Volunteering Again in Kolkata

October 7, 2011

Soon after the McKernan’s arrived, we went to the “Mother House”, the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, and burial place of Mother Theresa. We were coming for our orientation so we could start volunteering. We arrived early, and found that the orientation was actually moved to a nearby orphanage which is also run by the Missionaries of Charity.

Joe and I waited on a bench in the courtyard of Mother House, while Lizzy and Mel paid a visit to the small museum and Mother’s Theresa’s tomb. “Mother House” is something of a monastery and they expect people to treat the space with respect and maintain silence. As we waited, a group of local high school kids that seemed to be on some sort of field trip, led by their teacher, burst loudly into the courtyard. By the way they were dressed and the fact that some of them were tapping away on their cell phones, they must have been from a privileged private school. Some of them also had cameras, or at least camera phones, and we noticed more than one of them start to take our picture. Being in the home of one of the world’s great philanthropists was apparently not quite as interesting as seeing a couple of scrubby westerners in the flesh. A couple of the bolder young men approached us to take pictures with us. We let them have their fun. During the second photo, though, one of the sisters came out and scolded the boys, saying that photos were not allowed inside the building. He didn’t care and as soon as she turned her back, they continued to snap photos of us. Needless to say, this felt very awkward.

The orientation was pretty much the same as I had remembered. We were given spiels about what each center does (orphanages, homes for the disabled, homes for the dying, etc.) issues of poverty in Kolkata, how to understand the industry of begging in certain areas of the city, etc. Although I had an interest in volunteering at a different place than I had been before, I also wanted to go to Prem Dan, the home for dying and disabled that I had worked at before, so I could possibly meet some of the patients I had known before. I also knew that this was one of the bigger centers that prefers short term volunteers. I knew that I would be in and out of Kolkata and couldn’t commit fully to long-term work. If I had signed on to work with children I knew that I would be doing a disservice to them since it is not healthy to have such a constantly changing crew of volunteers passing through for brief periods of time.

The next morning, we made the walk to mother house to start our day of volunteering. The walk invigorated me. As I have said before, there is something special about walking through early morning Kolkata as people are starting their daily grind. The children in uniforms on their way to school, the men in their lungis bathing in the public washing facilities, bikes strapped with dozens of live chickens making their deliveries through the neighborhood, goats tied to posts calmly ate their food scraps and garbage, and street vendors cooked up sweets for breakfast. Things were carrying on just as I had remembered. When arrived at Mother House, I was further comforted by the breakfast tradition remaining simple and unchanged since I had last been here. Volunteers would assemble in a concrete room to share a humble breakfast of tea, bread and sweet little bananas. The volunteers, coming from affluent corners of the globe, from Japan to Sweden, Canada to Spain, rich suburbs of LA to rich suburbs of Kolkata, shared the same prayer as always. I have my issues with how the Missionaries of Charity operates on many levels, but this tradition of passionate volunteers amassing from all over the world is something special to behold. The warmth that grew from within made me that much more excited to start my day and a new journey in this city.

The first thing that was noticeably different was that nobody walked from Mother House to Prem Dan anymore. Instead, everyone took the bus, which probably took a little over half the time that the thirty-minute walk took. Part of me thought it was lame and lazy of the volunteers, while another part recognized that it would at least give us more time for work. And there was a little bit of laziness in me as well that enjoyed not having to make that long walk that early in the morning. I had also heard that an American volunteer had lost his legs when he was hit by a train on the walk to Prem Dan a few months earlier. Supposedly this led to volunteers being encouraged to take the bus rather than walk.

