they make terracotta things. I didn't understand, because I thought everything was made by mold, but I guess only the plates were done by mold, which means the others were by hand, which is cool. But it started to RAIN and few of us had umbrellas and we kept getting stranded in houses. Ben bought two horses. Everything was super, super cheap. We finally called the cars and had them come because it was never going to stop raining and the street was starting to look like a river. We got back, had lunch, and then had nothing to do for the next 3.5 hours (I napped) until the train at 5:45. The way back we only had 4 AC seats for some reason, so the rest of us rode non AC, which meant stuck among a bunch of Indians, some of whom I suspect didn't have tickets and others who didn't care that they were in our seats. I like the feel of the wind from the window, but I got SO dirty from it. When it was pitch black out, the lights were still on inside, so I got pretty far into "The Kite Runner" (Thank you, Mom!), which I'll finish on this trip this weekend. We got in at 9:15, and we made it at last to the apartment at about 10:20 or so. How very tiring! And that completes the description of my trip. End. Now I have an hour before I leave for my next adventure, and I'm very, very worried about it. Wish me luck. Current Mood: worried (Comment on this)
7:06 am	Part Two We returned and had lunch, which wasn't bad, then we went on our "crafts tour." First we stopped at the card maker's. He was painting a piece of cloth, a scroll, with bright colors. It was beautiful. His cards are "playing cards," but not as we know them. There are apparently 110 or so cards in the deck. 10 suits? They're the 10 incarnations of Vishnu, and each card has 10 or so numbered cards. I realize that comes to 100, but he didn't say 100. Anyway, though he hand paints them, they all look identical because he's been doing it for so long. They weren't terribly interesting. The colors were dull, and some of the paintings were a bit gruesome. But the scrolls! Now these were to die for. Bright, beautiful colors. But I set my cap at 1,000 Rs. That's a bit under $30. I know that sounds low, but I'm a student! When I asked the price of a Durga painting that was a bit elaborate and very bright, it was 1,600. No, I won't do it. I was great, and something you could never buy in the States, at least not for that price, and he says he's renowned throughout India, but $40 for a picture of a woman slaying something and someone was too much. That is, though it would be great to have it up on the wall as a souvenir of India that people could see, it's a bit disturbing to have murder on your wall, plus I have enough random stuff from abroad as it is. So, I didn't get it. But I did get a pack of 10 cards, not because they're particularly great, but because it's a souvenir. And for $12 if it's the only thing I bring back from India at least it will be something. God it's raining outside right now! The cards I will put up on my wall in a row. But taking out two: one of a god tearing some guy in half, and one of a horse disemboweling someone. Then we went to a conch shell carver. The conch shells are white. He only had one finished one (he also does coconut shells) and MY! It's amazing what he can do. The most elaborate carvings, sculpted out of a shell. Scenes from religious texts. But at $200 utterly unaffordable and very hard to display without looking kitschy. Dinner that night was fabulous, however, and I went to bed soon after. And now, a short break as I eat dinner. Current Mood: very worried (Comment on this)
6:21 am	Our Trip Actually, before I start with the story of our trip, I should start by saying that I'm leaving tonight at 8:50 my time to catch a 10:35 pm overnight express train from the Howrah train station to Puri, which is in the state of Orissa. I will be gone until Monday morning at approximately 7 am, as we arrive back in Howrah at 5 am. Oh boy. Suddenly, I really, really don't want to go. Anyway, back to the story. On Friday I woke up at 4:25, got dressed, and waited until 4:45 to be picked up by the AIIS car. I had packed the day before, and was ready. Bijoy slept through it all. Stupid AIIS decided to pack all 7 students and one teacher into the Land Rover-esque car. This might not have been a problem except that it was 7 students and a teacher that all had luggage. It was a bit cramped. And I hate the driver. Whenever he drives I get really nauseated and start to wonder if I'm going to vomit. Howrah station was built by the British. I read that 10 million people pass through it each day. Unbelievable. It's red brick, and I suppose it looks nice from the outside. Inside people are sleeping on the floor, vendors are walking around hawking newspapers, and people beg from you. The usual, I suppose. Driving to Howrah there were dozens of taxi cabs parked on the side of the road, their drivers asleep on the sidewalk. So many people here sleep on the side of the road. It's cooler than sleeping IN the car, I guess (a quick note about the Ambassador cars, by the way. Apparently when the communist government (the longest running elected communist government in the world) of Bengal took over, they decreed that no cars should be imported. And so, they build new Ambassadors. This, of course, makes no sense as they are huge cars that undoubtedly gas guzzle, but that is beyond the point. It's about communism, comrade!). There we waited until our 6 am train, which we quickly boarded. I don't know when the trains were built, but they're not exactly fancy. There are AC cars and non AC cars. The AC cars have closed windows and chairs made of pleather. The non AC cars have open holes in the wall and plank, sort of pleather benches. The bathroom, which I didn't explore thank you very much, is apparently a hole that empties onto the track. For about two hours or so I did homework, looking out the window occasionally. I talked to Proshenjit some, and spent the rest looking out the window. West Bengal is very different from Bangladesh. Bangladesh, looking out from the road in one of our giant tour buses or else the vans we took the next summer, all you see is rice paddies. Or else the road is thickly lined by stall after stall of tea, small goods vendors who sell gum or bread or whatever, and rickshaws. Rickshaws are unavoidable, though sometimes you see small houses made of mud and thatch roofs. Maybe, maybe you see a cow or two, but it's very rare. Perhaps