Soan Papdi!

Ah, a new favorite sweet that I discovered at an American Center function. The American Center works in conjunction with USIEF, Jarrod's "employer" while he's on Fulbright. They have cultural programs and things periodically, and always serve delicious sweets and cha afterword.

Anyway, I was surprised and delighted when I tasted the new sweet that was on my plate. Wikipedia describes its texture as crispy and flaky, but it's more threadlike-crispy. Totally awesome. Here's a picture:



It's a dry sweet, flavored with cardamom and pistachio. After the American Center event, I went out and bought an 8-pack of Haldiram's packaged stuff for Rs 40 at Spencers. We polished it off and then got some more. We polished it off again.

Then we decided that we didn't need the packaged stuff. On the street one day we came across a guy selling it for Rs 2 apiece, so we each got one. It was good, of course. Another day we went into a sweet shop and bought eight pieces for Rs 40 (same price as packaged!). We're still finishing this last round--they're a little weird-tasting, just the way the shop makes them. Whatever :)

Learning Rabindra Sangeet

There is a man you need to know about. His name is Rabindranath Tagore, and he is the pride and joy of West Bengal/Calcutta. Here he is:



Tagore lived around the turn of the 1900's, and was a writer--poetry, short stories, etc. Back in 1913 or so, he won a Nobel Prize in Literature for his book of songs, called the Gitanjali. I guess part of it was the fact that he had not only written the songs in Bengali, but he had created English translations for them as well. The translations are not entirely similar, and other English translations are out there, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, in his lifetime he wrote over 2,000 songs. This guy was prolific. And here's the kicker--everyone around here knows and can sing many of these songs. They're just that ingrained into life around here.

Jarrod and I have been meaning to take voice lessons or something, but last night I just decided that I wanted to learn right then, so I sat down at YouTube to teach myself. Jarrod caught on to what I was doing and came over to learn with me, so, thanks to our efforts, we can now sing about half of this song:



We're very excited. It's like a whole world has opened itself up to us.

Alive and Kickin'

First matter of business, happy birthday to me! Twenty four years ago today, in a little yellow house on 11th street, I came screaming and red-faced into the world. And not much has changed since!

Today has really been great. It started out with a delicious cup of Starbucks Via Cinnamon Spice instant coffee, my for-immediate-consumption birthday gift sent from Jarrod's mom. Okay, delicious. I'm sorry. I don't like cinnamon flavored coffee normally, but this was just fall in a cup, really. Just so, so wonderful.

In the morning, Jarrod and I went to Dakshinapan, a government emporium with shops from each state in India that sell goods from their respective states. It's a really great, quiet place, away from the crowds and noise of Kolkata, with the shops arranged around a large courtyard area. Kind of hard to explain, but nice to explore. The shopkeepers aren't too pushy, and the prices are fixed (I think!)

We had been once before, but went back with a goal in mind: to visit the Kashmir store for a purse for me, a few painted wooden boxes for our apartment, and two shawls for the coming winter. After a successful trip and some wandering around the shops, we took a cab back home so we wouldn't be late for our lesson.

This evening, then, we went out to one of our favorite restaurants, The Banana Leaf, with our friend Jordan and two of his friends, a Bengali girl and a guy from Bangladesh. It was great fun. When they found out it was my birthday they sang to me and made me blow out Jordan's lighter.

Anyway, here's some news from around here. Last Saturday, Sujitra came to cook for us as usual, but was complaining of back pain and looked all-around miserable. We told her, "Please--go!" but she insisted on cooking a vegetable and some rice for us before she left.

She hasn't been back since, even though she normally comes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I was beginning to get worried. So tonight when we ran into Poulami, another Fulbrighter who lives in our building, on our way out to supper, I asked her what was going on with Sujitra. Yeah--apparently, she has dengue. So, tomorrow I'm washing the dishes and doing laundry, because I don't know when she's going to be back with us.

Then I asked about the doorman, who had also been absent for about a week or two. Apparently he has malaria. So, um, yeah. I'm definitely going to be taking my pill and bathing myself in mosquito repellent.

Finally, I have to say. I've been delinquent in writing, but it's not even because I've been so busy with NaNoWriMo that I couldn't write, because NaNo definitely got shelved too (we had guests is my new answer). So I'm trying to catch up. Yesterday morning I had about 6,000 words. This evening I have 15,050 words. It's been crazy, I tell you, but fun.

No more slacking! Expect to hear more from me from now on.

If You Want to Study Bangla With Me...

Okay, let's forget about the fact that you most likely have no idea how to read the Bangla script. Let's also forget about the fact that there's no way you would use Bangla in everyday life.

You now have the ability to study Bangla along with me!

Since I have nothing exciting to write about--seriously, my life is boring--I thought I would type off a bit about my work on SuperMemo.net.

I first discovered SuperMemo when I was doing a research paper senior year in college about the Ubermann sleep schedule, that is, sleeping for thirty minutes every four hours with a grand total of three hours of sleep every 24 hours. You gain five hours! Turns out it's pretty much a crock, but competitive sailors, like the man who came up with SuperMemo, use sleep schedules like this to maximize time awake and therefore win races.

Anyway, that's off topic. SuperMemo is an online program (or a software program, purchasable for only $50) that uses some sort of complex algorithm to maximize learning by controlling how long you go between question repetitions. Make sense? No? Oh well.

All I know is that I learned all the capitals of the world this summer by using this delightful program.

There's an option online to create your own course, and since there was--surprise, surprise--no Bengali Vocabulary course, I decided to create my own. It's been tedious. It's been hair-pulling. Crabbiness has abounded. But in the end, it's a pretty intuitive program, so I've slowly begun to put in the vocabulary that I know.

Here's the site if you want to check it out. My course is under "Other Languages". It's alright.

A Misunder-fan-ding

I woke up last night just dying of heat, thinking that the power had gone out because the fan was off. It occurred to me that I should check to see that the fan switch was turned on, but it seemed like a bad idea, because we always keep the fan on at night, and the probability that Jarrod had gotten up and turned it off was low, especially after he woke up and asked, "Is the power out?"

