The Lake Centre

Well, it's time to write about the school.

Vikramshila, the organization with which I am working--'working' at this point seems a little strong; I think 'hanging out' is closer, all though I think that will change soon--Vikramshila runs 24 schools in the city, which provide education for kids living in slums or on the street. The program is actually a partnership with the Kolkata police; the schools are set up in high-crime neighborhoods as a way to prevent kids from being pickpockets or joining gangs. The aim is, by 8th or 9th grade, to mainstream the kids into the Kolkata public school system, as well as to provide basic education about health and hygiene.

The schools are one-rooms buildings, which have a small washroom off to one side. I've visited a few of them. The 60 to 80 students, aged 3 to 14, sit on the floor on mats, and practice their Benglai and English and math, as well as doing a lot of creative activities. Visiting the schools for the first time is always a bit of an Event. When Sam, large, big-footed white guy, walks into school full of small Benglai children, you can imagine that it's not exactly business-as-usual.

The first time I visited the Kalighat school I received, to my sheer discomfort, two rounds of applause. The first was for getting my forehead pasted with this kind of colored dust. I think the teacher was trying to demonstrate something about how the art material was non-toxic or something, although it was also similar to the kind of mark you get when you visit the Kalighat temple, which is right down the road. The second round of applause was for asking one of the kids what his name was in Bengali (it's so easy, you can do it; tomar nam ki?). I tried to be discreet, but discretion is a highly scarce resource in a one room school. So, of course, there were gasps of, "Oh, you speak Bengali!" which is proverbially not true. And then, the second round of applause.

I've visited one of the schools 3 times now, to speak in English with the oldest kids. There are sometimes as many as 6, but the regulars are: Subhadeep, who is a 13 year old boy and the son of the Vikramshila cook: Swarupa, a really (I mean, seriously) cute 12 year old girl who is the school math champ: Arati, who's 15 and wicked smart, and kind of sarcastic: and Bharati, Arati's serious younger sister.

The first day I went to tutor them, they were obviously waiting for me. I had imagined doing some grammar excercises or giving them silly writing assignments or something--but what they wanted was just to talk. Their English is pretty good. Subhadeep is the chattiest, and manages to communicate by using gerunds a lot. The others pause frequently, and as long as Subhadeep doesn't interject, they can say pretty much anything they want. They all make tons of mistakes, including forgetting that there are gendered pronouns in English (there aren't in Bengali). But what's amazing is that they understand nearly everything I say, and that they can communicate even pretty complicated ideas using their fragmented English.

We ended up talking for 5 hours, sitting on the floor of the one room school, as kids on the other side of the room chanted spellings and numbers. For a while, we talked about our families, and what sports we like to play.

The most unnerving thing about talking with those for the first day was how quickly I realized how much of what I tend to talk about and do is a symbol of wealth. When I took my big 1000ml water bottle out of my backpack, it was a big deal. When we talked about movies, they told me that they had all seen the same two--Spiderman and Baby's Day Out.(About Baby's Day Out, imagine Arati saying, in the most proper Indian accent, "It's a very good movie!") Subhadeep asked me if I'd seen King Kong, and I told him that I had, on the plane over. Then,

"How many movies have you seen?" Swarupa asked me. I dunno. 1000 maybe? Maybe more?

When we talked about our homes, I told them how I lived outside DC, and they told me how they had recently been evicted from the shanty town along side the railroad tracks a couple blocks from the school. I don't quite understand the politics of it, but the bridge over the railroad is the district line; in the district to the west of the bridge, the municipal government made it illegal to live along the tracks.

On the other side, the shanty town is still there. From the top of the bridge, you can see miles and miles of small huts, with thousands of people milling about on the tracks when a train isn't coming. Under the bridge, too, there are houses stacked one atop another. About 45% of Kolkatans live in shanties like these. Living in such places birng with it a host of problems--200 people share a single common tap, there is no sanitation system, there is no way to clean anything, the cooking fuel is extremely dirty and so creates horrible indoor air poolution. But to the west of the bridge, now, there is nothing but piles of what used to be the homes of Bharati, Arati, Subhadeep, and Swarupa. They live now, I think, on the other side, or on the street with their parents near the schools.