most people plow without the help of oxen, though I may be misremembering it (by the way, what IS the difference between a cow and an ox?). Here the houses when I saw them were a story or two, made of brick and plastered over. There were cows and goats everywhere, free to roam wherever they wanted. So many cows. I think it's the wealth difference. The Bangladeshis can't afford cows. And lots of ducks, too. They eat the eggs. Chickens were also occasionally visible. Bishnupur was our final destination. This is actually a combination of Vishnu, the Hindu god, and pur, which means city. I assume. Since there is no "v" in Bangla, it becomes Bishnu. It was a smaller place than I had thought it would be. We got out and there were two cars waiting for us: the ubiquitous Land Rover wannabe and a Geo Metro. Okay, it wasn't a Geo Metro, but it was the exact same size and shape. I'm not even exaggerating. It was tiny. And now we had 7 students, 3 teachers, and a bit of luggage (most of it was Travis' actually. He brought a large rolling suitcase while every other guy had a small school backpack). I was assigned to the Metro. Which was gold. We drove through the small city and reached our hotel. How to describe the hotel? I think it is enough to say, the first hotel where I have really, really minded how it looked. It was the Bishnupur Tourism Hotel (um, that doesn't sound quite right, but it was something about the official tourism hotel). Walking in there was immediately a discussion between Indrani and the guy. I heard the word "bhul," meaning mistake, but she wouldn't tell me what it was. She's a very bad liar. There was a sign up with the time for dinner, tea time, and lunch. It was horribly old and dirty and ugly. Everything. They took us into the "new" part. New? Ha! I was with Jillian, as we were the two girls, and we had two singles. The bathroom, in 30 years of service, had probably never once been cleaned. The dirt was just permanently caked on, there were spiderwebs and bugs and everything there. Okay, whatever. We went and had tea, but when we came back the real problem presented itself. Ants! Everywhere! I picked up something on my bed and realized that bugs were swarming all over my bed. I spent ten minutes flicking the ants off of my bed, then realized that they had gotten onto my backpack as well, which really freaked me out since I didn't want to bring them home with me, so I started actually killing them. But it wasn't going to work. There was no way that I could keep the ants off the bed, and I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night with ants crawling everywhere on my face. The AC didn't work and the television didn't work. And no AC was not going to work for Jillian. So we were put in a different room, in what I think was the "old" part. This was better. No ants. Great, I was happy. I didn't care about AC, only about those darn ants, which I was still picking off my backpack and killing. Jillian started picking hairs off her pillowcase. It was true--the sheets hadn't been washed in awhile. We then went and saw temples. Dozens of them. First we saw the...oh God, see, I can never remember its name. But I found out what it was--it was a place where the Malla kings and queens played for Holi, which is a Hindu festival. Then we saw more temples, which are up in the pictures section, under the Kolkata gallery. They were all covered with terracotta plaques, so I took pictures of those. All of them were built by the Malla kings, who were obviously the rulers of that area. Then there was a gate by which the Malla kings entered the city on their elephants, where I saw a little boar, which was very cute. I thought it was wild, but I later found out it wasn't. Outside of one temple were monkeys. I don't know what kind they were, but they were cream colored with black faces. There were even baby monkeys. I have to admit that I'm rather afraid of them. I mean, those suckers can be vicious! They're used to fighting, and they know humans aren't, so they will take you down. One jumped down and I watched with fascination and a little trepidation. A curious dog came over to sniff it, and it shrieked and ran away. End part one, part two coming up Current Mood: worried (Comment on this)
Monday, July 14th, 2008
10:48 am	New Pictures Added Nwe pictures from this weekend added. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 4th, 2008
10:37 am	Part 2 Ben and I did not find a coffee shop. By the way, I forgot to mention that Ben has scabies. This is irrelevant to the story, but does tie into the trip I'll be making July 15th-20th with Joel and his partner Mandy to Puri, as I will be sleeping next to Ben in a bed. Mmm, scabies. However, Ben and I were close to the Kalighat Mundir (temple) and so we walked around the outside of it. Goats are sacrificed there, and it's a temple and all, but if you go inside you'll totally get ripped off by someone who makes you follow them and tries to get you to give exorbitant sums. No thanks. All around the outside of the temple are stalls with white conch shell bangles, conch shells, red bangles, and other stuff. It was crazy. There was one place in Dhaka where you could get that, and there were more conch shell bracelets than I've ever seen there. A sea of white. There were also puppies!! Oh God, there were 5 street dog puppies there and they were so young. It was the cutest thing. So Ben and I were trying to go around the temple, and instead we ended up ambling down strange backroads, but it was great because we were in this little lane between houses and it felt like we were in the countryside. Definitely a place Westerners don't go to. I wish I could have taken a picture, but there was just no opportunity. And it was so quiet there! Then we hailed an autorickshaw (a CNG, in Bangladesh) whose route went alone Rosh Bihari and got out at Goriahat, looking for another coffee shop. In the end, we never found it, but we had lunch/dinner at this little place that had fusion food. We had...forgot what they're called but they're dumplings, and I had fried rice. There was a ton! I also had a Mirinda (orange soda). They put water on our table and I was sooo thirsty, but of course I couldn't drink it. It wasn't filtered. Talk about Tantalus. We were right across from the (Hare Krishna) Ram Krishna Mission, which is just an uninteresting building. Then I had an icecream bar (I use the term loosely, because I'm sure powdered milk was involved on the "Icecream" side of it) and took a cab home. Ben's great because he wants to get out and explore and says whenever and wherever I go he'll come. So. Happy 4th of July to everyone! Ps, my computer now says it's charged. Apparently it's just reading the charging process wrong and counting up rather than down? I hope? Current Mood: waiting (Comment on this)