A couple days earlier I had been wondering which of the patients would still be at Prem Dan. If somebody was gone, did it mean they had gotten healthy enough to leave, or had they died? I mostly thought of Raju, the mentally and physically disabled man that I had spent a lot of time with. I had worked with him to help him learn (or re-learn) how to walk His legs were too weak to support himself, so we exercised every day, until he was able to walk with my help, and eventually he was able to hobble a few steps on his own. When I left, I had made sure another volunteer would keep up with his exercises. I had no idea if he would still be there. He was not terminally ill as far as I knew, but it seems as though anybody could easily catch tuberculosis there and whither away in a matter of months. Perhaps he would still be there, continuing to make progress, or, better yet, maybe he had been deemed strong and healthy enough to leave and relatives had come for him. The night before I started to volunteer again, I had a dream that I was walking into Prem Dan, looking for Raju. He spotted me first, getting up out of bed and walking towards me. He had a freshly shaved head and a slight grin. “Raju, you can walk!” I said. He responded, “Hey Joey, how are you?” and proceeded to shake my hand. Not only had he learned to walk, he had learned to speak, and even learned English, complete with a purely American accent. Dreams are funny that way.

I started to get nervous before I entered Prem Dan. The dream had gotten my hopes up, and I knew it was unlikely that many if any of the men that I had remembered would actually be there. Upon entering, I quickly saw one of the most familiar faces of Prem Dan, named Raju, but to many simply referred to as “goiter guy”. The bulbous goiters on his neck had doubled in size since last time, but he was still as smiling and charming as ever. He had also accumulated more bracelets that he had either made or gotten from volunteers. He stretched out his tiny, fat hand and shook mine heartily. That would probably be the high point of my day. As I walked further into the courtyard and into the building, among the patients, the shock began to grow. There were almost no familiar faces, and the condition of most of the men was appalling. A line of men squatted against one of the walls, some of them with missing limbs, others with gaping, untended wounds with flies feasting on the vulnerable flesh, some just laying on the concrete, too sick to hold themselves upright. One man dragged his partially paralyzed body with his arms across the concrete in front of my path without the assistance of anyone or anything. Another man sat in a broken wheelchair in a pool of his own urine and feces. A younger man seemed to be missing about a third of the top of his head. It looked like it had just been sliced off with a sharp knife. Had I just walked into some grotesque horror show? Was this the same place I had fond memories of? I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but somehow I was far more taken aback than I could have anticipated. Maybe the fact that I had gotten to know many of the patients over time made me see them in a much more human light, rather than just a mass of humanity in desperately poor condition.

I continued to walk through the inside and outside of the building, looking for Raju, or any of the other men that I had remembered. As I walked along the concrete path that edged the garden, one of the patients grabbed my arm and pointed to a man laying down on the concrete nearby. He wasn’t speaking, just pointing at him. I thought maybe he needed to be carried inside to use the bathroom, but as I got closer, I realized it was something entirely different. His eyelids rested just above closed and flies were starting to buzz around his face. His cheeks were sunken into his face and his arms were rail thin. I felt like I would snap them if I accidentally leaned on them. He must have looked much older than he really was. I touched his arm and he didn’t respond. I put my fingers to his neck and tried to feel a pulse. He was gone. I saw one of the sisters nearby, and waved her over. She also checked for a pulse. She probably saw the shock in my eyes. For her, of course, this is routine, but she tried her best to say what she thought was the right thing to say to me. “Oh, well…ya know, this happens sometimes.” I was too shocked to respond to her frankness. I had only been here for twenty minutes, and I had already found a dead man.

My shock of finding a man who had just passed away would fade quick, but it was immediately replaced by the shock of the condition of the man in his moment of death. One of the original objectives of the Missionaries of Charity is to give people a dignified death, and at least in this instance, I feel that they failed. This man died alone, laying on a slab of concrete. Perhaps he had been “rescued” from the train station, where many sick and dying patients come from, but perhaps he also had a community there. I don’t know this man’s story, and I can’t say for sure what would have been best for him, but in my opinion, he did not leave our world in a dignified or respectable way. I don’t fault the sister that was so casual about his passing, but it did lead me to questioning the whole system of the Missionaries of Charity, their motives and their methods.

