Finally Landed

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13/04/08

So today was the day that our comfort blanket was pulled from under us. I’ve said before that South Delhi is really quite western and very easy to spend time in; it’s also become very familiar. This morning all the volunteers began to go their separate ways and make the marathon journeys across country. Eamon and I actually lucked-out as we got the shortest journey (17 hours) and the nicest train. Despite the fact that there are now divisions within the group and everyone is very aware of it, the group was great today as we all saw each other off. I hope to be staying in touch with Rachel, Jan and Peta at least who are personally and (by happy co-incidence) geographically the closest to me (only 7-10 hours). There were a lot of nerves in the air.

Having experienced the full assault of New Delhi Train Station, we made the train in plenty of time. The journey was then really easy and comfortable; helped by the complimentary meals, water and newspapers. The guy who had the adjacent bunk to me was really interesting, he works as a human rights advocate - I want his job! We exchanged details. The trip was going way too well… my arrival at Howrah (Kolkata) soon put a stop to that. I assume Eamon’s rendez-vous was fine as he disappeared very quickly… I waited. I got myself comfortable on the platform, comfortable in the knowledge that everything in India is at slow pace and that I have no issue with waiting for my lift. Whilst floating about, a guy who was also on my train came to say hello, as they do, and subsequently decided that I was a suitable target for his inquisitiveness, thus not releasing me from the bonds of his relentless conversation until his lift arrived almost an hour later. Ok, so he was a good guy, and quite interesting, he also saved me from potential boredom, however his subject matter left me fearful of ever talking to another Delhi male again! You don’t need details (believe me, you don’t want them), but he took the predictable conversation about marriage, wife, children and age to hither-to unexplored extremes. I was going to use the word depths, but I’m mindful that such conversation may be a social norm and so I don’t want to prejudge. Suffices to say that the finer details of my sexual expression were solicited, though only partly relinquished! Bless him. He gave me his contact details too, but that won’t be one I pursue any further. Anyway, after an hour and a half waiting, I began to suspect that no one was coming to collect me after all. I impressed myself with how chilled I was about this. I was planning a night in a travellers’ hostel from where I could try and get hold of someone, but tomorrow is a public holiday here and I was concerned that no-one would be available to help. Thus, I went in search of a phone that would allow me to call Delhi mobiles (VSO), oh so easy you’d think. Apparently not! I did eventually find one, but bare in mind that I’ve just had a long and tiring journey, it’s violently humid, the station is as busy as you can imagine and then some, I’m lugging 50kg of luggage around and I can’t speak much Bengali yet - twas an experience to remember. People kept coming up to me telling me to sit down; I was sweating so much I think people thought I had a high fever. The details of how I finally got hold of someone and met my contact at the station are tedious, but it took two and a half hours and a big dollop of discomfort. Welcome to Kolkata! I’m told that’s the template for life here so I can’t wait. The guy who met me is called Kishore. He’s a bit of a dude. Unfortunately, his English isn’t great and my Bengali isn’t up to more than the most basic of conversations. We both said lots of things, but neither of us understood the other, not the most fruitful of conversations. I really need to get on to this language learning malarkey. So, to recap, the theory went that a representative of my organisation would meet me at the station and then orientate me briefly before leaving me to settle in to my exciting new flat. The reality contained a few hics. The other biggy was that my exciting new flat, isn’t… mine that is, yet. With any luck I can move in on Tuesday, but in the meantime I’m in a mid-renovation, dust-ball of a hotel and am still living out of my bags; could be worse I guess. Kishore has been very cool actually and joined me for dinner before heading off. He’ll also fetch me tomorrow and with any luck will show me the area and some of the New Year celebrations. Yes indeed, Monday is Bengali New Year - ‘Khushi Notun Bochor Shomboi’ (Happy New Year Everyone!). It’s now the year 1415.

20/03/08

I have no idea where to begin. I have had a massive week. I’ve waited ‘til now to write as I wanted to be having a good day when I did so. This week has seen more extremes of emotion for me, some wonderful and exciting moments and a few distressing ones (nothing more than you might expect though). So right now, I’m chilling out (well as chilled as you can be in 40 degree heat and unbelievable humidity) to the dulcet tones of the shockingly misogynistic, but extraordinary talented Mr. Andy Williams, thus I have just enjoyed a chino at the house of bamboo and am now up and away in my beautiful balloon. If you’re not with me in my balloon, shame on you! Get out and buy the very best of Andy Williams this instant - it will fill your life with joy.