9:13 am	A Long Post, if Only I Have Time This morning I got up at 8, Skyped until perhaps 10:30 or so, and then at 11 set off on my grand adventure. Today, the 4th of July, the goal was to go see the National Museum. According to tourist reviews, this museum is one of the largest museums in Asia, and among the exhibits listed, there were whale skeletons and giant tortoise shells. Also, I could get some money out of an ATM at the Deutsche Bank that was in the area, because it's free for me. So, I hopped a cab and off I went. In no time I arrived, paid my foreigner ticket price of 150 Rs, and went in. I intended to be there for a very, very long time. With no other plans, it would be great if I could be there from 11:30 until 4 or 5. So having entered the museum, I took a right into the...um...fossil room? Not good. It was a big room, musty, filled with drawers and glass cases. Inside the glass cases you could hardly even see the specimens because they were covered with a thick layer of gray dust. Nor was it terribly exciting. Ancient horse tooth. Ancient critter leg bone. There was a giant prehistoric elephant skull with tusks 10 feet long. That was surprising. And the one thing that really struck me (Karen! Bad!) was this shell that made me think, "Oh, those annoying characters from Ice Age 2 really were like that." It was the turtle-like thing. The shell is about 4 feet high and four or five feet wide and has lots of little bumps on it. Then I walked out and around the inside track of the museum. As you'll be able to see from the picture I'll post, you walk not from room to room but into one room, back out, walk a bit to the next one...The next room was the anthropology room. At one end is this section on pre-historic man. Prehistoric man is very hairy. And in a way, I don't understand at all: there was a picture of a more developed neanderthal fighting a less developed ape-man. So, basically all different kinds of apemen were developing, just as we have different kinds of monkeys today. But where did they go? Why don't we still have neanderthals and cromagnons and stuff? I think the cro-magnons killed all the others off. That's my current theory. He just killed all the slightly less developed versions of man like a hick cousin. But if that's true, then why did he leave gorillas? I don't really understand it at all, sort of like how I don't understand why we don't find more of these skulls, or why my computer refuses to charge and runs down the battery so quickly. The next section was the best in the museum though. It detailed all the tribals in India. "Tribals" means those aboriginal groups that are still distinguishable from the "normal" Indians, whatever that means. So the Kasis, about which tribe Matt Rich is writing his dissertation at UChicago, were mentioned, and other groups. It's very strange-some groups are from the Australian racial stock, and speak a language related to the Australian language group. I wonder how that happened. Most of these tribals do small-scale agriculture but rely primarily upon hunting and gathering for their means of survival. Interestingly, one (maaaaybe two) were matriarchical. Quite a few were matrilineal. Only one was polygamous. Many were exogamous, and traded women between groups, obviously to diversity genetic stock. Their style of dress differs widely, from a skirt and top (like a modified sari) to...variations on that. The weirdest involves the 150 inhabitants of a small island off of India. They obviously originally came from Africa, because their skin is black, they have short curly hair, and their noses are broad. In the 1960s, when these anthropologic surveys were done, they wore no clothing at all, but little bundles of fiber at their...below the belt. They found glass bottles on the beach, refuse from the mainland, that they began to use to shave their hair (men and women) and beards. It was very primitive. They did no agriculture at all and lived entirely by hunting and gathering. Then I looked at some of the statues that were outside, and moved into the statue room. Well, I don't know what it's official name was. Frankly, after two summers in Bangladesh, I never need to see another statue of Shiva. There were other gods here too though. A few of Ganesha, many of other gods who I will never know. Photography is, of course, prohibited I imagine, though I saw no signs. But the guys guarding the area were so bad that I tried to take a few shots with my flash off. Somehow, this resulted in blurry images. I'm sorry. I don't know whether to post blurry Buddhas or not. Actually, some of the statues were quite cool. I'm always amazed at the artistry that is achieved with a crude chisel and some stone. One single mistake and it's like, "Well oops." There was one room that had the stoneworkings from outside a Buddhist temple. It was gorgeous. Breathtaking. And literally, because the room smelled Godawful. I have inhaled SO many things here I shouldn't have in my time here. Then I went to the second floor. First I went into the paintings room, which was so negligible that I cannot even say anything about it. It is a mystery to me. Then I went to the ancient sea protozoa room, where everything was brilliantly ancient and utterly boring. Just shells and plankton. Once again, this was another room of glass and wooden drawers. Nothing labeled in the glass cases, but everything covered with dust anyway. The only thing of interest in that room-and interesting they were- were right at the entrance-a giant deer 9 feet tall with horns 9 feet in width. It was a huge thing, from Ireland. I imagine that it was pre-historic, because nothing has horns like those heavy suckers now. It was like an elk. Behind it was a giant turtle shell. It was six or seven feet long and five feet wide. It must have been a giant turtle, and nothing could eat it because it could just pop back into its shell. There was also a dinosaur skull. It was the rajasaurus. I'm not even making that up. It is funny because "raja" means king, so it was the kingsaurus. But though it looked like the T-rex it was shorter. Which reminds me about the ginormous megaphant from