Throughout my first week of volunteering, I saw some things that I felt were a positive change, and some that were negative or disappointing. First, there was a long-term volunteer - a nurse from New Zealand - who had taken charge of the dispensary at Prem Dan. She spent her days dressing wounds and doing other sorts of medical treatment on the patients. She worked hard and she did great work. It was a welcome change from before, where anyone who felt comfortable enough, was performing treatment on patients whether or not they really knew what they were doing. They also had a new rule that volunteers that wanted to help in the dispensary must commit to two weeks. It was a modest rule, but it was a step in the right direction. Prem Dan is a revolving door of volunteers, many of whom spend just a few days. Those that are so short term spend more time processing what is going on around them and figuring out the ropes than actually assisting effectively in the center. It seemed that the powers that be had taken this into consideration and the way volunteers operate seemed to have been re-shaped since last time. A lot more of our work was focused on doing the “chores”. Laundry, dishes, floor-cleaning, etc. There seemed to be more Indian employees that did the hands-on work with the patients. This meant less time doing the messy stuff like carrying men to the bathroom, cleaning them when they had soiled themselves, feeding those that couldn’t feed themselves, etc. I appreciated the organization for hiring more local help (job creation=less poverty=success!). It led me to wonder what the real purpose of the volunteers was, though. I mean, we were basically doing manual labor to help the organization, which was fine. At the same time, most volunteers came here to connect with patients, connect on a personal level and share love with the so-called “poorest of the poor”. It is a commendable motive, but I felt there was less of this going on than last time I had been here. If volunteers weren’t going to be having this experience and simply be doing manual labor, why not eliminate the volunteers and hire local help entirely? Like I said, job creation can be a positive result of charity organizations. There can also be the positive aspect that the local employees speak the language of the patients and understand the culture better, making them more effective help. On the other hand, I still feel like there is a certain element that the foreign volunteers bring to Prem Dan that local employees won’t provide. It is the passion. Sometimes the patients need personal attention, affection, a friend. For the Bengalis hired to work at Prem Dan, they are carrying out their tasks as if it is any other job. I don’t want to disparage the hard work they do, because they do work hard, but their motive has more to do with a paycheck than the desire to help give back to their community and make the patients’ lives a little more enjoyable.

And I guess this leads me to the main idea that I have to think about when I am volunteering with the MC’s. Neither me, nor the Missionaries of Charity will ever have a major impact on poverty in Kolkata as long as it continues on the simplistic path it has been following from the beginning. However, it is difficult to deny that as a volunteer, you still have the capability of making small changes in the lives of individuals. You can fill in the personal gaps that are being missed by the institution. You can take the initiative to hold the hand of that man on the concrete so he at least does not die alone, or make sure that Raju is getting his exercise every day on his path to mobility. Maybe it is sitting with Raju the goiter guy, as he shows you all his bracelets, or shaving Hussein the blind man so he doesn’t have to sit with itchy stubble all day. These are the small things that you have to make an effort to do as a volunteer because otherwise it will be hard to see purpose in your efforts and even harder to see that perhaps there is hope underneath this veneer of horror show after all.