When I arrived, I noticed the poverty--how could you not?--but it didn't affect me somehow until I was hit by my relationship to it. Sitting in a cab in a traffic jam, a small girl ran up to the window to ask for money. After a minute, I figured out that she was actually saying, in English, "water." I was holding my 3/4 full nalgene bottle. I started to hand it to her, but it became clear that what she wanted was for me to pour the water into her hands, so she could drink it and splash it on her face. She smiled, and ran up the street, where another kid was holding a naked baby, rapping on the windows of other cars. Within a minute, there were 2 kids on each side of the cab, asking for money. The cab driver starting yelling at them and shooing them. I had a little water left, but was afraid I would cause further chaos by giving it away.

One kid, maybe nine years old, was looking at me with this slightly maniacal smile and saying a word over and over again in Bengali. Finally, traffic started moving, and we drove away.

It's those moments that are the most intense--where I am confronted by the nauseating discrepancy between what I have and what so many of these people have. It's not about any image or action--I think I have a pretty strong stomach. Pulling a rickshaw on foot in the pouring rain seems like a lousy way to make a living, but as long as I am not part of that scene, the discomfort fades in a matter of minutes. When it sticks with me is when it draws me in, and I see the poverty not as an absolute, but in its relation to me.

The first time I saw the shanty town I mentioned earlier, my instinct was to reach for my camera. It is a rough and beautiful sight--the beautiful colors of the women's saris, the uneven rows of houses. But in that reaction, I think what happened was that I had a need to put something between me and the town--to distance it, to put it on film, to make it an image.

Images I can deal with. Talking with 4 teenagers about everything I have and everything they do not, making real the dynamic of power between the rich and the poor--that's where the real discmofort is. And fundamentally, I think it's embarassment--a total inability to account for why I've been so priviledged and why Arati, Bharati, Subhadeep, and Swarupa have not.

People: When You Are In Foreign Countries, Do Not Act Like This Guy

Dear people who live in rich countries,

I was standing in the Park St. Metro station at rush hour a couple days ago. The Kolkata metro is very nice and clean and air conditioned. It is also extremely cheap, so except for the fact that there is only one line, it is the ideal mode of transportation in the city. I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of Japanese trains, where people are packed together in the cars, but that's pretty much what it was like. There are a lot of very friendly people very very close to you.

Thus far in my trip, I had seen exactly 2 other white people; a couple, probably German, staring up at something. I saw them from a cab. So Kolkata is not exactly tourist central. So, it was to my great surprise that I turned around to see, next ot me on the train platform, a white guy. He was tall, with kind of floppy red hair and trendy facial hair, carrying a smallish hiking back pack. I leaned over and said,

"Do you think anyone here would believe that we don't know each other?"

"Slow down, I'm French," he said. I apologized and repeated my joke. He then launched into a bizzare rampage about how his month in India was too much for him to take, and everything was so dirty and people were always trying to rip him off. He did this for 4 minutes--I know, because I watched the clock behind him. I was struck with absolute horror, and I watched the people around us slowly edge away.

"And the food, it's so dirty! I can't find any where to eat! I just want to go back to France. Everyone is so dirty when they prepare the food...."

I tried to be lighthearted by saying, "Oh come now, I like it here! The food I've eated has been perfectly fine..." and providing basic travel tips. He, though very friendly, would have none of it.

"You're staying for three months? How can you stand it?"

It was horrifying. I'm only lucky that the Indians around us displayed standard Indian tact and pretended (more or less successfully) not to notice. I, for one, rather like India--and it's dirty and polluted and crowded, sure. But it's also beautifult and complex and fascinating. And the people are really wonderful. So, for me, can we all try to see the sunny side of life when we're visiting in foreign countries? And, if not, can we at least shut up about it?

Sincerely,
Sam

A brief warning against taking my ramblings too seriously

Shortly before I left the states, Sarah Hoglund asked me to help her a bit with her thesis for her doctorate in British history. She's researching British burial practices, and Kolkata (once considered the 'Second City of the British Empire' by some former magistrate) has an amazing specimen in the Park St. Cemetery. It is now quite unkempt; the paths aren't mowed, nor the tropical trees trimmed, and there are people living in some of the more out-of-the-way monuments. But still, Park St cemetery is an impressive and mythical place that retains nearly all of the absurd, evil pompousness we've come to love in British imperialism. And there is something appropriate about the current state of the Park St. Cemetery. It represents, I think, how the city lives with its British heritage; not in a celebratory nor resentful manner, but with a healthy sense of posterity and pragmatism.