downstairs--how did it mount the female if its tusks were 10 feet long? Awkward. Then was the zoology room, also known as the dead animal room. I have to hand it to the Indians-they know how to stuff things. Unlike the Jordanians, who don't quite know where the pieces go. They stuffed everything. There was one huge, huge waterbuffalo head, and every animal you could think of. The stuffed tiger was huge. Really, really, ridiculously huge looking. It must have weighed 900 pounds. The lion was tiny. Scrawny. The deermice or whatever they were called were the cutest things I've ever seen. I want to take one home. Imagine a deer the size of a guinea pig and that's what they were. The rhino was quite large. The elephant skeletons were massive. The hippo is big and it's skull, when a skeleton, is fierce. But some things were sad. They had baby tigers, and a baby liger. I've never even seen one, but there was a baby liger. Or I guess this one was a tion, come to think of it. Emphasis on was. And the dead monkeys! They're sort of human-like. I can't imagine someone being heartless enough to kill them. Next was the birds and fish room. I looked at everything without reading the names, because I didn't really care. Then came the finishing touch: the tiny Egypt room. Complete with...one Egyptian mummy. Everything else was photocopies and replicas. I don't understand that room at all. A random Egypt room without anything from Egypt. Then I sat for a moment and decided to walk to Shakespeare Sarani, where the Deutsche Bank was. I had seen a map and knew that it was sort of close, so I figured that since it was only about 2:30 I had time to burn. I started walking and had made it just past Park Street (sound familiar?) when who should I run into but Ben, out by himself? Ben says, "Imagine meeting you here. What are the chances? 15 million people..." I said, "Ben, we're white. We stick out. We're white and we go to the same places. It's not that weird." So he walked with me to Deutsche Bank, then he taught me to take the subway and we were going to go to the intersection of Rosh Bihari and Goriahat and part ways there, but he really wanted to find a cafe to hang out at in the future, so we got off early and... stay tuned for part 2 I think my computer's battery is not charging, but the computer is at least running while plugged in. This is not good. Current Mood: aggravated (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
6:32 am	The World is One Yesterday we had cooking class. This consisted of us watching the cook fry eggplant, and put ingredients in with the rice to make kichuri. I confess I paid almost not attention. That is, I watched, but knowing that I would never remember it anyway I didn't really care that much. However, one thing was very interesting. Many peppers are used in the cooking. Red green, ground, chopped, whatever. And potato. Potato is also used. I said, "That's interesting, because didn't potato come originally from the New World (America)?" And someone, I think Joel replied, "Yeah, and peppers came from South America. Ginger (or was it cinnamon he said?) used to be the main spice before peppers came here." And I wonder how long ago India got peppers. I mean, it's essential to cooking now. Indian food is quite famous for being hot, and yet it wasn't always so. This is a recent change. Like when I was in Jordan, and the national dish involves rice. I suppose rice can be grown in Egypt, but I can't imagine that rice became cheap and widely available in the Levant until the 1960s at the earliest. How globalization has changed food! Oh, on a cultural note, when Proshenjit and I were talking about child marriage, he mentioned that some great grandmother of his had gotten married at age 12. Apparently this was done when the father was not going to be able to support his daughters. They would be married off, but only sent to the groom's house when they were mature. Interesting. Current Mood: bored (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
9:21 am	There was a lot of cultural stuff that I was thinking earlier today I should post, but now I have to remember it. Right now, for my "tutorial" with Proshenjit, we're "reading" a pamphlet on human trafficking in South Asia. It goes like this: in the 70s, with the real oil boom in the Middle East (wait, wasn't that when the oil crisis was everywhere else?), there came a huge demand for "entertainment" of people in the Middle East. Domestic servants were needed, and so people were recruited from South Asia. Small children as well as women were needed, because small children were used as camel jockeys for the camel races. This was really dangerous, so they brought in kids from poor countries rather than use native children. But here's the part that gets me. It is estimated that from Bangladesh alone EACH YEAR 25,000 women and children are trafficked. In unrelated information, bodies are routinely thrown into the Ganges river in varying stages of cremation. Those who cannot afford to cremate their dead at all just throw the newly dead bodies in. This means that though in Hinduism the Ganges water is considered pure and holy, it is common to be hit by a dead body while bathing in it. Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Monday, June 30th, 2008
4:22 am	The Victoria Memorial On Saturday, Jillian and I went to see the Victoria Memorial. According to Wikipedia: "The Victoria Memorial, located in Kolkata, India is a memorial of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom who also carried the title of Empress of India. It currently serves as a museum and a tourist attraction. The memorial was designed by Sir William Emerson in an architectural style similar to Belfast City Hall.Earlier asked to design the building in the Italian Renaissance style, Emerson was against the exclusive use of European styles and incorporated Mughal elements in the structure. Vincent Esch was the superintending architect while Lord Redesdale and Sir David Prain designed the gardens. The work of construction was entrusted to Messrs Martin & Co. of Calcutta.Built between 1906 and 1921, it is a majestic white marble building at the southern end of the Maidan and surrounded by a sprawling garden. A black bronze Angel of Victory, holding a bugle in her hand was placed at the apex of the dome above the Memorial. It is fixed to its pedestal with ball bearings and acts as a weathercock when the wind is strong enough. Unlike many other monuments of the