Durga Puja in Kolkata

October 5^th, 2011

When I arrived in Kolkata ten days earlier, I was high off this city. I was enjoying it so much that it could do no wrong. Then I spent a few days away in the hill stations of northern Bengal and Sikkim. When I got back, things seemed different. I had become so relaxed so quickly in the calm mountain atmosphere that the return to the city was like a sucker punch to the gut. I couldn’t figure out what had seemed magical about it before. I felt that everyone was out to make my life harder by whatever means necessary. I didn’t understand why people couldn’t simply be kind and friendly like they were in the mountains.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. Kolkata can be an endless obstacle source. Something as simple as going to an internet café was now more difficult than it had been five years before. When I first walked into the same internet café that I used to go to, they asked for my passport. I didn’t understand, nor did I have my passport on me. They said they needed to copy my passport before I could used the internet. I found it strange, and went to a different one. They said the same thing. When the third place said that I needed to submit my passport, I gave up and went back to my room to get it. Not only would I have to give them a photocopy of my passport, they would also take a picture of me with a webcam. My information would be kept on file so all ov my time using the internet, and what I was doing on there, could be tracked. Of course by western standards this feels like an incredible invasion of privacy, but then again, at least you know when you are being watched. The reason for this seeming paranoia (which is no shock in India) has to do with the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai. Interestingly, these regulations are only in place in Kolkata, since the attack was at least partly orchestrated there. The sim cards for the cell phones (pay as you go of course, and therefore less traceable) were found to have been purchased in Kolkata. Sometimes getting a sim card when traveling is worth it because it is easy and cheap to get started. After seeing a group of girls filling out paperwork to get one at the same internet café, I decided it definitely would not be worth the hassle.

As much as I was starting to have reservations about staying in Kolkata, I was excited to see my friends, about half the McKernan family, who would be arriving that night. Lizzy, the oldest, is a friend from college who had actually been in Kolkata with me five years earlier. It was a fluke that we were going to be back here at the same. She actually had no idea that I was here, but I was in touch with her little sister, Mel and she was helping me set up the surprise. She had also been to Kolkata two times before, but never when I was there. The youngest one in the family, Joe, would be making his inaugural journey out of North America. Although he had just turned twenty and was a pretty green traveler (inexperienced, not environmentally conscious), he had worked for a long time at a hostel in San Francisco. Through that he had an endless supply of travelers that made him somewhat of a traveler by proxy. I had only met him once before, but I was excited to see him experiencing Kolkata for the first time.

Because of Durga Puja, the buses to the airport were running all night. I had assumed it would be the complete opposite, so I was pleasantly surprised to make it there on the cheap.

I waited an hour before I started seeing people leave the airport from the arriving flight from Frankfurt. I hid so that they would not see me when they exited, but I would be able to see them. Crossing the threshold from the airport into Kolkata can be overwhelming simply because of the aggressive taxi drivers competing with each other for your business. When I saw them come out, I waited for the first of the drivers to rush towards them. I snuck behind Lizzy as she was saying no to the first driver, and grabbed her arm, while saying in my best Indian accent, “Hello! You need taxi?” Without even looking over her shoulder at me, Lizzy smacked my arm and said firmly,”No! Don’t touch me.” It was perfect. Of oourse when she realized it was me, we all gave each other big hugs, and the taxi drivers continued to awkwardly ask us to get in their cars even though we were caught in the moment and completely ignoring them.

Because of the festival, the taxi ride into town took ages. It was a great way for them to make an entrance. The taxi crawled through the traffic jam, and we passed elaborate light displays set up around temporary temples. Lines of people waiting to perform puja at the temple stretched for hundreds of yards, wrapping around corners. The city seemed on fire. There was a mix of quiet reverence, pushy crowds and brash revelry. At one point there was a large SUV beside us. The windows were down and I could see that it was packed with young men. One of them saw me, so I waved. The guys stuck their heads through the windows and cheered loudly for…foreigners? Durga? Alcohol? Whatever? One of them pulled out a bottle of beer and passed it through the window to me. I figured it was worth accepting for the simple fact that I could never do this back home. I took the bottle, took a hearty swig and passed it back through to them. This made everyone, except maybe our taxi driver, very happy. I tried to apologize to the driver, and while he wanted to act like he was upset over my antics, I could see him holding back a smile.

When we got to our neighborhood, the taxi driver seemed disappointed with the agreed upon fare. He was upset because of the traffic and how long it had taken him to get into town. First of all, the fare we had agreed upon was slightly higher than the standard price from the pre-paid taxi stand. Second of all, he is a taxi driver and just like everyone else in town, he should have known that there would be traffic at night during this holiday. He said the 300 rupees we were handing us wasn’t enough. He demanded several hundred more. When we said no, he refused the 300 and told us to leave without paying. He was trying to guilt trip us, a tactic that I would see repeatedly throughout the rest of my time in India. We called his bluff, and started to get out without paying, but he quickly asked for the 300 rupees back. We grabbed our bags, thanked the driver and he sped off without saying a word.

