Mama's Last Days in India

 

Nov. 6^th 2012

Back at the station in Kolkata.

Now that we were back in Kolkata, we had a little bit of time before Mama had to fly back home. Before she left, we were invited to lunch by my friend Jasma. She took us to a fancy restaurant at Kolkata’s newest malls. When we were on the way to meet her, My sandal broke. Now we were in urgent need of a cobbler, as I could not show up with just one shoe on (though I wouldn’t have cared to walk around the mall like this, I understood it was not acceptable). The neighborhood we were in looked like there would definitely be a cobbler nearby. It only took a little bit of asking around and showing people my broken sandal to be pointed in the right direction. The cobbler had my sandal fixed up within minutes, I gave him a few rupees, and we were back on our way. Of course, Jasma called me out for being late. I explained what had happened and she rolled her eyes, questioning why I hadn’t just bought a pair of decent sandals or worn shoes. But that is Jasma and I expect that.

The lunch was quite the experience. It started out with a grill being set up in the middle of our table and a variety of kebabs presented to us. Ground lamb kebabs, marinated chicken, whole crabs covered in spice. They brought as many kebabs out as we could eat. When we were finished with our grill, we went to the buffet. Now, I am generally anti-buffet, but this was pretty decent. There was biryani, raita, sabzi, a few curries, rice, naan and lots more. I ate more than I should have, but then again, my appetite usually shrinks when I am in India. Afterword we walked around the mall, peering into the high-end clothing boutiques. Mama was not really interested in buying anything, but it was interesting for her to see a part of India that she had previously not been exposed to.

The last couple days we had in Kolkata, Mama was not feeling too well. Her stomach was out of sorts, as it probably should be in India, but it sapped her energy right at the end. When the kind owner of our guesthouse found out, he gave her a package of Cadbury chocolates. I was glad that Mama was lucky enough to have a kind guesthouse staff, unlike the typical surly people one usually has to deal with in budget guesthouses in Kolkata. Although she was under the weather, we still had some time to walk around and explore the surrounding neighbors. The day before she left, the streets were more calm and quiet than normal, due to the approach of Eid-Al-Adha, one of the most important Muslim holidays. This calm in the city allowed certain things that I had not noticed before to float to the surface and become visible. One of these was a man repairing plastic buckets that I had never seen before. He had a small fire where he was heating up flat pieces of metal, which he would use to melt plastic for repairing buckets. I suddenly remembered that I needed to get my plastic cup fixed. I had been traveling with this orange cup since I was in Morocco, and it had just recently broken when I accidentally dropped my bag on it. I had saved the pieces, wondering if I would figure out a way to fix it. And here was my golden opportunity. I went and got my cup and all its pieces. I waited in line (this bucket repairmen had quite the steady flow of business). He heated his pieces of metal and fused the cracks in my cup back together. He used spare pieces of red plastic to reinforce the repair and to help fuse the handle back on. The workmanship was all about function over form, but it still turned out beautifully. 

Look at this craftsmanship!

It wasn’t our only salvage of the trip though. One day we were walking down a major boulevard, when I spotted some discarded piece of clothing. After so much scavenging in Africa, I find it hard to overlook some sort of unused but usable materials. I picked it up and discovered a filthy pair of colorful pants. I figured Mama would tell me to just put them back, which would have been sound advice. But no, she encouraged me to take them along. Everyone else said I was crazy. Later, I soaked them, and washed them several times. They turned out to be quite wearable, but not on a guy. So I gave them to mama and she loved them.

Mama's new pants.

One day, Joe, Mel, Mallory and I went to Kolkata’s Botanical Gardens. The hour-long bus ride, although crowded, was something of a highlight. It took us through a variety of neighborhoods that I had not seen before. A lot of it seemed poorer and more ramshackle than a lot of the areas I had seen. Part of me wanted to get out and explore, but this was not the time to do so. We were on a mission. The gardens were as I remembered them from last trip: a nice retreat from the chaos of the city, but still rugged and chaotic for a botanical garden. It was far bigger than I had remembered and I saw a lot that I had not seeen before, such as tire-sized lily pads that looked like they belonged more in Alice’s Wonderland or Willy Wonka’s house. The garden’s claim to fame was its “world’s biggest banyan tree”. Somehow I remembered it as the world’s second largest banyan tree from the time before. Maybe someone chopped down the other one since then. It does not look like one tree, but more like a sparse forest of thin, trees connected by vines and branches from above. But it is indeed one tree.  Also, there were mosquitos. Lots of mosquitos that I thanked for preying on Mel and Mal before getting to me.