British Raj in India, it is well maintained...The monument was built by British Viceroy Lord Curzon in the memory of Queen Victoria. It is said to be second only to the Taj Mahal in beauty and historical importance." I was glad to have someone accompany me. We got in a cab and whoosh! Off we went. There wasn't much to take pictures of while we were in the cab because all the interesting stuff was a little bit away, but my was I in for a surprise when we got to the Memorial. Since I hadn't read about it or seen any pictures, seeing it was amazing. On one side of the street is the Memorial, and on the other is Maidan Park, a large park where cricket and soccer are played, and right on the side of the road are dozens of tiny horses and ponies that you can pay to ride for like 10 seconds. Yes, they're very scrawny things, and some have to pull carriages with their hip bones sticking out and their ribs bulging. It's 150 Rs. for foreigners to get into the memorial, and I think it was about 10 for Indians. Well, $3.50 isn't bad. So, as you can see in the pictures, the Memorial is a HUGE white building. There's a gate in the front with two stone lions ("It's a stone Aslan!" I piped up.), and a path that leads to the front of the building. But before that you run into a monstrous eyesore that is a statue of Queen Victoria. At first, since I wasn't paying attention, I assumed it to be some fat guy, and for some reason it came to my head that perhaps it was a pope. Who looked sort of like a really long-haired Benjamin Franklin. Then Jillian said, "Wow, she was really fat. You know the sculptor was trying to be flattering, but there was just nothing to be flattering about." And as Marija points out, are those monkeys on the chair behind her? (Wikipedia fact number one: Queen Victoria's name was actually Alexandrina Victoria, after her fourth cousin Alexander I, the Tsar of Russia, who was there for her christening. Fact number two: she was 18 when she ascended the throne. Fact three: When Victoria was born, she was 5th in line to the throne. Having gone through two of these (her father was the 4th but he died 8 months after she was born), the third ruled but had no legitimate children, though he had 10 by his mistress, the actress Dorothy Jordan. To which I respond- darn they didn't live long back in those days. Fact four: Albert, Victoria's husband, was her first cousin. Eeeew. Oops, back to the story) Anyway, on both sides of the statue are bronzes depicting...um, some people on elephants surrounded by natives in their "exotic garb." I can't really say anything other than that because the inscriptions really only say who made them, not what they're of, if I recall correctly. The monument itself in a way is smaller than it looks, which I've heard is true of the Taj Mahal as well. But how amazingly bright and white the stones are! As the Wikipedia description says, there is an infusion of Asian architecture in it. Some guys came past us as we were looking at the statue, asked if we spoke English, then asked if we would take a picture with them. I said sure, Jillian said no. She doesn't like to be made a spectacle of because we're white. So I didn't do it. Whatever, if it makes the deshis happy to have pictures with random white people they're never met so what? In Bangladesh they hid behind trees and did it, so why not reward candor? They took our ticket at the door. There were more bronzes on either side of the door, actually, so 4 in all. And far above the door were two lions on either side of the English monarchy's shield-three gold lions rampant on a field of red (well, all of it was white of course, but that's what it would be in color). The lions on the side were very cool. Inside had been made into a museum. In the first room were some busts and statues of British magistrates, as well as drawings made by British people of sites and sights in India. It's amazing how there is so much to see all over India. So many abandoned temples, lavish mosques, and, as Jillian joked, "The world's first skateboard park." The next room had old weapons (the swords were too big. You couldn't brandish some of them because they weren't double-handed; they would be too heavy. And most of them were curved scimitars, but most of the British swords were straight.) as well as paintings done by the British. A British lady with her tiny foofy dog, a man with an Indian servant next to him, about half his size, in a loincloth and fawning. In one painting, both the British and the Mughal court officers had big noses and were fat. I mean, Reubenesque. Then there was an airconditioned section that chronicled how the British came to rule India. There was just so much that I let my eyes skim over the pictures and that was about it. The only conclusion I came to is that the Muslims and the Hindus have been fighting each other in India since long before the British came (wikipedia fact: Mexico had an empress-Carlota. I assume she was Spanish?). We then went outside again and walked to the side of the Monument. It's quite beautiful not only as a structure, but also because it's surrounded on all sides by ponds that were built. So there are trees to sit under and bright green grass and cooling ponds. We didn't go around on all four sides, only to one side, which is where I'm standing in the picture squinting into the sun. Then we went out, got some water from the vendors which I chugged, and tried to catch a cab. Being unsuccessful, we began to walk to Park Street since we needed to get a wireless router. It was maybe a 30 minute walk, actually, but the real problem was the pollution was awful. Absolutely terrible. You can see it in the air, and you know you're breathing it in. My fingernails are always dirty, and it's from the pollution. I started to get constant post-nasal drip, which I never get. Then we found a South Indian restaurant and I had a butter dhosa, which I loved. I love dhosas!! And there was this drink thing that was really more like soup. I mean, I think it was soup that you drink. Either way, it was good and it was only about $1. After that we found a router and went home. As we were in the cab on the way home, my nose started to run. By the time we got home, I was blowing my nose constantly. Then my joints started to ache and my skin got very sensitive and it was like, "Uh oh. I'm going to get a fever." And I did. So I was sick for the rest of the day and the night, but by 12 the next day I was getting better again. I've got