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.