So, to my week, so let’s begin at the start, that makes sense to me. Kishore never did return for me on the Monday. I guess it’s not shocking, but was very disappointing. My horoscope in the Telegraph (its not Tory here) for that day said that I should ‘wait and watch’ and that I shouldn’t have ‘unrealistic expectations’ - never was a horoscope so persceptive. Monday really was a low point so far, I felt unceremoniously dumped in a pit of a hotel in a remote backwater without a single friendly face. Clearly I’m dramatising, but that’s how it felt, so give me that! Anyway, because I‘d not seen Kolkata at all, had no idea of the public transport routes and had no map, I was a little nervous of going exploring by myself. After a few hours of freaking out behind the bars of my bedroom window however, I decided that my mental well-being presented me with very little choice. I really had no intention of getting lost though, so I scoped out Thakurpukur in a radial fashion. Really, the Boy Scout movement should be proud of me. I know the shop keepers around the focal point of my walk will have doubts about my sanity. After wandering down each road I would return to smile at their inquisition only to return again ten minutes later, road 2 having been checked out as clear of sanctuary, this continued for an hour or so until I could no longer stand shop-keepers’ chuckles as I passed, I then broke my pattern. I considered leaving a trail of bread crumbs, but the bread here is so soggy that it wouldn’t crumble. Anyway, my final venture proved hugely fruitful as I came upon a number of the large ponds after which Thakurpukur (God’s Lake) is named. They make for a happy place where the whole community come together and enjoy the water’s ameliorating affect. I happened upon a 7-aside cricket tournament between several teams all made up off locals, it was a celebration of the community in this New Year. Cricket will always be the way Indians chose to celebrate anything given an occasion, if not, they’ll just celebrate cricket. So whilst down at the lakes, I had my first sense of what my life may hold for me in the coming months, I felt so excited to watch community life unfold in front of me. Loads of people came to say hello of course… and take the inevitable photo of me. I walked back to the hotel after a couple of hours with a little skip in my step smiling broadly for the first time in a couple of days.

That evening, came more welcome relief, this time in the form of a spectacular electric storm. Ok, so its 40 degrees here, give or take a degree, which is no longer news by now, what however is note-worthy, is that where as Delhi has about 40% humidity at the moment, Kolkata is experiencing 93%!!! It literally can’t get much more uncomfortable. The only moments of this week that I’ve been comfortable have been those in the shower (bucket bath). Needless to say, I’ve had a lot of them. As you stop drying yourself you can feel the sweat building again, it’s really quite gross. I’m pleased to report that the locals have as much trouble with it as I do; it’s just not something you can acclimatise to. Sadly, I’ve got no air condition or ceiling fan in my temporary accommodation and so it’s about sitting in front of a desk top fan for the whole evening and moving as little as possible. As you may now imagine, the storm was then a phenomenally wonderful thing; it was still over 30 degrees and sticky, but hardly comparable with the daytime. The storm was also pretty impressive; numerous times the sky split open as lightning brought its momentary day light and rich purple conviction. There’ll be no let up in humidity until, ironically, the monsoons arrive in July sometime - eek! I do now completely understand why Indians go on about how lovely the weather is as the skies cloud over.

So, Tuesday came, and, you guessed it, no new flat. Actually, I did at last get to see it - it does exist. Indeed I was offered two to choose from which was completely lovely. Both owned by the same people. The first is a first-floor flat next to Rosalyn’s. It’s a gorgeous 2-bed self-contained flat in a newly built building. I was very relieved and really very excited. The second is 2 houses away, this time on the ground floor. It’s in a lesser condition, but is even bigger with a lounge as well as two large bedrooms. It’s also got outside space and is set on the edge of one of those lakes I mentioned. It’s fantastic! Although the first is clearly ‘nicest’ as such, I went for the second one as its location is perfect and most importantly, a ground floor flat is much cooler than the first floor, especially as I have the lake on my doorstep - oh too literally in rainy season I think! It just goes to show how important being cooler has become; I’ve chosen flooding and mosquitoes over a shiny new flat. I’m sure this makes no sense unless you experience the immense ferocity of this humidity. Oh, and the other plus with the one I’ve chosen is that it has a western style toilet, loving that! I was concerned about being on the ground floor for security reasons as well possible flooding, but Thakurpukur is really safe and as I implied earlier, Indian’s have this curious habit of choosing to be enjailed in their homes. Nothing to do with security, apparently they just like to have their windows and doors covered in iron bars. I don’t get it myself, however ornate they might be. So even though I don’t move in until tomorrow now, I do have my new address, but I’ll send it separately in an email as this is a public site. I live off the same road as my office; it’s about a 4 minute walk to work. Hurrah for that as it’ll save me large amounts of money, large amounts of time and a large amount of the ever present asthma risk (traffic is just as hectic here as in the city centre). It’s great that Rosalyn and I are to be near neighbours and we live in such a lovely area. You know when you’re in a posh area in India because the council come to collect your rubbish and people have post boxes! I’m lucky that my landlord and landlady are completely lovely. They live upstairs and have agreed to pass my post on. This is amazing as otherwise it’s a messy process to go and collect your post and it’s not necessarily safe in the meantime. Posting to my landlord should be completely safe.