a handkerchief with me today, but the fever is gone and I'll be fine. And so concludes my story of the Victoria Memorial. Oh, sketchy story about our landlord. Apparently Travis said something about the redlight districts and it got the landlord talking about all the brothels he'd visited in various countries. I said, "Travis, like visited or "visited"?" Travis said, "Karen, what do you think? He said 20 years with his wife-it's boring." But Travis also thinks he's equal opportunity. He suggested a masseur to Travis and when the guy came he was making it very clear that he offered other services as well. Travis says there's no way that our landlord didn't know this guy did that, and Travis didn't tell our landlord he's gay, so it's not like the landlord sent him in particular for that reason. Jillian said, "I wondered if he was somewhat sketchy." I'm like, "No! No you didn't! That was ME that said that. You were all like, 'No, he's cool.'" On Friday Jillian and Travis went to a club to go drinking and the landlord asked me, "Do you want to come with my to my club (the former Swiss Club of Kolkata and now an old boy's club for snooker and badminton) and drink with me?" Hell no. His daughter is 18. Creeper. He would probably hit on me. Current Mood: amused Current Music: none (Comment on this)
Friday, June 27th, 2008
10:43 am	And All is Right Again I take back everything that I ever said about Kolkata. All of it. Most of it. But not about my roommates. It was a great day. It was fabulous. I got up at 6 in the morning, showered, and then tiptoed into the living room where Bijoy and the other guy sleep at night, and pulled the internet cord as far as it would go. Then I pulled my chair from my room and set it up against the other side of the living/dining room, and got to talk to Marija for an hour. Then I had breakfast (Bijoy now knows my schedule and knows that I alternate eating cereal with eating an omelet and toast), and we got to school at 9. School was "eh"- we had a grammar test that I failed. I know, I know what I always say and then I get an A-, but this one I really didn't get over 50% on. It was like, first question: if...then clauses. I told the teacher yesterday that I didn't know them. Then parsing sentences, which is okay, but I had no idea what some of the terms were and they were in English! Then a translation and I was by far the last to turn in my test. Then the excitement begins. We went to the National Museum today. We all piled into the car and drove in stops and starts. I was sitting in the back back, in the trunk really of the SUV, facing inward (the seat was on the side) and the driving was making me nauseous. We finally got there and hunh. The National Library looks great from the outside. Fantastic. It's this majestic piece of architecture. Once it would have had manicured lawns. It was white and its high ceilings and breezy construction would have allowed for cooling air circulation. The lawn is unmowed. Some grass grows higher than others and it looks like someone went crazy with the weed whacker and mowed it to different heights. When you get close, you can see that the paint is peeling away and cracked. There are blotches everywhere. What was once probably a mailbox system for the library's scholars is covered with cobwebs. Confusion, or rather apathy, reigns. The men that sit at the front desk have no job but to tell you not to go in there. They have no education, and do nothing. We could not go inside, but we could see a little bit inside. Outside, there were the dedications inscribed into granite tablets that were set into the walls. Old English spellings were used. Mukherjee became Mookerjee. It's actually kind of insulting, as though they had not bothered to learn the language and were just writing phonetically what they heard, but then the international phonetic alphabet had not been created then (the u in Bangla is written u, not oo, for example) and so they can't be blamed for that. At any rate, after standing around for awhile it turned out that though that had once been the national library, now it was the administrative headquarters and the national Kolkata library was a few yards away, in what looks to me like a completely brand new building. Too bad they still use the card catalogue system. They only started using computers in 2001 or 2003 (this was unclear to me), so everything is in a card catalogue. Furthermore, to be able to access the books, you have to have a letter of recommendation from an academic institution. To make photocopies, you must have a further letter of recommendation. To get a book, you must find out its information, bring it to a desk, and they will get the book and bring it back to the desk. You cannot check a book out, and the library closes at 7. We went down to where the books are, actually, and it's a librarian's nightmare. The books are all slanted in their shelves and knocked over and nothing is set straight. When we got back to the main level again, there were these men (who work there, probably doing nothing) sitting at a desk. Around their feet were many small ripped up scraps of paper. No one had made an effort to clean them up. Perhaps they were waiting for a woman to do it? And no, they weren't scholars too absorbed to know what was going on. They were lazing around doing nothing. We were taken to the rare books section. Their oldest book is from 1408. It came from Italy and is a copy of Pliny's "Natural History." They also have the first newspaper published in Kolkata, which was in the 1700s. The librarian there was very eager to show us stuff. He showed us one book, I don't remember which, and said, "Feel! The pages are made from the skin of unborn calves." How's that for a C-section? And it sure was durable. I wish I could remember which book that was. Another was made from bark. Probably birch bark? There were some really cool ones, too. One from the...gee, when was it from? I felt like he said the 12th century, but that doesn't make sense. And yet, that's what's coming to mind...was inscribed (inscribed! Not written) on palm leaf. Palm, it's a tree. Leaf. Palm, tree, leaf, he was saying. It's written about less than 1 cm high, maybe 10 lines a leaf, on these 10 in long and 2 in wide things and then it's perforated by two holes and stuck on two metal prongs. At the ends are wooden "covers." For many books they made their own paper. In another room they had illustrated works, and these were done with gold leaf. A