So I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, which was difficult, because the fan also acts as a white noise producer, drowning out the sounds of honking cars and fighting dogs. I had a headache, and the yips coming from the distance didn't help, let alone the oppressive heat.

In the morning I woke up, still surprised that the power was out. Usually power cuts last for a half hour or less. Then I got out of bed and flicked the fan switch to on. So...yeah.

When Sujitra's Away...

Jarrod and I have been left cook-less since Friday. Sujitra, the woman who cooks for us, normally comes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, and on the off days we eat the leftovers. Food is always abundant.

Sujitra informed us on Thursday that she would be on vacation until Monday, leaving us to another means of feeding ourselves for four days. Well, okay.

Don't get the impression that we're lazy bums who can't cook for ourselves. I lament the fact that I don't cook much here (save for Maggie, Nescafe, cha, and reheating food). The kitchen is just so different from in the states, and in any case, what would I even cook?

Maybe I'm being whiny--that's not the point of this post. The point is, in comparison to when we were living in the guest house after we first arrived and had no cook, it's been so much easier to feed ourselves this time around, and this is why: street food.

Before, we didn't dare touch the stuff for fear of getting A Stomach Bug. Boiling hot cha was the only thing we allowed ourselves, and even that, Jarrod said, was like playing roulette. Consequently, we had to eat out for about five days, which was a big pain, and kind of expensive. We also supplemented our meals with packaged food like chips and biscuits.

But now that we've opened ourselves up to eating from the stands that line the sidewalks, there's no need for all the trouble! Take yesterday's lunch, for example: we made a big loop around our area by starting with a roll stand near the metro, moving on to luchees with aloo dom on Rash Behari, I got momos* at the stand next to the luchee stand, from there it was mosambi juice on Sarat Bose road, then a quick stop at the sweet shop by our house, and finished off with two steaming cups of ginger cha.

This is the life!

For dinner I got this delicious plateful of papri chaat, which are kind of like Indian nachos, only instead of beans, salsa, cheese, etc, they're covered with runny yogurt, some sort of hot stuff, and a little bit of crushed potato. And all for eight rupees! Unbelievable.

Anyway, Sujitra comes back tomorrow, and though it will be nice to have hot Bengali meals waiting for us every other day, we've enjoyed ourselves this weekend.

*Momos were something I forgot to write about, but in any case, the first time I tried them was yesterday. At Rs 15 for six, they're "steamed Tibetan dumplings", and basically taste like potstickers. And they're delicious.

My Halloween Costume/Advance Apologies

The following picture will have to suffice for my Thursday post. Let's just say that it's my Halloween costume (squeamish/easily scared folks, you might need to look away--it's terrifying):



Yes, that's me with fish bones in my teeth.

The honest truth is that yesterday I spent much of my day feverishly preparing for the upcoming NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month, something I've participated in for the last five or six years. The idea is to write a novel in a month, which can get pretty crazy, as three single-spaced pages of typing daily are required to keep on track.

So here is my advanced apology: my blog entries might suffer during November, and I'm sorry for that. I'll still try to get out something small each day, but no guarantees in quality.

Anyway, I need to go now. I still have a page left of plot summary to write, along with character development and a scene-by-scene spreadsheet to do (I'm trying a different method of writing this time, okay?), all by Monday. Wish me luck.

Pani Phol

I've seen these incredibly odd-looking vegetable-like nuggets in all of the fruit markets recently. Sorry Mom, no pictures tonight, but let me describe them to you: they're irregularly-shaped, small, and greenish purple. On closer investigation they look like the head of a comic villian, with two spikes for ears, and a devillishly grinning face.

Tonight we asked Protima Didi what they are, and this is what she told us: They're actually fruits, called pani phol, or literally, "water fruit". To eat them, you peel off the greenish-purple skin and inside is a white flesh that you pop in your mouth. "They're quite good," she said.

So I got twenty rupees worth tonight, which ended up being a bag of about thirty of these little buggers. On the walk back home I peeled one and ate it. It was...not thrilling. In fact, I compared it in my mind to a slightly sweet water chestnut.

Which in fact, upon Wikipedia investigation, it is--a raw water chestnut. So, now we've got a whole bagful of these villianous-looking fruits to eat. Um, yay.

Kolkata's Street Food

Yesterday I realized something. Street food here is amazing. I mean, it's not that I haven't already realized this, because I have.

What I mean is this. Let's say I'm in Chicago, and I find myself suddenly hungry. What I am most likely to do is pop into the nearest coffee shop, probably Starbucks, and grab a coffee to go, along with a semi-okay-tasting pastry (especially if it's Starbucks). The grand total for my trip would be something around six dollars or so, and I would have just fed myself some sort of a sweet, simple carbohydrate snack that wouldn't really leave me very satisfied.

Not that I'm bashing this. I love being in Chicago, and I love popping into Starbucks and getting a pastry and coffee to go.

The other alternative is to go to a Seven Eleven or something and get a bag of chips. Or maybe a fast food restaurant if the hunger is really pressing.

In Kolkata, it's different. Yes, there are the window shops (there is no way of describing these--I'll have to take a picture, but they're everywhere) where you can get any kind of processed snack and/or drink that your heart desires, usually for around Rs 10-20.

But then there are the street stalls. All of which, I am told, are completely illegal. And completely delicious!

Street stalls sell amazing food--much of which is fried, but good food can also be found. So today, let me highlight some of the most common stalls you will find on the street, and what you can expect to pay for food at each one.

• Fruit sellers. Cost: Rs 5-10. Bananas and guava seem to be the most common fruits that people grab on the go, but you can also find oranges, and apples if you're into eating fruit with peels. Which I'm not.
  