Their second night in town was the final night of Durga Puja and we decided to go to Babu Ghat on the Hooghly River to watch the festivities that take place on the last night of the festival. When we got off the bus at Babu Ghat just after sunset, there was already a crowd gathering.

For weeks or even months before the festival, people are busy building temporary temples to house shrines with statues of the goddess Durga. The statues are traditionally made with clay taken from the Hooghly River (which is a branch of the Ganges). At the end of the festival, the statues are brought back to the river and plunged back into their source.

A statue of the Goddess Durga

Parties, packed into the beds of huge truck, would arrive with their statue of the goddess and disembark. There would be some drumming and dancing, followed by the carrying of Durga into the river.

A truck arrives with a party (and soccer team?) to bring Durga to the river.

Returning Durga to the river.

I had missed this part of the festival the last time I had been in Kolkata, so I was glad that I made it now. It turned out to be less raucous than I had imagined it would be, but it was still a fascinating display of devotion. It turned out that a lot of the foreigners I had already met in India were there as well. I saw a British couple that I had met in Darjeeling, the Israeli girl I had met at the train station in New Jalpaiguri, her Hawaiian friend, and several people staying at my guesthouse.

A veteran traveler from Hawaii.

I also met an interesting man from Georgia (the country) named Nick. He was working here as an architect. It was good to meet someone outside of the travel community because they have different perspectives on the city. He had a lot of thought-provoking things to say about Kolkata. Unfortunately soon after we started talking, we were surrounded by curious teenagers and 20-somethings. After one of them approached us to ask about where we were from, the rest followed. One of them asked Nick for a cigarette, and the rest followed. He doled out half his pack as they continued to ask questions. Eventually the questions ran out, but they continued to stand around and stare as we tried to pick up where we had left off.

I assumed there were celebrations like this at many of the ghats along the Hooghly and I wondered if there were so many foreigners at this one simply because it was the closest one to the tourist district. I hope that I am in Kolkata again for this holiday so I can try to seek out some of the other areas of celebration that are more obscure to foreigners.

A child reads a discarded newspaper near the festivities.

A boy picks through a pile of garbage left behind from the celebration.

Durga Puja in Darjeeling

Oct. 2, 2011

The morning after my sick day, I decided that I didn’t have much time to go further into Sikkim. The travel in this mountainous region was so slow that if I went any deeper, I wouldn’t have enough time to get back to Kolkata by October 5^th. I wanted to be back in time for both Durga Puja and the arrival of my good friends, the McKernans. So I checked out of my hotel and waited for the first jeep heading out of town. It took most of my day to leave Sikkim and return to Darjeeling. I had never intended to stay in Darjeeling, but it was both a convenient stopover point, as well as a far more relaxing and comfortable town than I had expected. During the course of the day’s travel, I started to see hints of the beginning of the five day Durga Puja, West Bengal’s most significant Hindu holiday. People were putting the final decorations on their roadside “pandals” (temporary temples constructed to house the ceremonies and worship of goddess Durga) and there was a hint of anticipation in the air.

I arrived in Darjeeling just after sunset and found the town to be much more crowded than it had been just a few days before. The streets were packed with Bengali visitors in town for the holiday. Part of the reason I wanted to be in Darjeeling was for the Durga Puja celebration, but it seemed that half of Kolkata had the same idea. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a room since this was such a busy time. Every hotel I passed had a Indian tourists shuffling in and out, but somehow the one that I knew was only popular for westerners and was nearly empty. I got my 4-bedroom dormitory for my good price and was satisfied with my situation. I went out into the street to shuffle through the crowds and found some street noodles and chai.

