Bideshi-trians

Good morning!

Well, where to start?

On Thursday, Chris and I moved into our homestay in Bediapara, which is one of the slum neighburhoods of Dum Dum, Kolkata. Our house is a tall, cinder-block structure which looks largeish from the outside, but is really mostly stairs on the inside. Meghan knows the family who live here quite well I think, especially the youngest daughter Gita, who's 16, and her 19 year old aunty, Chumki. We share the house with Chumki, her elder brother Binod (who makes signage for a job, and has a makeshift welding workshop/storage/bedroom space on the bottom floor), and their Takuma (grandmother), seven or eight aunties and uncles, Gita, and her mum, who live close by but hang out here during the day. Chris sleeps in a little room on the roof, and Chumki insisted that I sleep in her room, which also serves as the kitchen. The first few days have been a crazy mix of being taken around to visit all the family and neighbours (tea four times in an hour is quite something), being given impromptu Bangla lessons by most people we meet, playing lots of different games with kids in our street, being taught how to cook good roti, sleeping, eating and madly trying to adjust. It's been wonderful and exhausting.

Physically, both Chris and I are just about better - it took out host family a couple of days to really believe that we were too sick to eat a whole meal (their portions are HUGE), so they have been very kindly cooking us roti and giving us milder, vege based dishes, which is great. It feels really disempowering to be offered so much hospitality and not be physically able to take it! Meals are done much differently here - breakfast isn't really done, other than a nibble on any leftovers from last night's meal. Then lunch starts being prepared at 11ish, but isn't served til about half past two - and it's BIG, the biggest meal of the day. Dinner is usually a couple of roti and a simple aloo (potato) mix at about 10.30pm. Our meal clocks were completely out of whack already, so thankfully it didn't take too much adjusting to!

On Sunday, Gita and Chumki begged Meghan, Chris and I to come out with them to a Balloon Market. The girls got dolled up and we headed out to catch a couple of rickshaws, and then a ferry across the Ganga (the mighty but disgusting Ganges, which is beautiful late in the afternoon) to a shining temple complex, full of people milling around on the beautiful lawns and in our out of the temples, shrines and museum. We were taken on a tour by the girls of all the buildings, to the small-but-detailed museum, into the temple and to a giant statue of Ramakrishna. Which was lovely, but where was the balloon mart? It wasn't until we were sitting on the ferry, waiting to go back to Dum Dum, that Meghan figured out that it wasn't a 'Balloon Mart' that we were going to, but Belur Math! They had meant the temple all along, but we hadn't clicked. Still a beautiful way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and Gita and Chumki were stoked.

I guess that's it for now - I'm about to head out and look for some postcards for my students. They're actually surprisingly hard to come by!

Arohanui, we miss you all,

C and C