• Luchi and Alu Dom. Cost: Rs 10ish. Luchi is a fried flatbread, which automatically makes it delicious. For your ten rupees, you usually get four luchis and a scoop of alu dom, which is boiled potatoes in a spicy gravy. This is one of Jarrod's favorites, but I'm not a huge fan of the potato part, so I generally don't get it.
• Phootchkas. Cost: Rs 10ish. Think of phootchkas as chips and dip. Only instead of chips, you are given a crunchy, puffy, hollow chiplike ball that the owner of the stand has punched a hole in with his thumb and stuffed a small amount of a spicy mixture of deliciousness the consistency of bean dip and then dipped into a bucket of tamarind juice. You can get about five of these for ten rupees.
• Wraps. Cost: Around Rs 20, depending on what kind you get. Wraps are pretty much what they sound like, only more delicious. The outside is flatbread fried in a pool of oil, and then filled with spiced meat, paneer, or egg, along with a generous helping of onions, some chilis, and ambiguous sauces. They're pretty decent, and make for a filling lunch if you're on the go.
• Samosas. Cost: Rs 5? Yes, the stereotypical Indian Thing--the samosa, a fried pastry stuffed with a spiced mixture of potato, peas, peanuts, or whatever else the guy making them wants to put in there. They're good! But the insides definitely vary from place to place.
• Sweets. Cost: Around Rs 5. Yes, there are the sweet shops that sell various kinds of milky sweet treats along with sweet yogurt. There are also these orange squiggly sweets that look a bit like syrup-soaked funnel cakes, which I haven't tried since two years ago when I got food poisoning after visiting an Indian buffet in Chicago. So I do need to give these a fair shot again. Oh, I guess the name is "jalebi". My favorite, though is like a jalebi, but instead of being funnel-caked out and squiggly, it's just like a ball of fried syrupy goodness, with the occasional fennel seed inside.
• Juice stands. Cost: Rs 20-ish, unless you get mango lassi! There are these stands, covered in dangling fruit, and you can get any fruit you want ground up in a blender, pressed through a strainer, and served with a bit of black (smoky-flavored) salt and sugar. It's quite delicious and refreshing. There are also sugarcane juice guys on every corner who have these big presses with bells dangling off the handles that jingle when they turn them, which they do constantly just to attract attention. I've heard the juice is good, but I've never tried it.
• Qwality Wells carts. Cost: Rs 10-20. These guys are seriously everywhere. They sell packaged ice cream from a cart, nothing special, but it's good stuff.

Anyway, that's just a brief overview of what all there is. Oh yeah, there's also the cha guys who sometimes can make you toast and eggs, and they always have biscuits in jars, just in case you want something to nibble on with your tea. Good stuff.

I guess I'll miss this tasty, cheap fare when I come back to the US. But I've got another ten months, so I'm not getting nostalgic just yet.

Hair Oil

I don't know why it is, but hair oil is cool stuff. All the ladies here use it. My first day in town, I got this tiny bottle of green stuff that smells like flowers, and so far I've only used half of the entire bottle, though I've applied it every day.

I don't even use conditioner here. I just wash my hair, towel it off, squirt a tiny amount into my hand, run it through my wet hair, and comb it out. It combs just as well as if I had used conditioner, but get this--I think it makes my hair look better!

Of course, it could all be in my head. But I really think that I don't have as many split ends, or maybe it's that the oil covers up the look of the split ends. It's great stuff though.

The only caution, though, is to not use more than a dime-sized squirt at the most. Any more and your hair ends up looking (and feeling) kind of greasy.

In any case, it's pretty awesome, and I'm planning on importing an entire case back to the US with me come August. No more conditioner for me, baby!

Crow Crap

It was bound to happen someday.

Today after church we were standing around talking with people when all of a sudden I heard a smacking sound on the pavement and felt a warm watery something on my foot. After several near-misses in the last two months, one of the stinkin' crows, the other half of the population of Kolkata, finally nailed me with his byproduct.

Sigh. Luckily it just grazed my purse and landed on my foot (while the smacking noise I heard was part of it landing on the brick next to me), instead of landing on my head or something.

Well, at least I wasn't wearing my unlucky silwar. Though, side note, the last time I wore it, the roof of the cha stand we were sitting under collapsed on us. I tell you what!

Pantaloons from Pantaloons

I just have to say, I'm pretty ecstatic about a new pair of jeans I bought from Pantaloons yesterday. They were Rs 1199, which is SUPER expensive for India, but a decent price converted to dollars, especially considering how much I love them.

Shopping for jeans is a painful process. In America, it's especially hard for me to get jeans that fit right. You know how certain jeans companies have jeans that just fit your body shape? Only Old Navy and Wal Mart fit me well. And Gap too, I think, but I don't really shop there.

Not to mention all the nasty coloring, feathering, whiskering, sandblasting, ripping, butt decor, etc. that jeans these days don't seem to be complete without. Just give me a classic pair of jeans that fits me alright, okay?

The one pair of cropped jeans I brought with me to India doesn't really fit me anymore, because 100% line dry means that the pants don't shrink when they're washed, they just always stay too loose. So jeans have been on my list. A lot of the youngsters here wear jeans with kurta tops, so it's not like I look too western or anything.

It was great though. I just strolled into Pantaloons, picked out a pair of straight-leg jeans in a color I liked, tried them on, tried on the next size down, and marvelled at how easy it was.

That's all.

A Different Kind of "Good Evening"

Badam is the dog's name, not Kujo. A fitting name, though--it means "nut". Tonight Jarrod and I had another encounter with it.

When we ride the elevator down, we're always eager to see if the landlord's elevator door is open or not, because if it is, Badam will most likely be lying down in front of it, and will most likely growl or bark as we pass. It's quite terrifying, because as the elevator descends, our heads become level with that of the snarling dog, instead of the normal position of being several feet above it.

Today we saw--and all this happened within the space of about five seconds--that the door was cracked. Then we heard Badam begin to growl, then bark, then get louder as he pushed his nose in the door to open it further and come after us. Then we saw Mandira, Amit's wife, pull the dog back and heard her say, as we cleared her floor, "He's just saying 'Good Evening'!"

I think they're in denial of how scary their dog is, like the parent of a bully. This dog seriously wants to eat us.

