it had been pouring the evening before, raining softly thru the night, and now at six am the rain had stopped for a moment, and above us the clouds were knitted so tight and dark that it looked like doom had come. it was still, shushed, and outside cars trucks drove thru black. then there was a clatter and a snap and in a moment the whole of heaven’s water was tumbling down on us below. the thunder rumbled and shouted and shrieked, lightning flashed thru the firmament, and down here in the streets of kolkata water began to run out of places to go.
i don’t know much about rainwater drainage systems but what followed seemed like it might just be a prime example of such a system’s failure. it started with a puddle here, a puddle there. and soon half the streets outside my window were foot-deep in water. in the courtyard beyond my door the lawn and the flower-beds were all submerged, a little sea under the benevolent gaze of swami vivekananda, who stood at the far corner of the garden looking purposeful with his arms crossed. in other parts of the city it was worse—entire roads below water, water up to the waist, or even the shoulders. men on rashbehari avenue wading thru it best as they could, the swirling dark and dirty waters of these kolkata streets lapping around their ankles, calves, thighs. buses splashing on thru it all as best as they could, while women looked hopelessly around themselves like caged puppies for a way off of what little islands of concrete and mud they had taken refuge on. the hand-drawn rickshaws were doing good business off of such ladies, that favorite rainy season mode of transport.
in my room i debated. flooding had hemmed in the ramakrishna mission, where i stay, on all sides. i was on an island. should i go to dance class? at least make the attempt? should i join the men outside pulling up their pants to their knees as they walked thru waterlogged streets? was the whole thing hopeless? should i just give up? after much battling with my inner guilty laziness (or maybe, instinct? prescience?) and my sense of responsibility, against my own better judgment, i decided to go. with so little time i shouldn’t be taking any and all excuses to skip classes. and anyway, if this was to be how rainy season went then i better get used to it. right?
i set off, and reached the bus stop with only a little bit of trouble. there, people huddled under the makeshift shelters as buses coasted thru the water, sending up waves in our direction. between the sidewalk and the un-submerged street was five or six feet of puddle. buses would either stop on the far side of the puddle, and wait as the passengers forded these murky expanses, or else would swerve right thru the water up close to the sidewalk, splashing half of the people waiting there. three times my bus came, and as i ran out towards it, my salwar pants hiked up to my knees and a crowd of concerned passerbys staring at my pale and unshaven legs, three times my bus passed me by, without even a bit of reduction in speed. the conductor of the last one just looked out of the bus at my frantic figure like i was some creature he could not recognize, place, something with no relation to his life, his job, his universe. i was crazy and almost in tears, spattered in mud and rainwater and lord knows what kinds of filth, when finally a bus stopped and i clawed into it, clawed my way into a seat, and clasped my bags to my chest. it had only took an hour, but finally i was on my way to dance class.
looking out the window i got a mini-tour of rain-logged kolkata, the patches of open street, the floods that consumed entire major throughways like rashbehari avenue and j nehru road, submerged sidewalks, soaked and spattered pedestrians. the bus wheeled on thru all this like a ship at sea, stopping for nothing and no one, the water under its wheels thrown upwards into the sky, as well as a little bit into the window and onto me. despite all the water in the way, it was the fastest trip (minus waiting time) i had ever made from home to dance school. and so i arrived bedraggled and forty five minutes late.
but of course, i should have known. the dance school was empty. and i had to wait another forty five minutes until people started showing up. pishi was mysteriously missing, and chordi came in her stead. ok, i thought, yes now maybe some dancing will be happening? but no, there would be no dancing today. instead, for an hour and a half one of the ladies that had come, an unsatisfied housewife, made a litany of her complaints against her husband. he does not appreciate me. he has no romance. when we go to the cinema he pretends that he is not there with me. and when i start crying at his cringing at my touch he starts asking me what is wrong have i become ill? i ask him what is this relationship and he says oh but you are my best friend. friend?! where is friendship here? what do you give me? i do and i do and i do for you, i am like a maid even tho i am also a working woman, not even a housewife. and what do you do? you bring some money, and then that is it. friend!
she went on like this in her unusually fast-paced and rough bengali, like a dam had been released and her whole inner world was pouring out for the first time in years. maybe it was, i had a feeling she did not have many other willing listeners to her woes. but chordi and kajal listened attentively to the soliloquy, chordi interrupting only to complain about husbands being unappreciative and leaving all of the troubles of the house to their wives—here me n america got honorable mention for our fifty-fifty (well, sort of except maybe probably not really) ways. and when this lady had a moment alone with me she started telling me also that story i have heard too many times, about the in-laws forbidding her dance after marriage, even tho her precondition to finding a match had been that the family was willing to allow her to continue. she said, i turned down many matches because they said they would not allow the daughter in law to dance. but his family said it was ok, no problem. then a year into marriage they put an end to it, telling me now, i would be a mother. that was twenty years ago, and i have only this year begun dancing again. this reminded me of another (married) girl’s comment, that it is only after we have become gray and ugly that they again let us out, for dancing. it is only then that we get our freedom.