But, unfortunately for Sarah, this post isn't about Park St. (although I should tell her that I'll send her the photos as soon as I figure out how). It is about an interaction I had after I left the gates, where I had to tip both of the doormen who, as far as I could tell, didn't do anything except let alone the cemetery's residents.

I took a cab up to Park St, which is about 3 miles from my neighborhood, but I decided to wander west on foot until I found a place to eat. The sky grew menacingly dark, and all the sidewalk vendors hawking their puffed rice and plastic toys began packing their wares under narrow tarps and awnings. To avoid the oncoming rain, I ducked into a busy kabob-and-curry place and was pointed to a table. A few moments after I ordered, it began to absolutely pour. I watched through the open front as pedestrians head for cover, and rickshaw drivers trudged along through foot-deep puddles.

4 large Bengalis came down the stairs from the place above to go out for a smoke; but, seeing the rain, decided to wait it out, and all sat down at my table. The largest introduced himself as Hassan. The others sat and listened.
Hassan, in thickly accented and very good English (a post is pending about English in Kolkata): Where are you from?
Me: The US.
Him: Where?
Me: Virginia.
Him: Where?
Me: It's outside Washington DC.
Him: I know Virginia, that's why I'm asking.
Me: Oh, I'm from Herndon.
Him: I used to drive a taxi for IBM. I know Herndon.

Hassan, it turned out, first went to the US in 1982, where he flipped burgers (at "King Burger") for 3 bucks an hour. He then spent time driving the limo in DC, Philly, Chicago, and in New Jersey, and as a result knows all those cities better than I. Eventually, he got enough money to start a chain of 99-cent stores. At some point, he won a big lawsuit against Macy's, and had a big enough nest-egg to return to India.

(I don't know what the suit was about, but the only reasonable guess I have is racial discrimination.)

"Also," he said, "I once made $120 on slots with one quarter."
"You're a lucky man," I replied. Chuckling and back slapping from the four men ensued.

Now, he's back in Kolkata, working as an exporter--the same as Mr. Chatterjee, the fellow I live with, and a sign of economic privelege. He had been out to dinner with the other 3 men, who were his importers in Bangladesh. The importers, it turns out, had paid because, ahem, the youngest man "is interested in chickies," as Hassan put it, "to be frank with you. He wants me to find him a girl."

"Well, with your luck, he should do alright," I said. Further gaffawing.

What followed was a fascinating series of observations of America, from the point of view of Hassan, a kind of Bengali de Toqueville.

"Before I went to America, everyone said the American people are so promiscuous. But actually the American people are very cautious people (pronounced here "kyooshus"). You know in America, you can't do anything with out the girl's consent. And you know, the Americans always use a condom because they are so scared of HIV/AIDS."

The fellow to Hassan's left stirred. "You can't do anything without the girl's consent?"

"No, nothing," Hassan insisted. "And you know what else? In America, it is very difficult to find a girl, yes, you know this, yes?" I agreed. The guy next to Hassan pondered these things with eyebrows raised, nodding.

"The American people are a good people, especially New York. You have all kinds of people--Indians, Bangladesh, Italian, Irish." Hassan, it turns out, rather likes the Irish. A few Irish cops in NY used to sit in his store and play lotto and have cold drinks. "You can always tell the Irish people, because they are gentle. They have this look." I, naturally, took the opportunity to disclose my 1/4 Irish heritage.

"You see!" said Hassan. Chucking, laughing. "You know, in American, the people do not discriminate. They like the Indian people. And you know, before I went to America, people told me that the Black people were a bad people. But I found out that the Black people are a good people. The only thing is they have an inferiority complex."

"You think so?" I asked, trying mask my discomfort while withholding my endorsement.

"Yes, you know this, yes?"

"Well, I think there is a lot of discrimination against Black people--it's pretty dangerous to be black in America."

"Yes yes, but you know, the Black people like the Irish people because they are so gentle." His ethnic observations continued--Italian people good; Spanish, nasty. Hassan even spoke a little Spanish, although I mostly couldn't understand him.