Qur'an, some Farsi stuff. Then we went upstairs. That was an ordeal. It smelled five times stronger than mothballs. I had to breathe through my hand when the librarians weren't looking. And then I switched to putting my orna over my nose and mouth like a cowboy. Jillian never wears ornas. I found out later what it was. I was looking at stuff and there was this thing that said something like "Napthalene brick." I feel like napthalene is a byproduct of gasoline production. In that section they had books from like the 18th and 19th century, rare editions of common books like Shakespeare. Most of them came from this guy who has an Indian name but who obviously was part of the British administration. And obviously, when he died he left it to them. Some of the books had ridiculously ornate covers. The copy of Faust was some special leather carved and with silver medallion busts of the main characters. There was another book with an actual painting on the front. There was a math book with fold-out figures. Then there were also books that had pictures in them. I whispered to Jillian, "Beware lest you become an author and your books be preserved here eternally." I mean honestly, I think the world has enough copies of Shakespeare, James Joyce, Sir Walter Scott, etc. There was a Bible that was huge. It was about 5 inches thick and 15" by probably 7". It was also held together by string. Because that was the stupid part about this library-all the books had a string around them to hold the parts from falling apart. And such a toxic environment for the workers. I was very glad when we left. We then discussed going to College Street. There are many book sellers there. But Travis, Jillian, and Joel didn't want to go there, they wanted to go home. So we dropped them off (to me it was the middle of nowhere since I have no concept of direction in the city yet) and Andy, Proshenjit and I went on to College Street. It was the best decision I have made in a long time. As we drove, the city changed. Where we are there is nothing of interest to see. Certainly not the architecture, and though Birla Mundir is close, there's nothing else. As you go towards Park Street and College Street, British architecture really comes into play. Until about 1912 Kolkata was the capital of British India. Of all of it. And I can see that it was a bustling, rich city. The architecture is so grand. I picture it as it must once have been and it's unbelievable. The window grates are so ornate, and the buildings so stately. Things were white, or cream. Some buildings are still in excellent repair. I hate fake architecture, that is, I hate when buildings try to copy another period's style, but this is REAL. This is what the British Empire really built, how its officials lived in style. I kept wanting to take pictures, but I didn't think my camera could cope with a moving car. We went past some amazing buildings. There was this Grand Plaza Hotel or something like that. Even now it's better than anything you can get in the states in terms of external appearance. But. There is one drawback to all this. The Indians keep nothing up. Perhaps they want to and don't have the money, because India is a poor country, but these amazing places are absolutely crumbling and won't last another hundred years. The facades are falling off and the paint is half gone. If the Indians had preserved and repainted these buildings India would be one of the prettiest countries in the world. Its apartments would have a sumptuous, breezy feel to them. The buildings would be imposing and stately. Instead, what were once the richest and most fabulous homes are now the lowliest places in this city. Like the zaminder bari we saw on Park Street, these former homes of the borolok (rich people) were abandoned, and squatters moved in. The squatters have no desire to maintain what's there, only to live and use. So these places often have no real furniture, certainly no carpet, and laundry hangs from the balconies. The great marvels of the British have become slums (not actually, I'm overdramatizing a bit here because they're certainly not in the slum neighborhoods, where houses are made of corrugated iron and tarp), their cricket fields overgrown and encroached upon. And the vast wealth that they once accumulated from this colony? It must still be here. The resources are still here. But it's not. I don't know where it is. I looked at the rickshaw wallahs who pull their rickshaw by hand (this came from Japan, not China as I had thought I had heard) and thought, "Have they been bettered by globalization? No, they have been hurt. The argument that everyone benefits from globalization and free trade must be flawed, because surely though there has always been a gap between rich and poor at least once this gap was not so great and their lunghi and rickshaw would have been a more honorable thing than it is now." We were stuck in traffic forever going to College Street. When we got there, we parked and walked past Kolkata University, which is another excellent piece of British building, and then past a million book stalls. You may picture something exotic, but this was nothing of the sort. These books were modern books on math, science, business, etc. Nothing interesting at all. And when we went into a real store (ish) they had all new books, and more Dostoevsky, Joyce, Plato, and Dante. I had heard that you could get old books. That would be cool, to collect old books and one day donate them, but wherever they were I never saw them. We had coffee in a (famous) coffee shop. Proshenjit says it's where famous writers and poets and other people go and spend hours there. Didn't look like it to me. It was pretty loud. And of course I hate coffee. I don't drink it at all. I've never drunk even a sip. But Proshenjit ordered me a cup and I had to drink it. Egh. And he also ordered something else, I don't remember what it was called, but I didn't like it. It was a fried food thing. Then we walked past the public pool thing. It's huge. Like, half a football field (half an acre). There were boys/men playing water polo, girls learning to kick as they swim, and everyone in silly swim caps. Really ridiculous. The caps weren't even rubber! And they were too small. The swim coaches would blow their whistles, but the swim coaches were all fat men, I noticed. Then Proshenjit took off to go home and Andy and I took the AIIS car (we have a driver) and went home, getting stuck in traffic yet again. I got home a bit after 7 and turned on my computer and have been doing things on it since. Like posting more pictures. Right, note to all: MORE PICTURES POSTED AS KOLKATA AND KOLKATA 2. Tomorrow I want to go to the Victoria Memorial, which is in the same area. Current Mood: getting tired, it's late (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
