Going to Kolkata and Not Going to Bangladesh

We decided (very sadly) to skip Bangladesh this trip, primarily because a lot of the country is flooded; as much of what we wanted to do would have been impossible it didn’t seem worth braving the humidity and the mosquitoes.

Instead we booked flights straight out of Kolkata to Bangkok, leaving us with only a few more days in India.

Having broken our guidebook we assumed Kolkata would be just another unpleasant Indian city, but actually we both liked the place a lot; in a winter I think I will go back, spend a few weeks volunteering in Kolkata and then head into Bangladesh for the travels we missed this time.

Kolkata is nice because it has good urban wildlife; on our second day there I saw a piglet running wild with a dog pack. Its family were asleep underneath a nearby truck.

It is also very nice because you can volunteer, for any amount of time, free at Kolkata’s Mother Teresa centre.

To volunteer at the Mother Teresa centre all you have to do is turn up at 3pm on Monday, Wednesday or Friday with your passport, and register.

We did  this the day we arrived and it sounded brilliant (although if you visit be prepared to be put off by the ‘advice’ and rules sheets they hand out, which are almost aggressively rude, patronising and authoritarian. The most charitable thing I could have done for the organisation would have been to rewrite these; they should definitely be ignored).

With the Mother Teresa centre you can work in one of about 8 ‘houses’, with children, ill people, dying people or handicapped people, for as long as you want and are of use. You can express your preference at the orientation session, although you’re not guaranteed to be sent to the house your request.

Men aren’t allowed to go to some of the houses with small and disabled children and women can’t go to one helping street boys, because, after all, it is in India and run by nuns, so can’t be too progressive.

Jonny and I offered to go wherever we were most needed, and were assigned to some ill people. We were also warned repeatedly not to turn up to work with ill people if we weren’t entirely well ourselves. I’d been frequently sick for most of the last six weeks but judged it to be ok because I’m pretty sure I’ve just repeatedly been poisoned, rather than suffering anything infectious. However, typically, we both woke up the next day with matching sore throats. We compared our identical symptoms and realised we would be arseholes to go anyway. This proved a good decision because I then spent the day vomitting out of my achey throat, if I’d been to see the ill people it probably would have triggered a Stand By Me  pie-eating contest style disaster.

 

 

The Mother Teresa centre also runs trips out of Kolkata for volunteers and one of these (unfortunately leaving the day after we left) was to a leper colony, which sounded morbidly fascinating.

We did manage to stumble out in Kolkata to go as far as the botanical gardens.

This was actually not very far, although the taxi drivers all told us it was one and a half hours to make sure we overpaid for the twenty minute drive.

The botanical gardens were very cool because they include the largest Banyan tree in India. This is so large it looks like an entire forest- the centre trunk has actually died and rotted away completely but the tree has gone on without it since 1925- now it is a mass of arterial roots reaching down from the branches to the ground. It looks like lots of little trees until you look up and see that the entire thing is connected by the branches.

We also went to see our first and last Bollywood film in Kolkata.

Attempting to have a very Indian last night we found a relatively posh Bengali restaurant at which to dine before the cinema. Our careful plans, however, were thwarted when we discovered that the restaurant opened later than the film started. Because of this we ended up eating 2 for 1 paneer subways and very un-Indian noodles in the ‘mall’.

We did, however, have a brilliant view of Kolkata.

We were a bit traumatised by the film- Cocktail- which was extremely intense (Isa and Doina should have warned us!); we expected light-hearted, naff Bollywood, and we got that for approximately half of it, but then, after the interval, people started to go mad and to be graphically hit by cars. It also wasn’t very Indian as it was set in London with a brief holiday to South Africa for the weekend (as you do). It was all ok in the end though, the boy ended up with the nice, good Indian girl and the bad, mad Indian girl reformed and was very sorry, and they all went back to Delhi to get married.

Leaving Kolkata we managed to fit in a quick car crash, just so that we hadn’t missed out in India. As we drove to the airport our rather wobbly and unspatially aware taxi driver, strayed gradually towards the middle of the road, as a bus did the same thing on the other side of another taxi. For absolutely no reason they were drawn closer and closer together until the taxi in the centre was crushed between the two other vehicles. It sighed and squeaked and the crumpled and the bumper was torn away. We all stopped.

In India it is traditional that if an accident occurs the responsible driver is beaten up. If someone is killed or seriously injured an angry mob will probably kill him. Many rich people get driven around, rather than driving themselves, to be certain of avoiding this in a land of very bad roads and very frequent crashes.

As our accident was minor our taxi driver only got punched in the face through the window. I was sitting behind him and so I leaned over the seat to shield him, badly blocking the window, and shouting a lot at the other driver. This worked very little; our driver got hit a bit more before a policeman turned up and the other man desisted.

A pleasant, mild, rich Indian man left the other taxi to find a new one and advised we do the same, as it would probably take a very long time. Our driver objected violently to this and quickly ushered us back into the car, argued that he had to take us to the airport and drove away. At the airport he asked desperately for a tip while looking sadly at his rather scratched taxi.