"In America, there is a law, that if a customer buys something for 99 cents, and you don't give him a penny, he can sue you." I understand why the custom of exact change might surprise a Bengali; a cab driver later that day insisted that he had no change, so I ended up paying Rs. 500 for a Rs. 60 cab fare. Hassan continued, "The rule is, the customer is always right. They take a bite of the cake and then"--Hassan mimed taking a bite--"They say 'no no, it's not good' and you give them their money back."

"But the American people are a good people, you know--you do what you want, no one will bother you. If you break the law, pfft-you are gone. But if you obey the law you are the best person in the world."

******

It's not that anything Hassan said was completely wrong, although I found some of it pretty offensive. It's just that I would never cast America in the terms he used. I will agree with one of Hassan's remarks: "The American people and the Indian people are really very similar." I suppose this is true. They are both massive, culturally dense, complex, and diverse societies. And in this, they are both countries that frantically resist simplification. But as visitors, Hassan and I both have the same need to categorize and simplify--it is the way human beings navigate social situations, I think.

And furthermore, as my conversation with Hassan demonstrated so literally, learning about India is really learning about myself.

So, heretofore, be wary of any statement that starts "The thing about Kolkata is..."

Critical Shoe Theory: Divisions between east and west

The main reason, dear readers, that I haven't updated this blog is that I hadn't, until about an hour ago, come up with the right angle. Do I do a detailed description of where I am? Or of the people I've met? It's odd to think I've been here for three days now--I'm overloaded with images and interactions that I want to get down. It has seemed impossible to create any kind of readable narrative of what I've done.
So I decided to keep it simple, take a deep breath, and jot down a neat little list of things I've accomplished thus far in Kolkata. I'm sorry for the boringness of this post; those of you who want jokes will need to wait for the next installment, which I hear will be a riot. On to the list!

1. I got to my house!

This particular item on the agenda was a bit up in the air, as you may remember. But, moments after I stepped out of customs into the sauna of the Indian sunrise, a tall Bengali fellow named Jish called out my name, and swept me and another American college kid I met on the plane into his car. We dropped the other guy off in Sudder St., allegedly near Mother Teresa's mission (poor kid--maybe he'll make it back to the US one day) and then sped to a neighborhood right in the thick of things called Jodhpur Park. Originally, I was to live in the suburbs, but something happened and now I'm living with a man named Mr. Chatterjee and his daughter and his wife, who's out of town but will be back next week.

My room, on the fourth floor of this townhouse (it's not exactly a townhouse, but you get the idea), is spacious: and, with the two ceiling fans going full blast, the weather is ever tolerable. I have a great view out onto the road, where I see bicycle pulled rickshaws and kids going to school, and people rooting through the trash for food, and ladies in their brightly colored saris going for a stroll. I also hear the traffic 24 hours a day--the cars, constantly swerving around pedestrians and nimbly dodging oncoming traffic, use the horn with impressive regularity.

There are two ladies who clean the house, and a kid who's the "mechanic" who has come twice to fix the toaster. The laundry guy who works at the gate out to the street (and lives there too) lets me into the house if Mr. Chatterjee isn't there. Mr Chatterjee, a semi-retired businessman, is a very nice guy, who has made all kinds of great recommendations about where to go and what to eat and what to buy. He's not at all very rich--middle class people in India, like in other countries in Asia and Latin America, benefit from really cheap labor. I know that one of the guys who works as a peon (their word, not mine) for the office gets paid Rs 1300 a month, which at Rs 40 to the dollar works out to about $35. The people I've met have all been amazingly hospitable--so much so that I sometimes feel rude if I don't take their (often unsolicited) advice. Mr. Chatterjee also gave me directions to my office, which leads tme to....

2. I made it to work.

Vikramshila is an organization that runs a bunch of different programs in and around Kolkata. From my new location, it's a 3 minute walk to the office, which is still amazingly epic. Sidewalk life in Kolkata is intense--there are a hundred different types of food cooked on the street between home and work, and dozes of people sprawled out on the pavement, and men getting shaves while sitting on their parked motorcycles.