10:15 pm	Another Fine Mess Yesterday was another in a long line of unbelievably boring days. I got up at 7, showered (ah, I may or may not have found a button that is the water heater! Please God let it be the water heater. Of course, I was sort of getting used to the cold water, but my legs are hairy! I can’t shave if there are goosebumps. I pressed the button and heard the hissing that I think means water is heating, but then a fuse blew and I had no power in my bathroom whatsoever. So.), had a breakfast of cornflakes and two bananas with water buffalow milk, and then left with Jillian for school. Travis still has a cold and didn’t go. I got my computer on for my precious half hour with Marija, then had “Pronunciation and Dictation Class” with Cchondok. This involved pronouncing words, after each of which Cchondok would be like, “Oh, good. Very good.” He claims there’s nothing to correct. I don’t believe him, but he’s such a sweet and sort of meek man. Then grammar with Protima. I’ve been doing extraordinarily well with grammar. Rather, with the stuff I already know. And I’m pretty good at deciphering meaning, it’s just really hard to put into practice “a reduplicated infinitive means ‘While…ing’.” Okay, I lied, that was an easier one. I tend to use the “when…then” sentences for that though. So instead of “While studying I watched tv” (ami poRte poRte tv dekhechilam) I would say “When I watched tv (then) I studied” (jokhon ami tv dekhechilam, tokhon ami porechilam.” Snack break, then listening with Indrani. If you goof off, Indrani will laugh. But she’s so…I don’t know. Like, she just wants to have a good time in life, she just doesn’t realize it, and that’s why she laughs so much. So I was mocking the listening thing. Then finally practicing dialogues with Proshenjit. I shut down on him a lot. I don’t like the subjects that he has to teach. Like, of course I’m going to say things wrong, but my point will get across. If he stops me and tells me the right stuff, I’m not going to remember it. What is it—you have to hear a word 10 or 40 times before you remember it? Anyway, we had lunch and then a meeting with the teachers to discuss the rest of the semester. It took a full hour. I wanted to die. Not actually, of course, but I was twitching like mad. I wanted to do stuff online and I knew that Jillian would want to leave so if I could just write and then we could go together… Everyone was like, “No, the program’s great…” I reiterated my complaint that in Bangladesh we actually went places. They re-listed the places that we can visit, and how to get to them, as if I had the faintest idea where the Goriahat station is. Okay, no more complaining. The next chance I get I’m whipping my map out and mapping a route to these places and I’m going, even though I’m sure it will be alone. Protima said we’ll be graded on whether we make Bengali friends and get out with them. I’m like, “Hell, I know my apartment will fail that.” The meeting ended and Jillian went home. There I was, alone at the Institute checking classes for next semester, sending a grand total of two e-mails, and it took me 2 hours to do those two things! I left the institute and decided to walk back. It’s very simple. You walk down Swinhoe Street and then it curves to the right and you come to the main road (Goriahat road. Yes, I know it bears a striking resemblance to the aforementioned “Goriahat station”), and you go right on that until you get to Balligunge Circular Road, which you go up to get to our apartment. Well, I was totally distracted while I was walking (“How could she let him kiss her neck?!”) that I did something wrong. I don’t know what happened. I really have no idea. I have no memory of the time from taking a step away from the institue and from when I realized that I was not on Swinhoe Street and that I must have turned up a road early. I thought, “I’ll take the road left, which should intersect with Swinhoe Street.” No, it didn’t. I don’t understand how it didn’t, but it didn’t, and ten minutes later I reached Goriahat road where it goes under the overpass. I was a good ten minutes in the WRONG direction from the institute on the Goriahat Road. Geez. So I came back totally wet with sweat. And here is my complaint: I absolutely hate this. I hate this existence. I go to class, I come back to the apartment and that’s it. Travis has been to India before and shows no interest in looking around, and Jillian has been here, to Kolkata, to the institute before, and neither of them will leave their airconditioned rooms. At all. I mean, I’ll sit in the dining/living room working on stuff and it’s just me and Bijoy here. Just us two chickens in front of the tv while the other two make like bears and hibernate. They sleep. Actually, Travis has been watching tv. I know because I can hear his tv when I’m in my bathroom. How can you hide out from this culture? How can you lock yourself in your room and have no interest in seeing what cultural monuments this city has to offer? And yes, I’m not so brave myself, if I won’t go alone, but it’s hard to be brave and whip out your camera without another person there to back you up. And so I’m trapped here in this darn apartment eating PB&J because no one wants to do anything. I also seem to have more homework than anyone else, but that’s another matter entirely. I don’t want to vent like this (it’s not good reading for my poor abused audience), but what else can I write? I can post pictures of the institute because that’s all I’ve seen. This livejournal was created to chronicle foreign adventures and sites, not to report how I eat PB&J alone in the house and that I’m out of the Pringles that I brought from the States and that I’ve only got two more chocolate cookie things to eat because NO ONE will go out. Oh God, then the landlord came. He comes every night, and if I’m not careful and get caught out in the living room and talks and talks to me and won’t go away until he’s talked out. And the others are in their rooms and never come out. Like ghosts. Okay, enough or I’ll keep ranting. Insha’ alla something will happen tomorrow. Current Mood: troubled (Comment on this)