25th
In India
I’ve been in Kolkata for about five days now. The chaos of it all still unnerves me.
I looked for an ATM inside the airport as soon as I arrived. There were none. I went outside, out in the heat that is not unlike Bangkok’s own stifling climate. A prepaid cabbie quickly noticed my absolute lack of competence in doing pretty much anything in this strange new country. “You need to get somewhere?” he asked. I quickly pulled out my hand-drawn map of where I was trying to get to. I mumbled the names of some landmarks that were given to me on the map. “Sure, no problem,” was his response to my incomprehensible directions.
As soon as we exited the airport’s parking lot I got that holy shit, this is fucking nuts feeling. There are no lanes to speak of on Kolkatan roads. Instead, motorists simply honk when they are moving from one linear space to the next. As you can probably imagine, there is a lot of honking. The cabbie turned to me after a few minutes of driving and asked, “Where are you going exactly?” After he had stopped several times to ask directions, everything was finally cleared up and I found myself within a couple of blocks of my destination.
My good friend Roger kindly hooked me up with his family here who fed me lunch and put me up in Roger’s family’s empty apartment. After being shown around the neighborhood a bit I was set loose, free to wander alone.
I’ve been busying myself eating, for the most part: trying lots of new dishes, resisting the urge to go back to that one tasty spot and instead heading to a new eatery. I met up with Roger’s friends here yesterday. They are all really cool and hilarious. We made sangria and ate sweets from a bakery called The Kookie Jar.
It’s been great in Kolkata but leaving Bangkok, even just for this short trip, has made me realize that I am going to miss my dad’s hometown. The place has really grown on me and, if I happened upon a job, I could most definitely see myself living there indefinitely.
