Return to Kolkata

Sept. 24, 2012

I was nervous about my return to Kolkata. It is a city that holds a lot of emotional significance to my life. I wasn’t sure what to expect. In the five years since I have left, I have constantly heard about the economic boom in India, and the rapid growth and development that went along with it. Would I see noticeable changes? And if so, would they be positive, inspirational changes, or would it be an offensively lopsided modernization that further widens the gap between rich and poor; the few haves and the infinite masses of have nots. I also wondered how the intensity of Kolkata would affect me. Other than a couple of brief experiences in Mexico and Belize, India had been my first real travel experience. Before going there the first time, I had been warned in every possible way about how hard it can be to live in Kolkata. The pollution, the traffic, the crowds, etc. Yes, it was shocking my first time, but I had been ready for just about anything. As far as being overwhelmed by the city, I was not nervous at all. Not only had I spent a couple months here before, I had been to over a dozen countries since then. I felt that the last thing I would need to worry about was any sort of culture shock.

To get into the city, I decided to be ambitious and take a bus. This looked like it would be a challenge since I had read that the buses leave from a station about a kilometer away from the airport. After some wandering and asking around, though, I found out that there was a new airport bus that would leave directly from the terminal. This was a big surprise. As I sat and waited, I saw a stall selling snacks. I hadn’t eaten since the night before and decided to get some of “Magic Masala” Lay’s and a Mountain Dew. The man operating the stall told me the prices, but when I went to pay, he wanted twenty more rupees than it should have been. He gave some explanation of why he would charge me 70 rupees for a 20 rupee bag of chips and a 30 rupee Mountain Dew, but it didn’t make any sense. I handed the food back to him, got my money back and walked away, still hungry and thirsty. It was a fitting welcome back.

The bus was not the smoke belching, rattling blue behemoth with a wooden frame that I had expected. Instead it was a brand new, modern bus with air-conditioning and tinted windows. To be honest it was disappointing in its lifelessness. There was no scruffy man hanging out of the open door screaming the destination, but instead an LED display on the front that stated “Esplanade”. The tint obscured my view and the air-con gave a false sense of comfort. I was cut off from the dramatic sights, sounds and smells of this intense city. Part of me wished that I would have sprung for the extra $4 to take a taxi for a more powerful return to the city.

For the first half of the traffic-addled ride, I could make out a slightly more developed city than I had remembered. The billboards and shops seemed more modern and everything seemed less run down than I had remembered. Then suddenly, getting off a main thoroughfare, I felt liked I was flung back into the chaos that I remembered so fondly. Our path was blocked by men with carts, livestock, a fleet of smoking auto rickshaws and working pedestrians hustling through the traffic as they carried out their “nine to five”. The ragged, mildewed buildings, with laundry struggling to dry in every window, sprung up out of the garden of pandemonium before us. Although my senses were encumbered I could start to feel the energy of the city.

I was the last person to get off the bus when we finally arrived at the Esplanade “station”. I got out and was embraced by the arresting humidity, noise and mayhem. It is not a city of loneliness or solitude, so just let it wrap you in its arms, hang on, and it will take you where it wants you to go. When I look back on this moment of my first few steps, I picture a smile growing on my face that I was trying to restrain. While it is known as the city of joy, it is not a place of public displays of glee.

I had a vague idea of where I was, I still had to ask someone the direction to New Market, a landmark that would orient me. The person I asked, a Nimbu Pani wallah (sweet lime juice vendor), was disarmingly kind and pointed me in the right direction. My excitement counterbalanced the extreme burden of my ever-growing backpack as I made my way toward the infamous Sudder Street.

Before I could even think about finding a place to sleep, I was accosted by a food vendor in a familiar location near New Market. Accosted probably is not the right word because I approached him, but his mere presence basically forced me to go eat. I wanted to taste the dish I had yearned for for so many years and failed repeatedly in recreating. I saw on his sign that he offered my dish, Raj Kachori, and requested a plate. I was surprised and almost disappointed, though, when he handed me a plate of puris and chickpeas instead. In fact, after looking at his stand, I saw none of the ingredients for the dish I was looking for, but took what he gave me anyway. I was too hungry to complain. To my pleasant surprise, the food was far better than I could have dreamed of. The puris were fluffy, the chickpeas spicy with an unforgettable touch of lime.