A Short Discourse on the Ten Rupee Note

This is a ten rupee note. Look at it. Take in its color, its design (Gandhi is on all of the notes here, so he's nothing special).

If you are planning on travelling in India, this piece of paper will be both incredibly important for you to hoarde, while at the same time will be incredibly elusive and difficult to get. It's...it's like the unicorn of Indian currency!

Ten rupee notes are handy for paying auto rickshaw bills, buying ice cream from one of the Qwality Wells guys that hangs out along every ten feet of the road, buying sweet curd or anything else from a sweet shop, picking up a quick pack of chips or a drink when the heat of the day and the crowds call for a break...but unless you're careful the notes disappear almost as fast as they appear. And once you're ten rupee-less, it's a hard, hard time to come upon more.

Okay, maybe I'm overstating how difficult it is to get your hands on these babies. It's not so hard, but you really have to learn the rules about getting and using them. This is coming from a master (or not): I currently have thirteen in my possession, and I'm planning on keeping them until they pry them out of my greedy little ten-hoarding fingers.

Anyway, rule number one: Don't let yourself become ten rupee-less. It's hard to convince someone to take a 100 rupee note for a 15-rupee bottle of water. I once had to give back a cold bottle of liquid refreshment that was already sweating in my arms because I didn't have anything but a 100. I almost cried.

Rule number two: Ten rupee notes seem to breed once you have a few, so always keep a few around.

Rule number three: Always give the biggest bill you can to pay for something. Breaking huge bills like 500's is difficult, and the 50's, 20's, and 10's are incredibly useful to keep on hand. Unfortunately, the ATM's only dispense 100's and 500's, so it's quite a game to get smaller notes.

Rule number four: Lie like you're a six-year-old accused of eating all the Oreos. Or, uh, just bend the truth a little. If a store merchent asks if you have change after you've handed him a 100 rupee note for a 26-rupee bill, just shrug a little. Look, he's got plenty of tens in that register, he's just not wanting to use them! If he says you'll need to put something back because he doesn't have change, he may be bluffing, but if he seriously goes through with it, act like you realized you have a ten rupee-note hiding as a bookmark and pull it out. This situation has happened to me twice, when I really didn't have change. The first time the cashier was bluffing, but the second time he really did have to take off a pack of biscuits because he didn't have change for me.

Rule number five: Don't accept, in any case whatsoever, any ripped bills. This one is more of a Jarrod rule. I haven't had any problems here in Kolkata, but Jarrod says in Silchar, people would refuse to take bills with even the tiniest of rips. If you express your displeasure, even just in your face, at a bill that looks a little iffy, the merchent will exchange the bill with a better one with no problem.

Anyway, that's just a short discussion on the intricacies of the ten rupee note. I'll admit, it's mostly just luck that hands the notes to you. Lately I've been getting only tens back for change, even when the cashier owes me seventy-some rupees. It's amazing. But my luck could change at any moment. So I'll count my blessings...and my red notes.

Appy Fizz, Part 2

Okay, so I figured out why Appy Fizz is so much better than Apfelschorle: It's because Apfelschorle is purely carbonated apple juice, which Appy Fizz definitely is not. A closer look at the ingredients led me to discover that it also contains sugar and apple flavoring. I love artificially apple-flavored things, so naturally I love Appy Fizz.

They also have Grappo Fizz, did I say that? So I'm wondering if it's nearly as delicious...hmm. Might have to try it out and see!

In any case, taking Appy Fizz (or Grappo Fizz, for that matter) with my pills each morning is probably better than taking them with Thums Up, which I had been doing in the past. I can't take pills with water, especially enormous pink ones that taste like bad chemical-flavored strawberry shortcake.

Post-Puja Calm

I'm feeling pretty lazy tonight, plus I'm coming down with another stinkin' cold, so this post isn't going to be amazing. But here are a few more pictures from pandal-hopping:



A sudden torrential downpour threatened to ruin the second day of Puja. Fortunately it stopped all in good time. This is a picture I took of the lights reflecting off of the wet pavement.



This is a picture of the masses of crowds that come out for pandal-hopping. And this was only at 8:00, not even near peak time for viewing (midnight or later). Calcutta just has soooo many people in it!



Yes, there was a lego pandal. It was pretty amazing.

Sunday was the last day of Puja. Jarrod and I met some friends at the ghats (steps leading down to water) on the bank of the Hooghly to watch the immersion of the idols. It was pretty crazy, and packed with people--I'll put up a few pictures later.

The last two days have been pretty busy. We met some people staying in Calcutta for a few days, and have been showing them all around the city, only it's been really hard because everything is closed since Puja is over. Seriously--everyone is catching up on sleep.

Right now Jarrod is up by College Street, in North Calcutta, with Jordan (one of the other two Fulbrighters) and Dave (this may not be his name), one of the tourists who is leaving tomorrow. Actually, I think the girls we hung out with on Sunday evening have left the city already. We didn't meet up with them on Monday because they wanted to watch a Bollywod film. And in West Bengal!

(Let me clarify this last statement to you. The part of the country I am in is Bengali-speaking. Everyone here is Bengali. Of course, many people also know Hindi, but there's even a Bengali film and soap opera industry. What I'm saying is that Bollywood, the Hindi film industry based in Bombay, isn't really what most people come to Calcutta to experience. But whatever)

Anyway, College Street is supposed to be a really neat place with tons of bookstores and everything. I decided to stay back and chill. It's been so hot here! Besides, I've been up there once before. But not to College Street, exactly. I was headed there, but I turned the wrong way off the metro, walked for a half hour, and then decided to go back home. Actually, that was when I had my last cold. Man, that was killer.

So, yep. That's what's been going on here. Classes have started back up, so it's nice to have something to do finally. I'll keep you all tuned for anything exciting.

Appy Fizz!

So, new food love. It's called Appy Fizz, a carbonated apple juice beverage. And...it's amazing.