for the first half hour or so all this talk was interesting... as well as a good practice for my bengali. but soon soon my eyes began to glaze over, i began to look from moment to moment at my watch, i started wondering what was this i was doing with my day? thinking back to how i had almost decided not to come, how i had made myself get into that salwar kameez, plait that hair, get out the door, out into the street with all its puddles and mud. here i was three hours later, sitting, just sitting, this woman rattling on and on and on and nothing to do but pick at the fried starchy snack that they had bought but that parched my throat and really, was not at all appetizing. why are the constantly feeding me things like chips, bhujia, biscuits? why won’t they let me say no?
i was on the verge of crying, really, for the second time that day as i sat there thinking about how my day was slowly being taken from me, when chordi said to me, you are thinking about something? you are looking over there all this time, why? part of me just wanted snap under all these emotions and frustrations and let out the anger, that they kept me here doing nothing taking my time from me when they knew i don’t know bengali well enough to understand what was going on and don’t they see this as disrespectful to just keep me there like that useless and mute? but no, i know such responses are not possible, i smoothed my nerves, i was like ummm yeah i have to leave i actually have an appointment at the american center. i let them believe that i had been absorbed in thought by the fears and anticipations of this meeting, and made my escape. it was done raining, but water was still in the streets. determined to make something of my day, i set off uptown for the british council, having with me a pile of books to return there.
but, water! i had scarcely gone a couple minutes when i was having to walk out in the road itself for all the waterlogging and mud. i tried going down elgin road, but it was reduced to a lake. turning back up chowringhee i found the same there, it was impassable. frustrated but determined, i got a cab, and directed it to camac street, where stands the british council. all to no use, as camac street was under water road and sidewalk both. we drove thru street after street of waist-deep water, spraying outward from the taxi like a fan. i was not ready to go home, i was angry about taking so much effort to get to a place that was unreachable, so i went to park street, safe zone, where i knew it could never be too waterlogged. the people there are just to fancy to allow such things, to suffer wet trousers. i hid up inside oxford bookstore, drinking darjeeling tea and reading silly little intro books about religion and watching the other customers especially the funny foreigners with their puffy patchy pants and watching watching the pools of water the rivers and rivulets in the street for signs of them receding.
two hours later i was ready to give it another try. i would make at least one success in this day! the streets were still flooded to the brim but some sidewalks were walkable, and soon i arrived across from the british council, only the stretch of river that was once a street between us. it was too late to give up, and when there was a lull in traffic i set off under the amused gaze of a number of rickshaw-wallahs. i pulled my salwar again above my knees and took the plunge. most of it was ok going. but towards the middle suddenly i stepped into a pothole and was above my knee in the mucky water, soaking thru and thru much of my salwar and also my sad little kameez that i had forgotten to pull up also. i scrambled out across and up onto the sidewalk, tugging down my clothing so that i was at least fully covered if not properly clean and dry. i had arrived. and the british council was open! (my lingering fear that i was making all this effort to get to a place that would be shut down because of the rains, relieved) there i took a shiver-y shivering refuge in their air-conditioned and clean cafe, with a pile of new books and ginger tea. i dried off, and from a distance u couldn’t see the mud splatters on my top. i looked pretty good, really, considering my odyssey.
getting home was another nightmare, buses flying past and crammed full, and then i had more problems at the internet cafe, which was really that straw that broke the camel’s back. the service was slow, expensive, and even after half an hour of trying the computers would not recognize the existence of my thumb drive that i had only come there at all to transfer information from. any other day maybe i would have taken this, dealt with it, been ok waiting another day to find a properly working computer. not today, not after hours of useless sitting and waiting, not after getting soaked and dirtied and exhausted with running about in circles. it was all i could do to not turn on this internet guy and savage him in my sad but mostly understandable bengali in front of the other customers. i restricted myself to a recommendation that he think about replacing his USB connectors, and got out of there. i gave in. today was failures, and only the single success of finally reaching the british council, even if that took hours. i felt like a mad person somehow and decided i should have known from the look of that rain that today was not a day to go out. all this effort and so little reward. i hurried on home, desperate to avert any further frustrations because i knew i just might snap and scream.
