Twenty-six Hours to Kolkata.

The next leg of our journey involved a twenty-six hour train ride to Kolkata. Yep. It was a doozy. The good news is that the views were really lovely for much of the ride and we had pretty decent neighbors in our compartment. As in, they didn't stare at us the entire ride. We actually had some shared a compartment with several young men about our age and at one point during the ride had a sing along time where they would sing Hindi songs for us and then we would sing (mostly Christmas songs) for them. It was December, after all! Then they demanded that we sing them "My Heart Will Go On" because everyone in the world is obsessed with Titanic. Truly. The leader of their group, who was kind of an Indian version of a guido, even had it as his ringtone. And then, to enhance the awkwardness, that guy demanded that I start the song because apparently I look like Celine Dion. It was super uncomfortable. But luckily our director Kirk knows all of the words to it from a previous experience abroad when he would sing it to the children in his host family. Like I said, the entire world.

Pretty blankets for sale on the street.

Kolkata was a big city. Surprising, I know. I didn't stray much from the few streets that we were staying on because it was completely overwhelming. But the few streets around where we were staying were pretty manageable and interesting. So it all worked out just fine. We stayed in the YMCA which was really cool. One thing that I loved about it was that it came from the British occupation period and the architecture style was so comforting western! That's probably terrible, but it was a nice change in accommodations for me. And there were really thick wool blankets on the beds because at night Kolkata is cold (relatively speaking for India)!

One thing we got here was Kati rolls, which are kinda like a fajita but the Indian version and (in my opinion) way better. The wrap is a paratha or other flat bread and there is spiced meat inside with fried onions and a squeeze of lime juice. It's hard to explain, but it is basically heaven. You can read the wikipedia explanation here. But I'll just say I ate like three or four during my two day stay in Kolkata.



Kolkata is also famous for their chai. Really, all of India kind of is. But in Kolkata you buy it from people with stands on the street (instead of just jugs of tea on the back of their motorcycles, which is what they had in Coimbatore) and it comes in little clay pot cups (instead of disposable paper ones)! It's great. The idea is for the clay cups to be disposable, too; that you smash them on the ground and they dissolve. Biodegradable! Eco-friendly! I was kind of excited to do that, but when we bought ours the vendor had a bucket where you could put your cup to be reused. No smashing...bummer. But the chai was super tasty all the same!




I tried lassi for the first time here. Lassi is a drink make of whisked yogurt. It's almost like a danimals or something, except it's not necessarily cold because they kinda heat it up to make it. You can get sweet or salted lassi. I liked lassis made with fruit (particularly mango, which blends up really well with the lassi and is the national fruit of India), but the one I'm drinking here is just plain yogurt without sweet or salt added...I think. But I didn't drink that whole thing myself! Two or three of us shared it because it was huge!



From the pictures, you might think all I did there is eat. But that is not the case! We did lots of things, like visit a place called Sari Bari. Sari Bari (sari as in the clothing and bari meaning "home" in Bengali, the language used in Kolkata) is a business where women who leave the sex industry can work so that they don't have to work in that industry any more. I think it's a pretty unique approach to this issue in that they encourage the women to keep their beds in the red light district. That is, Sari Bari is a place of work, but the women keep living in the brothel they call home. This is because a brothel is a business, too. If they have empty beds, they will work to fill them. So if women are leaving the brothel, they will be replaced. If women are leaving the sex industry but staying in the brothel, the woman doesn't get freedom at the expense of her replacement. Sari Bari was probably my favorite NGO that we visited (even though I don't think it counts as an NGO because it's a business, not an organization...) partly because the woman who talked to us while we were there was a twentysomething American Christian college graduate. Basically, she could have been me. And she was out in Kolkata, doing this. It was really inspiring. If you want to learn more about Sari Bari, you can check out the website here.


We also saw some of the "sights" in the city. One was St. Paul's Cathedral. The outside was lovely, though the interior fell flat a bit. It wasn't really very impressive. Honestly, I like the one in Minnesota more. People in India seem to often favor functionality over beauty when it comes to interior design. That's fine, but the twenty suspended ceiling fans weren't really doing much for the aesthetics, in my opinion.










Just down the street was the Victoria Memorial, this gorgeous structure that was built during the British occupation (duh). Honestly, we weren't sure why the Indians have kept it so long even after their independence considering the fact that it was built essentially with slave labor of their own people and with money collected from their country, in order to glorify their oppressors. But....whatever. It was beautiful.

  

Sidewalk chalk art outside the Victoria Memorial. Photograph © Randy Cronk.

We also visited the Kali Temple. Kali is the goddess of destruction in the Hindu faith, and this temple in Kolkata is her temple, the main one for worshiping her, I think. It was the least peaceful temple I've been in, basically mass chaos. I think that's partly because it's such a huge tourist destination; that kind of takes some of the silent reverence out of it. While we were there, some of the people in my group witnessed a goat sacrifice. Yikes! I didn't see the killing, but I saw the headless goat being dragged by afterwards. It was intense. And it reminded me of reading this post that my friend Simon wrote about experiencing Eid al-Adha in Palestine. It really makes you appreciate the whole "Jesus died" thing we have in Christianity. I wrote a story about my experience there that I'll post soon.

So there's Kolkata in a nutshell.