crazy schmemma

just back in kolkata for last few days, insane and off-balance after a few weeks of wandering around the south with schmabil and only a few days away from being off to delhi... once i organize my thoughts i swear i will post bout all of this. until then.....

many days, out of order

we rattle down landsdowne in the half-empty minibus, me n kaju kazue, evening time. i have just finished telling kaju about how i know i have been here too long cuz every ten seconds i turn my head and think i see something of home. she laughs and cannot believe it, seeing my world in this musty crusty rusty dusty place? when before us something magical appears, a street draped in christmas lights, lined in christmas trees (ok ok a couple of palm trees too), all lit up and shining in the midst of dreary nighttime. i gasp. ‘it is christmas in july!’ kaju laughs and says ‘uh huh’ doubtfully but amused. she says, ‘it is some puja’, peering down the street for a glimpse of the idol, the pandal, that somewhere beyond all the lights must be there. but i say, ‘christmas puja!’ kaju laughs at me and thinks i am crazy. christmas in kolkata, in the midst of summer. i don’t care. i like to think of it this way. and anyway, why worry about the judgment of a girl with a name like kaju, anyway?

one of those afternoons, everything has gone wrong. time wasted by a succession of people, nothing produced, all attempts at achieving anything whatsoever failed. walking down the street, and there is one of these men staring, walking ahead of me turning back every two steps to look at what was there behind him. he finally stops and takes a position to watch me walking by. i think, fuck this why am i putting up with this guy? it was a bad day, i couldn’t help myself. i burst out at him in angry bengali, ‘what? what you looking at? why are you looking at me?’ ... on his face is surprise followed by a look as if i had just given him the most wonderful of compliments. ‘oh!’ he said responding to the language and not the message or mood it had conveyed, a big smile on his face, ‘you know bengali!’ his hand is clasped to his chest. i am at a loss for words. i throw up my hands. I stomp off, his shining eyes trailing behind.

dance one sad sunday morning—unsuccessful. s-di shouts, goru goru! moo moo! holding her index fingers up to her forehead like horns, at one girl who hasn’t got a clue as to the difference between right and left. another girl tries to get through her spins by throwing her body counterclockwise and attempting to use her arms like paddles, flapping through the unhelpful air. even the costume of these poor girls is unfortunate, one in a semi-transparent sheer white poncho-thing with a red fringe over a skirt, another in something strappy and black and really in my eyes inappropriate for such a small girl. i am dodging bad dancing and poor fashion, right and left. even the tabla players seem to have forgotten their fingers from one another. but from outside there is a nice breeze and a burst of rainfall here and there, banishing the scorching sun. the rain has come again, everyone is happy and laughing as the girls keep on with their flapping.

he is a pig. he sits there behind the tabla, picking at his teeth for five minutes with a toothpick, showing off his blubbery mouth. he is useless. he demands tea, ‘cha! cha!’ of the dancers who ignore him or tell him to wait for the dance teacher, he will get his tea in some time. but he is determined. ‘cha! cha!’ eventually teacher arrives, and so does tea; he keeps the pot close by him and drinks it all down as fast as he can, offering none to anyone else present. he rubs his enormous hideous belly and stares at me lasciviously. he tries out his english on me and i look away, try to answer only the necessary. he belches. when he finally gets around to playing tabla he is miserable never gets nothing right, yells at the dancers for getting it wrong when he himself has no idea. he complains about the time, that he is being paid for, that we don’t start on time, but then when we start he refuses to play properly. as nostalgic as i am getting about this city that i am so soon to leave behind me (at least for a couple years), there are some things i will be glad glad glad to leave behind.

locked in, breaking out

some things get you from the first day. you step off the plane and are assailed by the heat, the humidity. you step out of the airport and are surrounded by this one and that one offering to help you with you don’t know what, you ride away in yr taxi over broken roads into congested kolkata coughing at the inhalation of all this poisoned air and entirely disoriented. these are the kinds of things that get you first.

