Kolkata Christmas

Again, ages since I sat down to write. This time I sit in a very different context, an unfamiliar country and culture and climate- in Kolkata. We saw the students off from Beijing. It is a strange feeling, heavy and light, to go from being responsible for 9 other people to only being responsible for yourself.
The day following the students departure, my dad came to Beijing for a visit. It was lovely and laid back. We went on long meandering walks through the upscale neighborhoods and underground shopping plazas of WangFuJing street, and then contrasted them with grimy old-Beijing hutong walks. Each day we found our way into small street-side restaurants where we snacked on steamed buns and tea eggs. We met up with my old friends from Taiwan who have found their ways into jobs and homes and families in Beijing. It was fun for both of us to call a Beijing youth hostel home for a few days.

I flew from Beijing to Kunming on the 17th and from Kunming to Kolkata on the 18th and into the 19th due to an unscheduled landing in Dhaka, Bangladesh to wait out a thick fog that shrouded Kolkata. While I waited, sprawled out on the plastic seats of the Dhaka airport, Lukin waited, sprawled out on the plastic seats of the Kolkata airport. At dawn I landed in Kolkata and flung my exhausted and elated self into Lukins weary arms. At that moment we realized just how long four months can be.

We've spent the last several days absorbing what we can of Kolkata. The city is made of sounds; honking horns from 50's style Ambassador taxi's, echoing calls to prayer, "hellos" hollered from merchants hawking everything from lime water to cell-phone repair (seriously, brilliant men at street-side stands holding soldering guns who make me wish I had brought to India the phone I just put through the washing machine in Kunming), jingling rupees on tin plates gripped by street people ranging in age from infants to grandmothers.

The sounds are accompanied by scents; masala chai stands sprout up each morning at nearly every intersection and for 6 cents you can take a moment of your day to sit in a small wooden bench and breath in cardamom and cloves from a small clay cup (they're meant to be disposable as they easily biodegrade, but I can't bring myself to throw them away, so I now have a stack of them wrapped up in my backpack!), curries and chilies and cumin waft from street-stand vats of dhal which I dove into head first on my first few days of wandering, mixed with all this is the scent of people- incredible numbers of people- the streets are the hallways and kitchens and bedrooms and bathrooms of millions of bodies and the sharp odors of urine and bodies is ever present.

A good segue, back, for a moment into diving head first into street food. I also dove head first into my first bout of India-induced illness. In our first few days back together, Lukin spent a couple of them nursing my violently-ill-self back to health as India streamed from me. Romantic.

And now it is Christmas and we are spending our last few hours in Kolkata before heading to the train station to make our way south to Puri tonight, and then on to Pondecherri and tree-planting on Sunday. Today, walking through the streets was like waiting in line for a a Bollywood blockbuster. We shuffled sideways and maneuvered for hours to wend our way around town. The sidewalks are packed with bodies and glitter and Christmas families out on the town. It was wonderful and crazy to be carried for blocks by thick crowds. We are ready to make our way south, towards smaller towns and calmer scenes. I love Kolkata though. This place is incredible.