ballygunge, late afternoon

rain thru soft sunlight
shone thru the gold-struck greens of
palms and potted ferns

an empty residential lane curved and curled off into silence and separation, rain falling like a mist, a transparent curtain drawn between the tumble jumble of the city and this house of solitude and seclusion. thunder rumbles in the distance, the birds cheep and chirp and chatter. in the gentle pitter patter of this place there is no talk. the fan above whirrs and sends a spin and a shiver through the air. empty tea cups sit on the corners of tables haphazardly while shoes lie at the entrance in a neat row be they leather plastic open closed disintegrating or shiny like a happy puppy’s nose. this gravel driveway, these big old metal gates, this place out of sight. this hideaway, peace and quiet hidden down a few lanes, a few anonymous streets.

it’s like i’m always saying, you spend so much time with the ugly, you forget and are surprised to be reminded about just how beautiful bengal can be...

kolkata quiet

after that first bombast of water and dark, lightning that ruptured the sky into pieces, violent fissures opening up in the dark of clouds, we have entered into some kind of period of uncertain calm. the sky has become unsettled, a canvas across which blues grays and whites drift, roving and ranging about like lost sheep. there is none of this intensity, none of the fireworks of those earlier rains. there is blue peeping thru white-grays and pale grays sweeping into blue, the scorching of an unbridled sun through a clear sky and the sudden cold of an unexpected and almost unnoticed rain shower only coming to leave, a momentary mood of this temperamental sky. the cool and the hot always in flux, the air in mute ripples of transition over a city alternately damp and arid.

sunny days

today i wake up to coolness and quiet, the air soft in its undulations over a greened garden. all so sweet. just as storming and flooding spelled out a bad day in the offing, this perfect peacefulness sets me thinking all optimistic and sunny. on the horizon if only i could see it, must be looming all kinds of good, i think, deep breathing and letting loose the tangle of my hair to be ruffled and fluttered about in the breeze.

morning is tea and newspapers and mangoes out overlooking the garden. the tea cart rattles around from room to room, a man crouches on his haunches as he sweeps the floor outside the room with a rough hand-broom, and in the garden an old couple takes a turn around the flowers. since i had arrived, on fridays (fresh linen day) i had sometimes come back to my bed made mysteriously for me, not just a pile of sheets left waiting on a bare mattress like it was for the other long-term residents. i had wondered at this, worried that it was that one dada with the looks that made me nervous. but today i found out the identity of the bed-maker—one of the older of the dadas, soft-faced and white-haired with crinkles at the corner of his eyes. i catch him at it on the way back from breakfast. he doesn’t say a word, just finishes up my bed cheerfully and tips his head to me, smiling, good day. a little kindness that needs no explanation.

at 9 30, i am supposed to leave for class. but in a panic i am unready, i have been too engrossed in my books, my hair is unbrushed my clothing unironed and all the stuff i need is scattered to the four corners of my room. in a tumble i pull it all together, i get out the door. i am running late, by fifteen minutes. and as if by magic the moment i arrive at the bus stop i see my bus is arriving too, the conductor waving for me to get on. my bus never comes when i need it. ever ever ever. i scramble on and the vehicle sweeps off towards my destination.

in dance class chordi is teaching a bol that is all floating and gentleness, all the little graces, the softnesses and curves of the moments, the delicate adjustments of angles and speed. and today also i do not bungle it all up, somehow i fumble n fudge my way thru it not half so bad. i leave feeling, for once in a long while, that i am actually really moving forward in this, in a way i can feel, not just muddling and bumbling about in it. there is a reminder in this bol of the reasons i am here, the reasons that i am always getting confused about or forgetting. one of those bols that makes you remember again why u fell in love with this art, why you came all this way crossing such great spaces leaving so many people you love behind for the life of strange loneliness in the face of crowds, unexpected companions, and occasional friendships.