I've definitely seen it everywhere the last two months, but wasn't really interested because in Germany they have this stuff called Apfel Schorle that's essentially the same thing--carbonated apple juice--but isn't really that great, just okay. I prefer Kirsch Schorle, the cherry version of the stuff.

The other day though, I wanted to grab a Thums Up (which deserves an-entire-nother blog post, but think of it as Indian Coke) to take my pills with. Unfortunately, the store only had Pepsi, so I decided to try this Appy Fizz stuff that Jarrod had been raving about since we first got here.

Delicious! For some reason, it's just better than the German stuff. Maybe sweeter or something, I'm not sure. But highly recommended. End of story.

NPR

I hope streaming radio doesn't take up a lot of bandwidth...'cause I'm totally listening to WVPE right now. I can't go another week without listening to Scott Simon!

...But It's Puja!

So you know how when the holiday season rolls around in the US, and there are parties galore with lots and lots of delicious, unhealthy food on gleaming platters just waiting to be eaten? And how the excuse to stuff yourself full of delicious, unhealthy food items is always something along the lines of, "(Insert holiday name) comes but once a year!" ?

Yeah, that's totally happening for me with Puja. I mean, even in America I'm the worst abuser of the phrase. ("The Super Bowl comes but once a year!") So I guess it's only natural that I use it when Jarrod and I are on our way to pick up our third sweet of the day from the sweet shop on the corner, or when I'm about to begin my fifth cup of cha.

To add to the irregularity, of course, is the fact that we have almost an entire week off from classes, so we've been super lazy and our sleep schedule is way messed-up. I mean, one of the residents of this flat is still in his or her pajamas (not mentioning any names, but I can say for a fact that I'm wearing my embroidered white kurta and bright blue leggings...)

Oh well. Puja comes but once a year, or for us, once in a lifetime. So we're living it up.

Shashti Pandal-Hopping

So, day one of Durga Puja down, and I am all Puja'd out. Last night we went pandal-hopping with a group of friends starting at 5:00, and went directly from them to Protima Didi's group at 7:30. We were out until around 9:30 or so, and then ate supper and chatted at Protima's until around 11:00. It was a late night! But lots and lots of fun. Here's a short video taken of the pandal by Protima Didi's house. Protima is the one who asks if we want to see the dancers. YOu can also see Piu, our language driller--she's the woman briefly shown at the very end that doesn't say anything.



Pandal-hopping is cool. I guess most people don't go the first evening of Puja, so it wasn't as crowded, which was nice. But even still, there were a ton of people. How do I even describe it? What you do is, you go out into the streets, which may or may not be closed off to traffic, and there are strings of lights and advertisements everywhere, and people selling food and stuff, and you wander around like this from pandal to pandal. Some pandals are traditional, and some are very modern. Here are just a selection of the many, many pictures I took.

This is the first pandal we went into, and also my favorite so far.



This is its protima--very modern.



You might notice that all of the protimas have the same components, but are rendered differently by the artists.



This guy was selling some sort of stamps--Protima Didi said they were for sari patterns or something, but here he's stamping this little girl's hand.



Another pretty sweet one.



These guys came out of nowhere and started drumming for us. It was pretty cool, but really loud too!

Probably my second-favorite pandal--it's made all out of earthenware jars and pots. The protima in this one was actually very traditional.

The pandal in Deshapriya Park wasn't quite finished yet!

One of the oldest pandals in Kolkata--75 years. Okay, this confuses me a little bit though. Pandals are temporary structures. I guess what they mean is that every year this pandal is exactly the same. There's real gold on the protima, which they take off before submerging it in the Hooghly. Oh yes...another aspect of Puja I forgot to tell you about. Well, all in due time!

Yes, you're at the right place

So I made a new blog design. It's still in progress, but we're gettin' there, slowly. I was just sick of the completely un-unique Blogger design that I randomly picked out without feeling like putting any work into it at all. But now things are changing.

Anyway! I've been good...not posting much, har har. Dr. Ahmed's daughter, Rachel, has been staying with us for the last week while the family she usually stays with was on vacation (it's Puja vacation for her, so she's out for almost a month). We took her back to her their house today, but it was a lot of fun having her around and hearing her opinion on things.

Today I am introducing a new feature to the blog: MishtiQuest 2010. It's not so much a quest to find the best mishti (sweet) in all of Kolkata, but to try them all. So, here is today's Mishti:



I call it the Rose-Flavored Cheese Thing. I don't know the Bangla, obviously. It's alright...no, I won't lie. I don't like rose-flavored things, so I wasn't a fan. Jarrod really likes these though, almost as much as gulab jamun, the fried balls of "milk solids and flour," as Wikipedia puts it, drenched in syrup. So that's that. I didn't say I was a food reviewer.

Durga Pooja is in the air. It starts tomorrow, and everyone is out around Gariahat market doing last-minute shopping. I got a few pictures of the craziness.





Just for the record, the above picture comes from the most delicious lassi store in all of Kolkata. Not that we've tried any others. We're just too thrilled with this one, which smells exactly like Jamba Juice and may actually be better than it. Just sayin'. Plus, the little girl at the bottom corner was really cute. She had wet mehandi (see below) on her hands, and was trying to scratch her face and not mess it up.

The mehandi guys. So, American college students call this "henna", but henna is actually what you put on your hair to dye it reddish, and mehandi is what you put on your hands. Found this all out from Rachel, actually. Indians put henna in their hair not as dye, necessarily, but to keep it healthy and soft. It takes the right blend of eggs and yogurt to keep it from changing your hair color. Interesting!

Durga Pooja means, literally "Prayers to Durga", one of the goddesses. People set up pandals, decorated structures where idols are placed, around the city and then go "pandal-hopping" at night to see them all. One of the big ones is right by Protima Didi's house, and we got to see it open last night.



Side note: I didn't realize how much India truly is an assault to the senses until I saw thumbnails of all of my pictures. I guess I'm just adjusted to it now, because everything seems so normal. Like these goats. In the middle of the city.