The night before Mama left, we were hanging out in the room when we heard the unmistakable whine of bagpipes. It was surprising, obviously, to me, and exciting to Mama. Bagpipes are her favorite instrument. They are nostalgic for me, as every summer growing up I would hear people practicing and performing bagpipes in the park nearby the beach we always went to. There was some sort of bagpipe school at the community college. For me, bagpipes were the music of summer more than the tune of an ice cream truck. So to hear them now, so far away from Idaho or Scotland was mind-blowing. We ran outside, followed the sound, and found a parade going down a nearby street. There was a bagpipe band a couple dozen strong marching down the street. I always say that one of the greatest things about Kolkata is that every day you will see something that you’ve never seen before. I explained this concept to Mama once, when we were walking down the street, and just then a small boy heaved a puppy into my face and said, “hey want a puppy?” That had never happened to me before. Sometimes, though, even when you have seen something before, it’s presence in Kolkata makes it feel like something brand new. After a bit of research into why the hell there would be a bagpipe band in Kolkata, I discovered that a more primitive version of the bagpipe, made from a goat skin bag has existed in India for a few hundred years. This, however, did not explain their modern Scottish style instruments, or marching band uniforms.

On one of our days, we made an effort to visit Kali Temple, one of Kolkata’s few notable landmarks. We trudged through the terribly slummy neighborhood and the temple’s trinket-vender-laden surrounds to arrive at the crowded temple. There were hundreds lined up to enter the temple and get a glimpse of the idol representing the (simply-put) Hindu goddess of death and destruction. We waited in the slowly moving line that wrapped around the outside of the temple. We saw other people bribing their way to the front of the line or in the back entrance. When we finally got to the entrance, there was chaotic pushing and shoving. People were trying to force themselves and each other in, while other people were trying to get out. I saw the man in front of me ruthlessly put his entire body weight behind the man in front of us, trying to force him into the small doorway. The crowd swayed around us like large ocean waves that we were forced to submit to. I started to realize that this was actually a dangerous situation. Last time I was here, it was not this bad. Perhaps if I was alone I would have proceeded, but I couldn’t see the situation improving and I didn’t want to put Mama in a dangerous situation. Things looked like they were on the verge of violence or something of a stampede (a common occurrence at Indian religious gatherings), so we turned back around and squeezed our way back out. We walked past a bloody square of concrete where goats were ceremoniously slaughtered and watched the butcher nearby hack up the most recent sacrifice.

So that was the end of Mama’s trip. It seemed so short, but I knew it was a significant event in my mom’s life, just like it was for me the first time I came to India. She had never been off the North American continent before and has lived in Idaho for the last few decades. India is the kind of place that can turn your understanding of the world upside down, especially if you have not been many places. For this reason, I knew it would be hard for Mama to go back. She had just gotten a taste of what life looks like in a place like Kolkata, and now had to go back to her normal life in Idaho. Everything would certainly appear a little different with her new perspective. Most difficult would be the fact that she would be going back to a community where nobody would be able to relate to her experience. They might ask, “Oh, how was India?” Maybe they were being genuine or maybe just politely acknowledging that she had gone somewhere for a couple weeks. Either way, though, it would be difficult for them to empathize with what Mama had seen and experienced, and understand how readjusting to Idaho life would be difficult after having your perspective of the world flipped on its head.

When Mama left, I felt kind of lost again. I had about a month left in India, but still wasn’t sure how I was going to use it. I had had plans of going to Pakistan, but the visa was impossible to get. I had considered going to Bangladesh, but the visa was pricey. Kashmir was a possibility, but this late in the year the roads would be slow, treacherous and possibly closed for the winter. Travel there would require more time than I had. I also considered sticking around Kolkata to volunteer and maybe work on a photo project. It was a hard decision, because I felt like I had to do something that would get me way off the beaten track, and show me something about India that I hadn’t seen before. Trying to figure out how I was going to do this, though, was making me procrastinate. I wasn’t planning an adventure because I couldn’t decide what it was going to be.