The next morning I woke to the sounds of drums and chanting. The festival was already starting with parades through the street. I had considered leaving this day and heading straight to Kolkata. Upon stepping outside and seeing the activity, though, I knew that I could not pass up this opportunity to see how Darjeeling celebrated Durga Puja.

Porters carry goods through town.

I spent my day simply wandering the town, watching the slew of parades passing through the narrow streets. Although I felt that the festival was obscuring the town itself, it was exciting to see the place so alive. Everywhere I turned, there was a horde of children carrying banners and wearing costumes, marching down the street in devotion to the goddess. I visited a couple of the “pandals” and watched worship ceremonies take place. The streets were packed and it was hard to move through the crowds. Foolish drivers tried in vain to push their cars through the melee. As one of the parades passed by, a woman stopped me and put a red banner around my neck and pushed a bindi, made of red-dyed grains of raw rice, against my forehead. I wasn’t looking for a spiritual experience, but not becoming part of the celebration was impossible.

The red-rice bindi.

Later in the day, I found myself near one of the higher points in town where there was something of a town square, with a stage set up. I sat off to the side and was approached by some guys near my age. One of them spoke English well, and he was a pretty interesting guy. I have regularly found the Nepalese/Himalayan youth to be much more westernized than Indian youth, or at least just easier to relate to. For a place that wasn’t colonized, they seem to have a pretty good sense for western pop culture, and not only the worst stuff. This guy was a musician and was really into punk and metal music. He was surprisingly well-versed in American punk music from the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Nepal and surrounds are the only places outside of North America or Western Europe where I have found people so into punk music. I am not much of a punk fan, but it was refreshing to find people that were into something beyond the most easily accessible elements of American pop culture. The guys told me about their band and the occasional gigs they would play at local bars. One of them showed me his homemade tattoos. Another told me that he had had to go to rehab because he had been smoking too much marijuana and drinking. He also said that heroin was a growing problem in the area, but that he no longer did that either. I was disappointed that their next performance was not for another week. I really wanted to see them play. The obscurity of the Darjeeling punk scene (in fact they were from a nearby village that they had to walk from) was so alluring, and I felt like staying just to learn about it.

I wanted to stay in Darjeeling longer, and experience it in its normal peacefulness. It seemed like it was an ideal place to stick around in just to write and read with little distraction. I needed to get back to Kolkata to meet with some dear friends of mine. I wanted to take the famous “toy train” back to Siliguri, but due to landslide and such in the past few years, it only went halfway there. Many visitors to Darjeeling take a brief made-for-tourists loop on the toy train that costs an exorbitant amount of money. Another option, though, is to take it in one direction as a means of transportation, where it is actually cheaper than taking a jeep. It takes three times as long as the jeep, but then again, I wasn’t in a rush, and why wouldn’t I prefer to take the adorable train?

For the most part, the train did not stray too far from the road, but it was far more comfortable than the jeep. It took about three hours for the steam engine to reach Kurseong, another hill station about halfway to Siliguri. The views were great, and the villages we passed through were utterly charming. Teenagers would run along the side and jump on for a free ride to the next town. Kurseong was not as quaint as Darjeeling and didn’t have as impressive of views, but it still had a lot of the cultural aspects that made the area appealing and none of the tourists. I still had plenty of time to make it to my evening train in New Jalpaiguri, so I wandered the town a bit. There was a small market that must have been more active in the morning hours. Some of the streets were too narrow for cars and meandering through the little alleys in search of nothing was a good way to pass the time.