So Tuesday also saw my first day in the office at BNP+. Having spent an hour trying to find it, I soon settled in. I’m really good at that milling-around-doing-not-a-lot thing that people do so well here, especially in Bengal. Well I say that, but too much of it will drive me bonkers. Apart from in the big corporations, there really isn’t much of a work culture here. Some people are of course really dedicated, very skilled and work hugely hard. There are undeniably however a large chunk of people who arrive as and when, make tea, read the paper, moan about the humidity, chat a little, go to lunch, walk around the office all afternoon looking over other people’s shoulders and then head home early ‘cos its been a tough day. At the moment it’s amusing, but give me a couple of weeks! Day one at work, was really about saying hello to everyone and very little else, induction is an alien concept. I had expected this and so took my Bengali notes so at least I could do something productive. My colleagues are hopefully going to be a huge source of smiliness for my time here. They are SO lovely. Tarit, my boss, and an amazingly sorted guy called Bimal, are pretty good English speakers which is ace, and a couple of the others make a really good effort, so all is not lost on that front. The difficulty for me with Bengali is that in everyday use, you hear things, but don’t get to see how they’re written. I’ve actually got a great memory for things if they’re written down, but an endless stream of verbage is completely impenetrable. Writing is rarely practicable. Aparently I’m being taught the same things over again, but I’m just not recognising them. I know they say that you only learn a language properly by speaking it and living in a country, but at this point I’m still sceptical. Anyway, I met Tarit on Weds and we talked briefly about what I am meant to be doing. Neither of us have much clue and so I guess there’s scope there! Then, Wednesday afternoon I’m told that on Friday and Saturday there’s a conference of representatives from all 19 District Level Networks of people living with HIV in West Bengal (DLNs), the organisations that BNP+ is the umbrella for. The conference is to rework BNP+’s vision statement for the next 4 years. This is a rare opportunity to meet all these key people and to get them all together. It makes sense to capitalise upon it. There I am then, with only 1 and half days of office time before the conference, being asked to run the second day. Normally not a problem, but some planning time wouldn’t have gone a miss. So I spend the next day working shocker hard on getting a workshop together which will be about assessing participants’ training and future professional development needs - meeting those needs is my job in theory. Happily complete, I take my plan to Bimal at the end of the day on Thursday to find that his idea of what the session should be about is different to what I understood from Tarit. Apparently I was supposed to be Training them on how to do a needs assessment, not doing one myself. Frustrated, I spent a hideous evening on Thursday, up all hours plugging away at planning a course on a subject that I know little about battling with sweltering heat, and power cuts. Power cuts can be forgiven for interrupting your work, which they do for up to a couple of hours a day, but there is no forgiveness for doing so in my own time and when I have a ridiculous deadline. Not to mention the most heinous of power-cut crimes - the prevention of fanage! Take away my music and my kettle if you have to, but my fan is not negotiable. The distress of not having one working is really quite substantial. To be fair, during the middle of the day fans are like heaters as they just throw the scorching air at you at a faster rate than normal, but at any other time, they’re a life-safer. I’ve just paid to get a ceiling fan installed in my new place as we speak. Friday morning I woke up to find no power, went to get a cooling shower and found that there was no water either! I freaked - this on top of a long shitty night. Thankfully, after two hours of having my hands in my head rocking from side to side I heard someone turn the water pump on! Unbelievable, never occurred to me I’d have to turn the water on; it wasn’t a cut at all.

Anyway, the conference turned out to be fascinating. Clearly I understood about…zero, of the content, but I did get regular updates in English of what had just taken place. What was really interesting though was just watching the human interactions, picking up on some of that Indianness that is still a bit of mystery to me. There were a lot of opinions flying across that room… some were even voiced! By the end of the day, my workshop saga had a new chapter; the new material I had prepared had been covered that day by the other facilitator - planning? What’s that? Anyway, I was staying in Kolkata that night as it’s so far to travel from home so couldn’t do any new work on it really. I found an Internet café and downloaded a few things and then pencilled out a few more thoughts; wasn’t up to putting too much effort in at this point. I was due to deliver it first thing the next morning. At 3pm the next day I was called upon, now with 2 hours rather than the 4 I was told to plan. My interpreter had a high fever and so hadn’t turned up - all going rosily! I ended up blagging with one of my colleagues interpreting, but I’m not sure how well he interpreted, there was much confusion which left me concerned that working here, I’d end up deskilling myself; Its just not viable to train via an interpreter, what was I thinking? Oh well, I’m here now. I did get through all the points I wanted to make and people were keen to join in, but I’m not sure what they managed to gain from the session. I got reasonable feedback, but you never know here, it’s not done to give criticism, even if you really aren’t happy - you blank people instead! Go on; hold a grudge, that’s healthy. Sorry, a little of my frustration coming through there. Anyway, looking back I really value the fact that I was thrown in at the deep end as it completely removes any scary anticipation and also I’ve risen to a challenge and hopefully won a few brownie points so I guess it’s not all bad. Next week I’m going to write a work plan and try to think of something else constructive to do.