In my first minutes walking through the New Market area, I was pleasantly intrigued with the changes that had and hadn’t arrived. At first glance, a lot of the most memorable aspects were still intact. The rickshaw wallahs showed no sign of leaving despite an ongoing battle over their legality and most of the shops and hotels seemed about the same at first. I would later discover, though, that a lot more had changed than I first realized. I was also quite surprised at how friendly the people I encountered were. Based on my memories, I was expecting a lot more gruff attitudes paralleled by incessant hustlers. Not only did I find friendly people and a lack of scammers in my first few minutes, it seemed that there were not nearly as many foreigners hanging around as I had expected. Since I had last been here, India had burst much further into the international community’s consciousness with its economic boom, the rise of Bollywood and pop culture phenomenons like Slumdog Millionaire. India was transforming itself from a typical destination for do-gooders and hippy backpackers seeking spiritual enlightenment to a serious travel destination for people of all travel persuasions. The “Incredible India” campaign was transforming the tourism scene, and pushing it to a higher standard of travel and not just a place for people with more time than money. That being said, I was surprised at how few foreigners I saw on my first walk down Sudder Street. Perhaps, though, it was because I had seen some real backpacker ghettoes and traveler destinations in Thailand and Cambodia more recently, so having a majority presence of Indians on the street made it seem like a relatively untouched neighborhood.

Of course, these are just my first impressions on my return. A lot of this was clouded by other experiences, expectations, etc. After spending a couple more months in Kolkata, I would come to change my perception of the city and especially the neighborhood I was based in. But for now, I was intoxicated with the city and my judgment was impaired.

I perused Sudder Street, looking for a place to sleep. Already two of my three old digs had closed. The Salvation Army was under some sort of construction and the dingy old “Calcutta Guest House” that catered to Bangladeshi immigrants had been bought out and transformed by a different hotel. The Paragon, my favorite place, had raised their rates significantly. I ended up at the “Modern Lodge”, which is really one of the less modern places I have ever stayed in. As expected, the mattress was thin and dirty, the sheets torn, the communal toilet was smelly and squatty, the showers (surprisingly not bucket showers) were cold, and there were no outlets in the room. Also as expected, the ceilings were high, the communal areas were friendly and had a nice rooftop to do laundry and socialize. It was a sort of luxury to be back in this utter lack of luxury. Of course, I realize how silly and even offensive this sounds. I was told once that I romanticize poverty. Yes, this living was a lot more basic than what I was used to for my entire life, and even much less “comfortable” than most places in my travels. And would I like to live forever with these relatively rough conditions, even though I enjoy it for the time being? Probably not. So is it offensive to the people that struggle to attain shelter as good as mine, that I enjoy something like this for its simplicity? Maybe. And this is what Kolkata is constantly doing to me. Challenging me, making me wonder what I am doing in the moment as well as in the greater scheme of things. The most important aspects of Kolkata, for me, are the every day challenges that test you mentally, physically, spiritually.

Anyway, my first few days in the city were surprisingly difficult. Despite my initial enthusiasm for the return, I found myself immediately drained. I was surprised, since I had been feeling confident in my ability to adapt to anything and take any new place in stride. I had traveled through Central America and Mexico, a few countries in West and North Africa, and a good portion of Southeast Asia. I was pretty sure that after all that, coming back to a place I had already been to before would not be a challenge. I figured any memory of it being overwhelming was because I had not seen much of the urban developing world before. Now that I had seen a lot more, I imagined Kolkata would seem much less intimidating. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There were few times in my travels where I felt more drained and exhausted from simply living daily life. Mostly it was physical, but there was an emotional toll as well. I could not believe the humidity. Everywhere else I had been in Asia was humid, but something about Kolkata made it seem even more intense. Maybe it was all the pollution and filth in the air that made it seem that much more thick. Like Arizonans saying, “but it’s a dry heat” to show it’s not that bad in the desert, in Kolkata I felt like saying, “but it’s a dirty humid” to show how uncomfortable it really was. On top of that were the typical things that will bother the outsider. Noise, crowds, poverty, bad smells, etc. I was so surprised that this was starting to bring me down, since five years earlier I felt like it didn’t affect me nearly as much. I can only assume that this had something to do with what I was expecting in the two different trips. Before going the first time, it had been over-stated to me, over and over, how intense it is in India and how I would barely be able to function. Everything was so over dramatic that when I arrived it did not seem that difficult to handle. This time, I was expecting a cake walk, and instead was getting slapped in the face by India. At the end of the day, though, I was glad for this. I felt like I was long overdue for some culture shock.