My attitude about things has been changing recently, though--like, I'm beginning to really love the chaos. Today we took an auto ride from Park Circus to Gariahat on the way back from dropping off Rachel. Since the main road was so darn crowded, the auto took this tiny back alley that wound through a Muslim section of town with Urdu signs everywhere, random goats and cows rummaging through the piles of trash on the side of the road, kids running around, everything. It was so fun.

Chocolate

Oops...three things to apologize about: the lack of two short entries yesterday and day before yesterday, and the lack of a long entry on Thursday! Oh well. My blog, my rules.

So I'm eating a KitKat bar right now. The chocolate tastes...weird. Look I don't want to bash, but I thought American Hershey's chocolate tasted bad. I'll just stick to the traditional sweet shops from now on.

That's all.

The Dog Downstairs

Our landlord has a dog. It has a name, but I don't know it, so I call it Kujo. It fits. Kujo is a very angry dog, and on top of that, he smells bad. I think he might be angry about how bad he smells.

The first time we met Kujo was when we went to our landlord's flat to meet with him and his wife before we officially began renting. I was so excited that there was a dog--I love dogs! But when I touched Kujo, he started growling at me.

"Oh, don't touch him," Mandira, Amit's wife, said, "He's a bit grumpy. He's been sick." I tried to stay away from him for the rest of the night.

But ever since then, he hasn't seemed to get any less grumpy. I will use the lift, and when it passes the Sen's floor, the dog will growl/bark, and continue doing this for some time after I've passed.

One day I needed to leave our flat. I noticed that the elevator said "In Use," and pressed the button as soon as it was unlit. I heard a muttering from below and watched as the elevator, complete with the doorman and Kujo inside, arrived.

I was terrified to get into the elevator with the dog, but got in anyway. The doorman would be a witness to my murder, at least. Kujo was fine during the ride, actually, but as soon as the elevator arrived at the ground floor, the doorman led the dog out. The dog, who is kind of fat, hobbled out and began growling at the world. It's just an angry dog in general.

We Have Become Cheap

In India, it's easy to spend like a relative rockstar. With 1 USD equalling approximately 45 Indian Rupees, prices are generally low here, and it's easy to drop 25 rupees on a decent-sized pack of raspberry JimJams (biscuits that are very similar to those short-lived strawberry and cream Girl Scout cookies of old).

But then Jarrod and I figured out an approximate way to calculate the actual relative cost of any item--what it should "feel like" we're paying. Just divide any price by ten. Okay, is that confusing? Here are some examples.

--The JimJams mentioned above would be $2.50 (of course it's not dollars that we're using, but it should feel like we're spending $2.50 when we buy the JimJams)

--Sweet limes, abundant right now, go for 5 rupees a piece, which feels like $.50

--One ride in an autorickshaw is also 5 rupees, $.50

--The amazing-smelling strawberry Garnier Fructis shampoo I wanted to buy was 130 rupees, which felt like $13...which is why I didn't buy it.

Seeing things this way has helped us curb excess spending; in fact, it's made us downright cheap. I'm embarassed that I dropped $15 relative-dollars on cheap mall spaghetti bolognase with ground lamb. And that's probably and okay thing.

An October Wedding

Man, I know I've already put three blogs out in October already, but let me just say this: Can you believe it's October already? I sure can't. It's sort of bittersweet for me, because it seems like it should be getting colder, when really it's been getting hotter. Today, though, a storm broke in the afternoon, so it's been quite bearable.

So last Friday's wedding was amazing. There's not much I can say about it other than that. I mean, I guess I'll give you the summary, just to give you all a taste of what an Indian Christian wedding is like (different, and similar, to American weddings!)

We got to the wedding just a few minutes late, just as the party was walking in. A very dressed-up lady pinned little horseshoe corsages on us and we took our places near the back of the church (it wasn't completely filled up).



The bride, Sharon, was dressed in a beautiful white silk sari, which you can't see so well from the picture. She also had bangles and jewelry galore.

She took her place at the front of the church, sitting facing the congregation with her almost-husband. (We didn't get a very good view because we were so far back.)



Here's the lady in front of us filming. The ceremony was pretty similar to a US ceremony, I think. Oh, there were cameras--video and still--and those big professional flash lights everywhere! It was so crazy.



Yes, the unity candle has made its way over to India. Oh, big difference I noticed--no kiss. This makes sense, of course, because any public display of affection in India is frowned upon, and kissing in public is way scandalous. They don't even kiss in Bollywood movies.



Toward the end of the ceremony, this man sang a song in Telagu, which I did not understand at all. Samosekhar, the groom, is from...another part of the country...I think where they speak Telagu. But don't take my word for it.

After they were married officially, they disappeared into a room behind the podium, although I'm not really sure why. Maybe to sign the marriage license or something. A few minutes later they came out and had the recessional.



The invitation said that the reception started at 7:00. Jarrod and I were a bit worried when we read it. Would it be a really long wedding? But when the wedding ended at 5:45, we were just confused. What could possibly occupy our time for the next hour and fifteen minutes?



The pastor (also father of the bride) was urging us all to go to the reception hall, where there would be the cake-cutting, toast, and a short program, but "not a traditional reception," he said. I was afraid that meant no feast. Not true, but I'll get to the food eventually!

We all assembled in the hall and the bride and groom came in and took their places on the thrones at the front of the room. (I didn't get a good picture, unfortunately). Fruitcake and small keepsake glasses of wine were passed out, and we all toasted them after they cut the cake and fed one another. And no, no smashed-cake face. I don't think that one has made it here yet.

After the reception we fled the stifling-hot room for outside, where the cool breeze was much-welcomed. That's when everything became magical. The sun had gone down and there were twinkle lights everywhere. The decorations were just absolutely fabulous. If I had it to do over again, I would get married at night with strings and strings of twinkle lights.

I think I was also enchanted because we were set back from the road, so the traffic noises were gone, and there was grass. I'll tell you what. I miss grass. I wanted to get down on my stomach and plant my face in the grass, but I decided that it would be 100% inappropriate.