on the way home i am reminded of one of my favorite kolkata courtesies. often i find myself expecting a certain lack of the courtesies towards strangers (the inadvertent pessimist i swear!) in my daily observations on these buses of the way people can be so ruthless about getting seats, or even a good corner, the way the pregnant and the elderly are made to stand cuz people won’t bother to give up their own seats for a stranger. there have been moments when i have felt enraged to see women bearing little babies in their arms, precariously standing and swinging with the bus that can toss as bad as a small boat in any storm, being left to manage as best she can while the entire bus just sits there staring at her predicament, mute and even worse action-less spectators. but then there are those other moments, moments when my hope for the human race is revived. for instance, i am always carrying around these huge heavy bags of clothing and water bottles for dance class, and whenever i get on a crowded bus a seated person will reach out and offer to hold it for me, so that i might stand more comfortably. i don’t think i have ever seen this custom in the USA. maybe there is something about private property, people not wanting others to touch their shit or whatever. maybe it is just a difference that exists for its own sake, that refuses an easy explanation. but anyway, today not on one not on two but on three separate occassions my burdens were lifted out of my hands by seated strangers. i was taken care of, and with two arms free, i could properly get my grip. so as the bus sailed over the potholes and between other perils-on-wheels, i could be carefree, swift and secure and flying on to my destinations.

although there is a foreboding cockroach in the hall outside of my room, on its back and waving its legs in the air frantically, i try not to take that as another one of nature’s foreshadowings. i’ve had too sweet a day to declare it all over yet. i know it is only a matter of time before kolkata is again getting to me in its little ways, in its little peculiarities n subtle pressures. but until then, i will enjoy these moments for all they are worth.

rainy drainy day

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.

drippy days

today was a drippy drippy day. drippy when u wake up cotton sheet pasted on your skin, drippy when u in dance class, drippy when u on the bus, drippy when u sit so still still as you can as still can be, drippy after the fourth shower of this drippy old day. arms dripping with sweat faster than i can wipe away. clothes dripping and drooping out of shape no matter how much care and starch you take. folks looking my way out of they drippy faces with drippy eyes.

i know, i know, i should just find some other pants to wear. every time i wear these jeans with the tear at the knee, these perfect comfortable jeans, everyone is looking at it like, what is with that? the ladies in dance class all a-staring in confusion, tho pishi hastened to explain that no no no, in USA the tear makes it cost more, more valuable, i saw it at the Old Navy, this is true. or this man in the bus today who was staring at the itsy bit of exposed flesh at my knee as if it were the whole of my legs were exposed, as if one could extrapolate from this hint-less innocuous island of pale skin what the rest looked like. regions scandalous and unknown. i had to hide it behind a bag.

with no rain in sight and all these proscriptions on clothing, i am reaching a potential crisis point. if either 1. light short skirts to let in the breeze sweet summer dresses and low-coverage shirts don’t become abruptly and unexpectedly socially acceptable, or 2. the monsoons don’t come soooooon, i might just melt away like the wicked witch of the west.

cooking away in humidity and heat. so steamy that coming out of an air-conditioned shop into the (it-should-have-been-cooler-but-wasn’t) early evening air my glasses fogged up so thick i couldn’t see thru them and almost got hit by a car. uff.

delays n detours

morning and i am feeling helpless. such hair i have grown, long and dry and falling out in the heat, in the stress, in the everything, and all i want is someone to get it under control for me cuz i don’t know what to do with it anymore. i dilly i dally and then i sally forth to the neighborhood hairdresser... to find it closed at almost-noontime. i revise my schedule. i do a little more studying and sit around wondering where it is all going to. i give the hairdresser another try. still closed and the guy repairing shoes by the entrance shrugs it all off, who knows when it will open? i had been sure the french girl had told me it was open from morning. why isn’t it open from morning? or, why does always no place here post their hours? sometimes i feel like i am flying about in circles always hoping for one thing on the circuit to work, feeling hopeless and out of control like a puppet train jerked around on the rails by invisible strings. it is no good that today is feeling hopeless already anyway even without the failure to get a haircut..... me hopelessly struggling at my tabla, hopelessly trying to cram bengali into brain that is just like no more give me vacation, hopelessly trying to explain first hopelessness and then nandigram and other issues of west bengal politics which i dont even understand to schmabil on phone but he is i think hopelessly wiped out by his own fight against deadlines, final papers, the end approaching...