Monday is yet another public holiday. I love Bengal for that. They literally have this day set aside so they can go on strike about something; it’s called ‘Bengal Strike Day’! I think I’ve said before, everyone and everything in this state is politically sensitised, people love nothing better than to go on strike, big companies even plan it into their timetables. Doesn’t matter what they’re striking about, its just about challenging the system - I personally wonder how many of those striking actually know what the system is that they’re challenging, but hey, like it matters. We have the day off work and there is the point! I’m told Monday’s strike will be about how expensive things are in the shops these days, but that’s subject to change. Meanwhile, I’m making the most of another short working week to moving house - for the fifth time in as many weeks. This time is the last though with any luck. I’m so excited about getting all my things and having a proper home here, I really think that will help to tone down my emotional volatility with a bit of stability.


On a day-to-day level, I’m beginning to find my ground. I have an amazing market about half an hour away, but locally some groceries are tough to find; particularly toilet roll, yoghurt and cereals. As I’m still in temporary accommodation, I’m having to eat out a lot, though at 25p a meal, it’s not going to break the bank. I’m not sure how hygienic it is in my local fooderie, but when you’ve got no choice, it’s amazing what you can shut your eyes to. Umm, well actually, having said that, there are limits; which brings me to my ‘Butcherous Streets of Bakrahat Road’ story, for which I apologise in advance. It may not be a long way, but the journey from my home to the office is one I do many times a day, as I pass I have to witness torture and murder on a major scale. I know this sounds like me being dramatic again, but this time I’m serious. Yes, I’m talking about goats, chicken and fish, but that makes it no less distressing for me and more importantly, for them. I’ll approach a stall, see a chicken wandering around its cage and before I get past the stall; there will have been deathly squealing, its head will be on the floor and a man will be pulling its innards out - a river of blood flows towards my feet; you can almost smell the fear of the remaining chicken, they know that they’re moments away from the same fate. Their blight is more than matched by that of the goats who go through very similar experiences, though whilst waiting for their turn they are pushed, kicked and run into by a whole range of passing people and vehicles. The goats’ deaths are also more distressing for me as their eyes are so much more expressive and as they are in less demand, you might see a bunch of about five tied to a shop front and then each day one more will be gone; slowly the crèche diminishes. On a couple of occasions I’ve felt physically sick from seeing distressing butchery, but the other night I had a tear in my eye as there was only one goat left outside this particular shop. I SO wanted to release it, but didn’t feel quite brave enough. Now I feel guilty. I’m sure this sounds a bit pathetic to some, but I can’t tell you enough how real these feelings are for me - they are so heightened because these scenes are permanently in my face. In England I can control my exposure to such things; it’s no less hideous, just easier to manage in my head. Here, there are no such luxuries, it’s a reality of life and there are no apologies for it. It defies belief to me that anyone can watch that process and then choose to eat that animal.

Ok, I need to lighten the tone I realise. Let me share with you a slice of Indian culture - this is a write up in the paper for one of Indian’s most popular soaps, it’s called “My Wife and Kids” (not really a paternalistic society - honest!): ‘the day after an anti-wrinkle injection goes awry for Michael and he ends up with an unnatural expression, he has to fight a traffic ticket in court. The judge is angered by his frozen grin and sentences him to a night in jail, where Michael’s cell mate, Big Guy, thinks Michael is coming on to him since he keeps smiling at him’. Got to love this country!

Ok, these blogs are getting ridiculously long. I’m sorry about that, I know none of you really have the time for my endless ramblings, but I get so much from writing them down - my mind is always so much healthier having off-loaded. I’m loving hearing about your worlds too, thank you. I know I owe a few of you letters, they’re on the way. Stay well and smiley lovely people. xxxxx

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Photos

Rather Amusing Curtains
Ok, so its a bizarre photo, but I reckon they're bizarre curtains. These gorgeous images of Tom and Jerry, the Easter Bunny, Nellie the Elephant and a random blue Giraffe were all that came between my and insanity in teh dust-ball hotel... maybe you'd question whether they came between us at all!

Camping Out
This is the posh flat next to Rosalyn's.. that I turned down.

My alley way
Trying to show you what its like in these pictures is proving fruitless I'm afraid. They just don't cut it, but hey, I tried.

What makes it all worth it
This is my fantastic view over the back wall and from my shower room.

Comments

[paul cooke]

Nice curtains!
Hmmm, My wife and kids sounds brillant, keep me posted! Ahhh, look at your flat! Nice! Sounds like it's all going well. Paulo xxx