The meal didn't start for a bit, but there were waiters working their way through the crowd serving appetizers. I got a strange vegetable fried something and delicious two fried paneer/sweet pepper kabobs.



After a while, with no Sharon or Samosekhar, and no gift table to speak of (but everyone around us carrying gifts), we were wondering where to deposit our card. Rachel, Dr. Ahmed's daughter who was helping out, pointed us in the direction of the reception hall again. A different tradition: you give your wedding gift directly to the couple and greet/congratulate them.



After that, we went back outside and talked to people for a while. When the meal did start, there was quite a selection of food, including three different kinds of breads: naan (baked flatbread), luchi (fried flatbread), and paratha (incredible flat biscuit-type pastry). We ate well.



Failure of the night: masala soda. I didn't know what the delicious-looking drink everyone was drinking was, so I decided to get one for myself, and one for Jarrod. I watched the guy at the drink table squeeze a little lime in the bottom, add some ice cubes, spoon in some powder-looking stuff (in retrospect, spices), and shoot in some club soda. I say shoot in by the way he shook the soda and then put his thumb mostly over the bottle so that the soda would shoot into the cup and make it extra fizzy.

It was bad. Really bad. It tasted like the stuffing of phutchkas, one of the street foods. It wasn't even something we could attempt to get used to that night. I mean, think of it this way. Take your spice cabinet, put some random spices in club soda, and drink it. It's really not good.



Other than that, we had a great time. I mean, with vegetable animals as awesome as these, how could you go wrong? And I didn't even get the shark on camera.



Finally, I leave you with this wonderful picture, to show you that we are, in fact, alive and kicking. And yes, that's me in my unlucky silwar.

Sweet Limes

Today Jarrod and I went to South City Mall to actually look around. It's nice, but I'm not really interested in any of the stores, so I'm not going to be spending a lot of my time there.

Jarrod wanted a fresh-squeezed orange juice for lunch, but the juice stand guy told him that oranges weren't in season, and suggested that he try the sweet lime juice. He pointed to a pile of orange-sized green fruits. Special note: we've seen these everywhere in the fruit markets recently. Jarrod was curious what the juice tasted like, so he agreed and got the sweet lime juice.

Delicious! It tasted just like orange juice. So, since we've seen them everywhere, we decided to get a few on the way back, and stopped at this stand selling amazing-looking produce (bright red pomegranates, wonderful-smelling pineapples, etc). Ten rupees for two--very cheap, even for the produce we've bought here.

When we got home, we peeled our booty and ate it just like an orange. Good stuff! It tastes like a less-sweet version of an orange. I can't say it's my favorite fruit in India, but I like oranges, it's in season, and it's cheap*, so I can see myself eating a fair amount of sweet limes in the future.

--Emily

*Jarrod and I have recently become quite stingy, which I will write about on Wednesday, since tomorrow calls for a longer post. Stay tuned.

My Unlucky Salwar

I have this outfit, it's a purple embroidered salwar kameez, which is the tunic-style top with baggy drawstring pants and a scarf that goes over my shoulders.

Anyway, I've determined that it's unlucky. It didn't start out that way, of course, but the last three times I've worn it, some sort of calamity has happened to prevent me from wearing it the entire day.

It's also getting progressively worse. The first time, the monsoon decided to break while we were out without an umbrella, so I got soaked through and had to wear something different to lessons that evening.

The second time, we went out for tea in the afternoon and I managed to get a giant, dirty glob of mint gum stuck to the bottom hem of the pants. I promptly changed.

The last time I wore it was Friday. I told Jarrod, "I'm going to attempt to wear this thing for the entire day. Wish me luck." I was mostly being funny, but when it comes down to it, I should have been dead serious. Within an hour I had spilled aloo dom, potatoes in a kind of curry sauce that you get on the street, on my kurta (the scarf).

I refused to let bad luck win, and rinsed out the kurta when I got back. Of course, nothing takes turmeric stains out of a garment except maybe bleach, so the stain is still there. I just arrange my kurta so that no one will think I'm a total slob by seeing it.

Foiled!

Well blog-readers/loved ones, I've decided that instead of the haphazard Tuesday-Thursday blog posting, I'll try to post a small anecdote every day, keeping, of course, the longer updates with pictures for Tuesday and Thursday. I'm not journaling by hand so much any more, so I figure that this method will work well to preserve my experience and the small things that humor me. So here is today's anecdote.

This morning, Jarrod and I needed to visit an ATM to get our rent money for the month. We were going down in the elevator when suddenly, it just shuddered and came to a halt, right between two floors. Jarrod punched at the buttons. Nothing.

Elevators are different here than in the US. If you ever saw Titanic, maybe you'll know what I mean. Here, there are two metal grates that you pull open and shut. If you forget to close the elevator grates, the "In Use" button by the door lights up and no one else can use the elevator.

So we could clearly see that we were stuck. We had been warned before that there were sometimes power cuts during which the elevator wouldn't work, and I had thought that the chance of getting stuck in the elevator when the power was cut was fairly slim, yet here we were. Except that the elevator light was still on, and we could run the fan...

It was funny though. I felt like we had been caught trying to escape or something. I had no idea how long we would be in there. I had visions in my mind of people going up and down the steps and staring at us as they passed.

Luckily, Jarrod had his phone. We called Amit, our landlord, and told him we were stuck between two floors. The outer grate was locked, so we couldn't get out on our own and hop down; fortunately, he had a key to the grate, so he got the doorman to cut off the power to the elevator (because indeed, there had been no power cut) and let us out.

Amit said the elevator had been acting strange recently, and that it had probably just gotten off its track or something. He's going to call the elevator maintanance man; meanwhile, we'll be using the stairs for the next several days.

--Emily

P.S. The wedding last night was awesome, and I took a lot of pictures, bonus! So look forward to that.

A Trip to South City

Last Sunday, we met this guy named Rwik, pronounced Rick, who told us that any time we were in South City, we should stop by and visit him, Tower D, flat 1A.

Now, let me tell you about South City. Here is a picture that I took of the towers from the window of our flat.