back in the safety of the mission i comforted myself with milky tea and the first season of desperate housewives, into the early hours of morning. resolving to know better than to mess ever again with waterlogged kolkata.
i don’t know much about rainwater drainage systems but what followed seemed like it might just be a prime example of such a system’s failure. it started with a puddle here, a puddle there. and soon half the streets outside my window were foot-deep in water. in the courtyard beyond my door the lawn and the flower-beds were all submerged, a little sea under the benevolent gaze of swami vivekananda, who stood at the far corner of the garden looking purposeful with his arms crossed. in other parts of the city it was worse—entire roads below water, water up to the waist, or even the shoulders. men on rashbehari avenue wading thru it best as they could, the swirling dark and dirty waters of these kolkata streets lapping around their ankles, calves, thighs. buses splashing on thru it all as best as they could, while women looked hopelessly around themselves like caged puppies for a way off of what little islands of concrete and mud they had taken refuge on. the hand-drawn rickshaws were doing good business off of such ladies, that favorite rainy season mode of transport.
in my room i debated. flooding had hemmed in the ramakrishna mission, where i stay, on all sides. i was on an island. should i go to dance class? at least make the attempt? should i join the men outside pulling up their pants to their knees as they walked thru waterlogged streets? was the whole thing hopeless? should i just give up? after much battling with my inner guilty laziness (or maybe, instinct? prescience?) and my sense of responsibility, against my own better judgment, i decided to go. with so little time i shouldn’t be taking any and all excuses to skip classes. and anyway, if this was to be how rainy season went then i better get used to it. right?
i set off, and reached the bus stop with only a little bit of trouble. there, people huddled under the makeshift shelters as buses coasted thru the water, sending up waves in our direction. between the sidewalk and the un-submerged street was five or six feet of puddle. buses would either stop on the far side of the puddle, and wait as the passengers forded these murky expanses, or else would swerve right thru the water up close to the sidewalk, splashing half of the people waiting there. three times my bus came, and as i ran out towards it, my salwar pants hiked up to my knees and a crowd of concerned passerbys staring at my pale and unshaven legs, three times my bus passed me by, without even a bit of reduction in speed. the conductor of the last one just looked out of the bus at my frantic figure like i was some creature he could not recognize, place, something with no relation to his life, his job, his universe. i was crazy and almost in tears, spattered in mud and rainwater and lord knows what kinds of filth, when finally a bus stopped and i clawed into it, clawed my way into a seat, and clasped my bags to my chest. it had only took an hour, but finally i was on my way to dance class.
looking out the window i got a mini-tour of rain-logged kolkata, the patches of open street, the floods that consumed entire major throughways like rashbehari avenue and j nehru road, submerged sidewalks, soaked and spattered pedestrians. the bus wheeled on thru all this like a ship at sea, stopping for nothing and no one, the water under its wheels thrown upwards into the sky, as well as a little bit into the window and onto me. despite all the water in the way, it was the fastest trip (minus waiting time) i had ever made from home to dance school. and so i arrived bedraggled and forty five minutes late.
but of course, i should have known. the dance school was empty. and i had to wait another forty five minutes until people started showing up. pishi was mysteriously missing, and chordi came in her stead. ok, i thought, yes now maybe some dancing will be happening? but no, there would be no dancing today. instead, for an hour and a half one of the ladies that had come, an unsatisfied housewife, made a litany of her complaints against her husband. he does not appreciate me. he has no romance. when we go to the cinema he pretends that he is not there with me. and when i start crying at his cringing at my touch he starts asking me what is wrong have i become ill? i ask him what is this relationship and he says oh but you are my best friend. friend?! where is friendship here? what do you give me? i do and i do and i do for you, i am like a maid even tho i am also a working woman, not even a housewife. and what do you do? you bring some money, and then that is it. friend!
she went on like this in her unusually fast-paced and rough bengali, like a dam had been released and her whole inner world was pouring out for the first time in years. maybe it was, i had a feeling she did not have many other willing listeners to her woes. but chordi and kajal listened attentively to the soliloquy, chordi interrupting only to complain about husbands being unappreciative and leaving all of the troubles of the house to their wives—here me n america got honorable mention for our fifty-fifty (well, sort of except maybe probably not really) ways. and when this lady had a moment alone with me she started telling me also that story i have heard too many times, about the in-laws forbidding her dance after marriage, even tho her precondition to finding a match had been that the family was willing to allow her to continue. she said, i turned down many matches because they said they would not allow the daughter in law to dance. but his family said it was ok, no problem. then a year into marriage they put an end to it, telling me now, i would be a mother. that was twenty years ago, and i have only this year begun dancing again. this reminded me of another (married) girl’s comment, that it is only after we have become gray and ugly that they again let us out, for dancing. it is only then that we get our freedom.