then there are the things that build. stares u can shrug off at first, but then later drive you to inappropriate explosions of anger against the nearest but not so necessarily most grievous offender. or the delays that first u absorb patiently. thinking, this is a way of life, different, a lesson. which it is oh totally without a doubt in the world. i have definitely learned important things from such trials.

but there is the question of how long a person should go on learning something. some things take a day to learn, some take a life. and after nine months of such things i begin to think that as good as it is for me to chill out and learn take the punches as they come, to roll with it, i cannot help but feel like something is being drained away from me. time. slipping off, stolen away, disappeared; my life (at least this year of it) swallowed up in some hazy confusion of time and place, some eternal waiting and wondering what is to happen.

and so you get to feeling trapped. in these commitments, in this program of study, in all the appointments that take their time to materialize, if they are to materialize at all. in all this traveling and dead time, all this staring into space, all this anticipation with no action. but what to do? this is what it is, this is my deal, this is what i have gotten myself into, this is my project.

then one day s-di the dance teacher never shows up. you wait and you wait and you wait in the dance school, drift under the furious fans, make an attempt or two at reviewing the material you are learning. but as you pass the one hour mark something angry inside starts to build, where is she? why is this always the way this ends up? why am i here? what am i doing? am i crazy stupid something to be doing this? what was i thinking, coming at all? i should leave, i shouldn’t wait and let even more time be pulled away from me. get out of this dance school, even get out of kolkata. i dont need this, i dont need this, i dont need this. i never needed this. why do i even bother? why am i kept here? why do i feel so obligated? why do i feel so trapped? i am the master of my own destiny. i can desert this place any time i want to. i will. this is it, i have taken enough. i am out. i am through. kolkata, i have had enough of you.

at which point, after roughly removing my poor bells from my ankles, tossing them into the cupboard, i make to sweep out the front door only to discover the gate padlocked from the outside. this very literal manifestation of my emotions, this symbol made concrete, is just a little too much. i break. i burst into tears. i wail, i hit my fists against my thighs, i feel set to burst. i pound on the gate, to no answer. i pound harder and harder and finally with a big kick that sets the gate resounding i get someone’s attention, outside. i don’t even ask who did it. i just get out of there, out out out. my mind in a chaos of thinking.

a nice boy at breakfast, a native kolkatan studying at shantiniketan, hears from me that i am thinking of leaving the city, that as much as i like kolkata even love, i just feel it is enough, it is time to leave. he says, ah, this is your first time in india. i say no, no it is not. he says, oh, your second then? i am annoyed. at the time i cannot think of why, tho his implication that i am some silly newbie who just needs to get over it is enough to insult my pride.

but really, this is one of those moments when you recognize your limits. cuz really, i am never going to be ok with the harassment that i face all the time on the streets of kolkata, these assaults on my respectability, on my feelings, on my body and on my sense of self. i will never be ok with always being seen as a foreigner first and foremost by the great majority of people. i will never be comfortable with having to hide all these parts of myself, my opinions my politics my personal life, for fear of offense. i will never feel happy having to wear these strange clothings to protect myself (as much as is possible) from being judged and poorly treated. never before did i realize how much it really does matter to me, how much it really does make a difference, to have power over my own appearance, to be able to wear blue jeans and t shirts and whatever else, how i literally come at certain moments to feel caged or even lost within the indian-style garments that i have taken to hiding myself away in. and as time goes on, i can’t help but feel more and more frustrated by my inability to dress as i like. it is another example of me frustrated, hidden away, suppressed, and afraid. the environment and the fear of judgment or adverse reaction leading me to the salwar kameez, and then this partial refuge, protection, in itself leaving me feeling silenced and trapped.

all these tensions, provoking shame and discomfort and anger, twisting away at my mind, and no way to deal with them, no way to come clean to the people around me. walking away from dance class, i hit upon it, that for my own peace of mind, even sanity, i cannot stay. my brain needs a break. so, i will make my escape.