afternoon and i am with my bengali tutor, as we labor laboriously thru a sad story of caste n class, some poor guy caught stealing a fish from the zamindar’s lake. outside the wind is whipping up the dust and dirt, rattling at the shutters, and in the air u can feel the rain coming. and in a moment, it does come, it is there, sudden and complete as always, dropping and drenching and spraying and splattering, reaching us where we sit with a rumbly roar through the walls of the house. i would be going, but she won’t let me—how can i go in such rain? instead i wait for tea, the clock ticking away thru the minutes, my sense of time drifts. inside there is my inner voice freaking out again, i will be late for dance class! but i try to suppress that, i cannot run out on a sweet old lady who has me waiting for tea, chill schmemma chill they are only minutes...

i am already twenty minutes late for a class that is thirty five minutes away. but my taxi driver is delighted by my miserable bengali and goes tara-tari when i tell him to get me there tara-tari, so soon enough i am skipping about over potholes and puddles down the block to dance school. pishi (guruma) is in a mischevious mood, and teaches us makan chori, the thieving baby krishna after the butter, announcing, today there will be a thieving of butter! she is excited, and so her english begins to fall apart. we are krishna’s mother, milking the cow and then churning. pishi directs us, us who are having trouble cuz we cannot help but giggle when she says, "this this, what is this? milky! yes milky, first you do milky, first milky then pitchering... then you bosh on floor again, legs crossed, bosh bosh, put down pitcher."

she feeds us fried eggplant, sitting in front on the divan with her big newspaper packet of 30 baingan for only ten of us... students plead but pishi will have none of it, pishi will feed and then overfeed each and every one of us. towards the end of class she gets clever, there are only a few of us left in the class and she still has some eggplant to get rid of, so she tells me oh these are still hot they have not become cold hold one see! i say and what will happen then? once i am holding it? no i will not hold it. but as usual there is no point protesting, since she refuses my refusal, calls me the goonda of bhawanipore, tells me today i have been so naughty, too naughty, and has the eggplant given to me by another student. happily, she has emptied her packet.

then i am stolen away by k-di, a tiger lady. she is older, i think sixties, and she is always coming to these dance classes to sit and watch in the corner, protesting that she is old and cannot be dancing so much. that is until she sees something she doesn’t like, and jumps up and shooing everyone in front where they can see, shouting at the poor tabla and harmonium players to do it right, she tears into whatever bol is at hand like some crazy tornado, occassionally stopping halfway thru the bol to yell again at the musicians who are half cowering half breaking out in laughter that they are doing it wrong, and when she is finished she says, there, that is it, now you know. and there is no saying no to her. k-di also happens to live near where i live, and every so often she gives me a ride home. today again she did this, but when we got out of the taxi said to me, you want soup? in a voice that would accept no nos, and so of course i said yes. but then she decided that first we would stop by her home cuz of course i would need to take rest before i went off for eating and sleeping. she took me into her home had me recline against the cushions as she arranged them, telling me she would show me how to relax, turned on the fans opened the windows dimmed the light and told me to relax for a bit, then we would go. the position is a little awkward but i go with it, and close my eyes at her instructions. in a few minutes, she is back in the room and with no warning starts wiping ice-chilled rose-scented water all over my face, saying, eyes closed eyes closed! i surrender, even my giggles i surrender, maybe this is normal i don’t know. she finishes, tells me still to rest, and then goes out again. ten minutes, and she is back, and we are ready to go.

by the time i get home it is after nine, i am full of soup and smelling of the bel phul garland that k-di has given me to sweeten the air, the day has been whispered away and i will have to get it all done tomorrow. so i push all my plans a day further down the line like i always do, and crawl into my bed, garland of flowers beside my pillow, the familiar sounds of dogs barking and goods carriage tata trucks rattling by lulling me into sleep.