for the first half hour or so all this talk was interesting... as well as a good practice for my bengali. but soon soon my eyes began to glaze over, i began to look from moment to moment at my watch, i started wondering what was this i was doing with my day? thinking back to how i had almost decided not to come, how i had made myself get into that salwar kameez, plait that hair, get out the door, out into the street with all its puddles and mud. here i was three hours later, sitting, just sitting, this woman rattling on and on and on and nothing to do but pick at the fried starchy snack that they had bought but that parched my throat and really, was not at all appetizing. why are the constantly feeding me things like chips, bhujia, biscuits? why won’t they let me say no?
i was on the verge of crying, really, for the second time that day as i sat there thinking about how my day was slowly being taken from me, when chordi said to me, you are thinking about something? you are looking over there all this time, why? part of me just wanted snap under all these emotions and frustrations and let out the anger, that they kept me here doing nothing taking my time from me when they knew i don’t know bengali well enough to understand what was going on and don’t they see this as disrespectful to just keep me there like that useless and mute? but no, i know such responses are not possible, i smoothed my nerves, i was like ummm yeah i have to leave i actually have an appointment at the american center. i let them believe that i had been absorbed in thought by the fears and anticipations of this meeting, and made my escape. it was done raining, but water was still in the streets. determined to make something of my day, i set off uptown for the british council, having with me a pile of books to return there.
but, water! i had scarcely gone a couple minutes when i was having to walk out in the road itself for all the waterlogging and mud. i tried going down elgin road, but it was reduced to a lake. turning back up chowringhee i found the same there, it was impassable. frustrated but determined, i got a cab, and directed it to camac street, where stands the british council. all to no use, as camac street was under water road and sidewalk both. we drove thru street after street of waist-deep water, spraying outward from the taxi like a fan. i was not ready to go home, i was angry about taking so much effort to get to a place that was unreachable, so i went to park street, safe zone, where i knew it could never be too waterlogged. the people there are just to fancy to allow such things, to suffer wet trousers. i hid up inside oxford bookstore, drinking darjeeling tea and reading silly little intro books about religion and watching the other customers especially the funny foreigners with their puffy patchy pants and watching watching the pools of water the rivers and rivulets in the street for signs of them receding.
two hours later i was ready to give it another try. i would make at least one success in this day! the streets were still flooded to the brim but some sidewalks were walkable, and soon i arrived across from the british council, only the stretch of river that was once a street between us. it was too late to give up, and when there was a lull in traffic i set off under the amused gaze of a number of rickshaw-wallahs. i pulled my salwar again above my knees and took the plunge. most of it was ok going. but towards the middle suddenly i stepped into a pothole and was above my knee in the mucky water, soaking thru and thru much of my salwar and also my sad little kameez that i had forgotten to pull up also. i scrambled out across and up onto the sidewalk, tugging down my clothing so that i was at least fully covered if not properly clean and dry. i had arrived. and the british council was open! (my lingering fear that i was making all this effort to get to a place that would be shut down because of the rains, relieved) there i took a shiver-y shivering refuge in their air-conditioned and clean cafe, with a pile of new books and ginger tea. i dried off, and from a distance u couldn’t see the mud splatters on my top. i looked pretty good, really, considering my odyssey.
getting home was another nightmare, buses flying past and crammed full, and then i had more problems at the internet cafe, which was really that straw that broke the camel’s back. the service was slow, expensive, and even after half an hour of trying the computers would not recognize the existence of my thumb drive that i had only come there at all to transfer information from. any other day maybe i would have taken this, dealt with it, been ok waiting another day to find a properly working computer. not today, not after hours of useless sitting and waiting, not after getting soaked and dirtied and exhausted with running about in circles. it was all i could do to not turn on this internet guy and savage him in my sad but mostly understandable bengali in front of the other customers. i restricted myself to a recommendation that he think about replacing his USB connectors, and got out of there. i gave in. today was failures, and only the single success of finally reaching the british council, even if that took hours. i felt like a mad person somehow and decided i should have known from the look of that rain that today was not a day to go out. all this effort and so little reward. i hurried on home, desperate to avert any further frustrations because i knew i just might snap and scream.
back in the safety of the mission i comforted myself with milky tea and the first season of desperate housewives, into the early hours of morning. resolving to know better than to mess ever again with waterlogged kolkata.
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