When I got hungry for lunch, I walked to the jeep stand and perused the grimy stalls. A young guy, maybe twenty, summoned me into a cramped little stall saying I should eat there. It was as good as any other place, although the food on offer looked thoroughly unappetizing. There was a bland soup and some stale bread. The guy that had invited me in was now sitting so close to me I could smell the intense odor of alcohol on his breath. He insisted on buying me a boiled egg. I acted grateful, and ate it, but did not want it in the first place. Then he asked for another egg. I thanked him for his generosity, but tried to explain that I was full. He took the egg anyway and peeled it. I noticed his hands and fingernails were filthy. He decided that if I was insisting that I wasn’t hungry, he would share it with me. He gouged his fingers through the center of the egg, split it in half, and gave the one of the now gritty halves. I thanked him, told the stall operator that we would not be eating any more eggs, and swallowed my half down quickly. The young man was now grabbing my arm, going through the same questions that I had already answered minutes before. I was starting to get nervous that I would never be able to leave politely. Eventually I explained that I needed to get in a jeep or I would miss my train. I wasn’t hoping for his help, but I knew I would get it anyway. He stumbled away from the stall with me, and showed me where the next jeep would be leaving from. It was empty and the driver wasn’t to be seen. I was more than skeptical of this young drunk’s advice. Then he went to a shop, and brought me back a handful of small candies. By the time I was beginning to unwrap them, the driver showed up, the jeep filled with passengers and I was suddenly heartily shaking my new friend’s hand through the window as we descended further down the hills.

Within an hour we were back on the hot, flat plains of West Bengal. I was not excited to get back to Siliguri, one of the least interesting and unfriendly places I have seen in India. It was even more shocking on the return trip how fast the culture, environment, atmosphere and everything else changed between the two places. It was like I was suddenly back on the ground. In my mind I perceive the two places as land and sky. It just makes sense like this. A bigger stretch would be heaven and hell. At least the climates would still fit. It was late in the day, and the polluted sky was a burning orange and I was suddenly sweating again. The crowds, the noise, the stern demeanor of the men that surrounded me; it was all putting me in a foul mood, making me wonder why I had bothered to ever descend from that lovely kingdom in the sky.

I found a shared auto rickshaw that was going down the road to the train station in New Jalpaiguri. By the time I got there it was almost dark and I was uncomfortable. I didn’t know what I needed, but I had a couple hours to kill. I wandered around the food stalls, wondering if I should get something for the 12-hour journey. I decided on a takeout box that included rice, egg curry, roti and dahl for dirt cheap. After this I was surprised to run into a foreigner. I had figured that the transit hubs between Kolkata and Darjeeling would have a lot of tourists, I had seen almost nobody until now. It was a young, blonde Israeli girl who was traveling alone. She looked lost, but surprisingly not uncomfortable. We started talking and she said she had parted ways with her travel partner a month before and was having a great time. Traveling alone as a woman in India is by no means impossible, but it is not something that should be taken lightly either. She seemed pretty care-free about it, almost acting oblivious to the potential dangers or general obstacles. I admired her for being so open-minded about it, but after talking to her a while, she came off more as naïve and lucky than confident and savvy. She was also heading to Kolkata, but was taking the next train after mine. We hung out near the tracks until my train came. I figured I didn’t need to worry about her since she had made it this far and was still having a great time, but I still had a hint of concern for her in the back of my mind.

By the time I got back to Kolkata I was in no better mood than the evening before. The ferry from the station to the other side of the Hooghly River was not running when I got there, so I took a bus instead. Even the special atmosphere of Kolkata in the early morning was not making me more optimistic about this ground level of India. I made my way back to my hotel, the Modern Lodge. The management did not remember me whatsoever, and I was annoyed to have to fill out their exhaustively inquisitive guestbook, get my picture taken and have my passport photocopied. Then I was shown to my room. The only one available was a tiny shoebox that I could barely standup straight in. It barely had enough room for my bag, the fan barely worked and there was no shutter in front of the broken window. Then I stepped, barefoot, into something slimy and wet. I looked down and saw a small puddle leaking out from a pipe on the wall. My heart sank. I swiped my finger across the liquid and brought it to my nose. Yes. Yes, that is raw sewage leaking into my room. Good to be back in you, Kolkata. Sarcastic wink.