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.

nighttime

the phone is silent
and so are the streets
overhead, the fan is furious
my mind works itself into knots
the spaces across
oceans, forests, mountains, deserts—
at such distances
in such silences
fears expand like madmen

holy place? shocking scam-o-rama?

kalighat temple. notorious for its bloody goat sacrifices and cramming crowds, i had been avoiding it for a while. but yesterday i finally got around to visiting this most important of kolkata temples, the supposed basis for kolkata’s name (of course, no one really knows for sure). it’s just down a lane off of s.p. mukherjee road, lined by stalls selling all the typical wares one might wish for, outside of a temple. in particular, flowers, coconuts, sweets, other paraphernalia of prayer. me and laura went on in, to the narrow footpath between many more of these stalls, and emerged before the temple. small but pretty from what could be seen, mostly because of the painted tiles that covered a good bit of the exterior, in soft natural hues. we are debating whether to join the line winding out of the entrance when we are approached by a brahmin, who offers us a tour which includes the perk of skipping this line altogether. i am not sure, i have heard enough bad about these priests and their schemes to rip off foreigners. but then, a guide is better than no guide, and laura seemed willing, so we went for it.

he pulled us around the line of people waiting to the entrance, going up a narrow second stair case, squeezing in past all the eager visitors. inside, more tiles, a narrow passageway only really, with a few steps up to a low gate over which kali herself could be seen, offerings left, priests talked to. the squishing and squashing at this point were so much, i scarcely got a moment to look at the figure, black stone with red eyes, bigger than i had imagined from all the reproductions i had seen round town (where it is as ubiquitous as images of ramakrishna, vivekananda, and sarada devi, the holy trinity of the ramakrishna mission). no opportunity to dilly dally, i could not compete with the fervence and ferocity of the crowd pressed up against the gate, and so i came out and the priest led us down the steps onto the mud spattered floor outside.

from here we were led to a pavilion where prayers and offerings were made, coconuts sacrificed there within that space and animals, goats, just outside of it. a goat had just been beheaded, blood was everywhere out there, and its body was still moving a little, a jerk wrenching through its body every couple seconds. it was one of those cute little ones, the black ones with the delicate feet, prone to trotting about the scenery in rural bengal. of course i couldn’t look, focusing instead on the people who sat there, with their offerings and their prayers, so calm after all the jostling and jockeying for space inside.

and now came the fun part. this guy, i mean priest, led us out of the temple and down the lane from which we entered, past all these stalls selling their wares, and beggar women with their hands up and and reaching, out to a pool of water meant for cleaning before puja (prayer). and here, one by one (they would not let us do it together), this priest had us do puja randomly to a statue of shiva, right there by the pool. no one else was praying there. there were only a bunch of boys jumping about naked in the water. this was no place of prayer. then, he demanded money, hundreds of rupees, from each of us. of course, he separated us first so that there could be no consultation or anything. i had no money with me anyway, i hadn’t thought we’d get one of these guys, so laura paid for both of us. five hundred. we had been talking earlier about how one hundred should definitely be enough, but laura later said, "i couldn’t say no to a priest!"
i was too in shock and confused to even put up a fight to all this anyway. i kept thinking, did this just happen? did he just make a joke and a mockery out of his own religion to cheat some foreigners? i mean, i have heard stories about the corruption of hindu priests, but going to the extent of inventing entire ceremonies for the sole purpose of fleecing the ignorant? i couldn’t believe it, to see someone treating their own religion this way, not to mention while other co-religionists looked on. did this not offend hindus? it sure offended me.

and when i went home, i discovered numerous other foreigners at the mission had had the same experience, been put through the same rigmarole. it wasn’t just me being the sucker, it was all of us. the same silly shiva statue as bathers look on, the same separation of people to prevent communication or conferencing, everything. slowly my anger melted away into plain incredulity at the ridiculousness of the thing. me and a friend laughed that all these lifetimes of good behavior that have added up to make him a proud brahmin, he is just wasting them away. and if i know my hinduism (which i don’t at all but i like to think he will get this punishment) i think it is pretty well assured he will be born next as an insect. a creepy crawly smushy one. hmph!