India is a land of infinite stories... the next few posts will be a feeble attempt to record a few of mine... but first, I had to arrive...
I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac and into what could have been mistaken for the world's basement. I waited for my bag to be tossed onto a conveyor belt slowly cranking through piles of discarded looking things and people. I stepped out of the only door possible and was greeted by muggy air in a parking lot. Kolkata, but only for about eight hours.
I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac and into what could have been mistaken for the world's basement. I waited for my bag to be tossed onto a conveyor belt slowly cranking through piles of discarded looking things and people. I stepped out of the only door possible and was greeted by muggy air in a parking lot. Kolkata, but only for about eight hours.
The sing song prayers of children in unison are fresh as a breeze and gently give way to bird song in guava trees.
Kolkata traffic blessedly dimmed by the darkness of evening though still horrifyingly present and friendships are made between two girls and an ice cream wallah who became the evening's driver. In an erratic burst of energy markets are visited, ice creams tasted, bare feet mourned, coconuts drank, and man run rickshaws ridden. A visit to a tea bar where neon lights cast a glare on swinging tables as tea is sipped leaves the distinct taste of possibility.
The patter of rats feet on the ceiling above disturbs no one and smells of fish curry frying on the stove waft through the room.
Waves of nausea mirror waves of extreme poverty rolled past the car windows. The Kolkata train station could have been a refugee camp for the groups of people sitting around in the dust every manner of cross legged. Free water available from faucets teeming with wrinkled hands, the jangle of ankle bracelets nearly drowned out by the splatter of orange spit, and a sleepy white girl stepping carefully around the reclining crowds. Billboards of ticket reservation papers mobbed by sweaty searching hoards and a strange name easily found among the Hindi: Kelly A Bastowcox. Now to find the train.
The low voices of a language that sounds like time itself chatter on and a now familiar black tea is sipped as dusk settles on the rice fields outside.
Friends stay by my side until the train shudders and they are only faces seen sliding past a grimy window. The four hour detour to avoid missing tracks, and rebels, and derailed trains is not even felt by a girl so hard asleep she could have been on the moon. Awakening to light slicing through the cheap curtains and a landscape like an African mirage disorients and a grumbling stomach gives thanks for curry stuffed rotis left over from the night before. Men with bulging stomachs that remain still as shoulders heave with laughter tell tales of mythical heroes and tricksters and answer shy questions with riddles ripe with everything. You never know, comes the eerily oft repeated phrase, our paths may cross again.
Dusty feet ache from the trails of the day as a screen door slams in the next room. Almost, almost time for stars.
A familiar face at a tiny station in a tiny bit of nowhere India. A Jeep ride past a strolling monkey into jungle that looks nothing like jungle and the strange echoing sound of truck horns obscured in billowing clouds of red dust. Meager shops huddling together strain to look like towns dot the road of engineering headaches. A wedding procession provides momentary diversion before the silence of trees and dust again reigns. When the car stops once more it is before dancing rows of school children and a handful of flowers pressed from dark wrinkled hands into my own.
Leaves become bats awaken from the trees, the night pulses with dark and then the bright eyes of the heavens begin to blink open one by one. And I laid down under tightly tucked mosquito netting marveling at the fantastic confusion of my arrival in this country. India.