One of Vikarmshila's main projects is the Naba Dishu school program, which is a partnership with the Kolkata police. The 24 centers are set up in the high crime areas of Kolkata in an effort to prevent the kids from ending up pickpockets or in gangs. The predominantly Muslim students live in the neighborhoods near the schools. I've visited a few of the schools already; they are amazing. In one, the 40 kids, aged 3-14, sit on the floor of one room set up in the police station complex, and study. The littlest ones learn basic communication skills; the older ones learn math and Bengali and English. In one school, the kids learned about how to purify water by using charcoal and sand filters. What's really neat is how 3 teachers get 40 kids to study inside in the 95 degree weather. American teachers can't do that no matter what.

I'll write more soon about what I'll be doing with the program, but so far it looks like I'll be doing to some English with some of the older kids in the mornings. Starting next week, I'm going to start looking at a bunch of data from the schools, and figuring out how to document the students' progress, and provide some narrative of how successful the schools are being. In other words, my economic and math credentials are being put to good use.

Most exciting, I think, is that I'll be looking at a school in a village outside of Kolkata, where the Vikramshila school has become the social center of the community . What started with a geography lesson led to the adoption of organic farming techniques by the farmers; the kids have learned about how to preserve the health of the pond by testing the pH levels; the boys who dropped out of high school have been coming back to practice reading by discussing articles in the paper. Evidently, in a few weeks, I'll be visiting the village and getting a sense of it myself. Weirdly, all the people at Vikramshila have faith in my research abilities. God knows why--they certainly don't have any evidence.

The ladies (all ladies except for the peon) are great. They've been very good about showing me the schools, and finding people to help teach me Bengali, and warning me about the heat. The first day I arrived, one woman, KanuPriya, decided I needed sandals, and so marched me across the busy thoroughfare so that...

3. I bought shoes!

Well, kind of. In reality, KanuPriya did all the talking. As it turns out, people in Kolkata are smaller than me. We tried three places until we found one shop that had some size 11's that I could squeeze my size-13 feetsies in. I was resistant to buy them but KanuPriya was fairly disgusted by the idea of me wearing socks around the city. At the same time, I stumbled across a lot of other Indian shoe etiquette; when I went to put my sneakers (which I had worn into the store) into my bag, KanuPriya and the store clerk both flipped out, and insisted that I put my shoes in a plastic sack rather than straight in my backpack. I acquiesced.

So, India is a different place; but so far, I love it, even if I do feel like a huge white water buffalo all of the time, earning gawks and glares from people as I walk by. (I've seen exactly 3 other white people in Kolkata, and none anywhere near my neighborhood.)

And yes, they eat Indian food here.

Sam spends too much time wondering how many shirts to pack

I write to you, my dear friends and family, from my bed in Virginia, surrounded by heaps of papers, books, and clothing that will, in the next 48 hours, be placed firmly in the "going to Kolkata" pile or the "not going to Kolkata" pile. Two notable items already sorted are my new underwear and my small travel guitar. My father purchased the underwear for me. We went, initially, to look at the poly- fiber- nano- whosamawhatsit shirts, which sport odorless insect repellant and a $85 price tag. We settled, instead, on two paris of fancy-pants underwear. The advertising slogan for this amazing demonstration of modern technological know-how is; "6 weeks; 12 countries; 1 pair of underwear." (Incidentally, this is also the slogan for REI's jock itch cream). I bought the travel guitar in the hopes that it would be better than nothing for keeping up the ol' guitar chops. I was wrong.

In other words: I'm preparing to take off. I've started this little bloggeroni as an incentive for me to document my trip, in words and photos, and to keep all interested parties appeased. The intinerary, for those just joining us: I leave the US at 10PM on Monday, May 15th, and 22 hours and 9.5 time zones later, I arrive in Kolkata at 5:10AM on Wednesday, May 17th. I'll be living (I think) with a woman named Debarati, paying $150 a month for a room and a bathroom. Included in the very reasonable rent is daily breakfast.

"What kind of breakfast to the have in India?" some of you have asked me.

Subcontinental breakfast.

While in Kolkata, I'll be volunteering with an organization called Vikramshila, which is an NGO that provides primary education in the state of West Bengal. At some point, I'll leave Kolkata and go traveling, perhaps to Darjeeling in the north, but I don't know for sure. Finally, I'll be leaving from Kolkata to come back to the US on August 11th.

So, the next time I post, I'll be in Kolkata. I intend to update this blog regularly, I think, as soon as I can find the nearest computer cafe and what have you. Please: comment freely! It'll be good company.