The South City towers are the big towers off to the left of the picture.

The South City Mall proclaims itself to be the "largest mall in India". Piu, our language driller, told us that it may in fact be the largest mall in Southeast Asia. Dang. So there's the mall, and then behind it are the residential towers. I think there are four right now with a fifth being built?

Before Jarrod and I had realized any of this, we decided to call up Rwik and find a time to meet up with him. Then, of course, we got online and found out how posh everything is down there. We had no idea what to expect when we arrived--did Rwik live with his parents? How could he otherwise afford the Rs 9,000,000 condo? Was he just super rich?

We had agreed to visit him on Wednesday evening, and took a taxi to get there after class. I, of course, didn't have the foresight to bring my camera along, but I wish I would have. The mall looked was really impressive, especially because it was dark out. Pooja is coming up, so outside everything is decorated with neon flashing lights and inside are all sorts of things hanging from the ceiling. It really is a lot like Christmas, as Durga Pooja is Kolkata's largest holiday by far. I think I've said this before, but it's five days of festivities, beginning the 14th this year.

Anyway, so we found our way to Tower D, flat 1A, all the while looking up at the massive towers and marvelling at how nice the complex was. I think it was just crazy to us because it seemed so out of context in the Kolkata that we've been living in for the last five weeks. I don't know.

We met Rwik and went up to his apartment with him. His mother was on the couch when we came in--so yes, he does still live with his parents, who are retired from the tea business. His father came out later to talk with us.

We had a very pleasant time! They served us cha, samosas, and biscuits with lemon filling, and we all talked about various things. Rwik's mother was very interested in why we would possibly want to live in Kolkata and study Bangla, when Indians want to come to America. I think we managed to get our intentions across. We talked some about music, and how Ravi Shankar was never as good as before he came to America, because after that point, his music was corrupted with Western fusion.

It was fun for us to try to say a few sentences in Bangla and have them encourage us on and help us finish properly. Or sometimes they would make offhand comments to each other and we could pick out most of what they were saying. So it was a good time.

They've invited us to come and have lunch some day, so hopefully we'll be visiting our new friends soon. Tomorrow, at least, we're going to walk around the mall for a bit, just to check it out since we didn't get a chance on Wednesday. I hear you can buy cheese there. Mmm...

Anyway, today we've got a wedding to go to--the pastor of our church's daughter (you know, I never know if that's correct grammar. I don't think it is.) is getting married! It's going to be fun to see what weddings are like here, I'm really looking forward to it :) Maybe I'll even take my camera along with me!

--Emily

আমি বাংলা যানি!

The title of this post is "I know Bangla!" Not really, but I am super excited about Google Transliteration, a service Jarrod and I just stumbled upon last night, which allows us to type in Roman script and it be automatically converted to Bengali script. (You have to know Bangla though--it doesn't change the English language into Bangla for you.)

Anyway, Jarrod and I got some really exciting and encouraging news about our language last week. Somehow we got on the subject of how we are doing with Protima Didi, our language instructor. She said that we are now at the low-intermediate level--very exciting for us, because we've been studying for just five weeks!

Then she told us about a major language program overhaul she's planning for October. You see, she's pretty much a master teacher...probably the best that we could have found in the city. She says that people go to Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture or Jadavpur University to study Bangla because the course fees are so inexpensive, and end up coming to her when the course is finished because they haven't learned anything. "A good teacher needs to be trained in Bangla," she says, "It doesn't help to be a native speaker, because you can't teach the language as well."

Anyway, because she's so rockin' awesome, she's very, very busy. She's got this little spiral-bound calendar that she schedules people on, and it's just full of eraser marks and pencilled-in appointments. She'll look at her calendar and say, "Where am I going to put you? Where? There is no space!"

Because of this, she's putting together a new, intensive, 3-month program. Jarrod and I will be studying with one other couple who are similar to us in Bangla skillz. At six-o-clock every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we will come to Protima Didi's house, study for an hour with someone trained in pronounciation, while another more advanced class studies grammar with Protima Didi. Then at seven-o-clock, we will switch to grammar with Protima Didi and the advanced students will go to the pronounciation person. She also plans to have listening exercises and video clips! And of course, Jarrod and I will continue our Tuesday-Thursday drilling with Piu, one of the junior instructors.

This is all very exciting. Protima Didi has told us that we will be able to read newspapers by December! Yikers...this might be a bit of an overestimate. But maybe it's totally feasible, I don't know! It just means that I'm going to be studying very hard to get to that point. And by December--we will have only been here for four months, with eight more left to get even better!

Well, I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, quick anecdote related to language: I was out on Rash Behari the other night, going to get some pomagranates and sweet yogurt (no joke), and I'm walking along this stretch just opposite to the local park, when this older lady just turns to me and asks, এটা কি দেশাপ্রিয়া পার্ক? Which sounds like, "Eta ki Deshapriya Park?" and means, "Is that Deshapriya Park?" And I totally understood her and could say yes! It was very exciting.

--Emily

Talkin' About Biscuits

Alright, I know that it seems a little early to be developing another food obsession, but a few nights ago I discovered the most delicious, the most delectable, the most wonderful biscuit (in the British sense of the word, because that's what they're called around here) in the entire Indian sub-continant. And maybe even the world.

So what they are is big square crackers flavored with jeera and ajwain (jeera is cumin, and ajwain is some sort of variety of caraway called Bishop's Weed). And they're delicious!

Jarrod is asking me why I love them so much. I think it's because they taste just like this herb bread that I've made in my bread machine a couple times. Man, that stuff is so good, fresh out of the machine, dripping with butter...mmm. These crackers are the closest thing to fresh-baked herb bread that I've found here. Not that I'm actively seeking fresh-baked herb bread. It just happened that I happened upon crackers that taste like it.

Anyway, now Jarrod is telling me that I need to write that "awesome bitter gourd is better than any stinkin' crackers". So I will take this opportunity now to tell you about bitter gourd, Jarrod's very favorite vegetable.

Here is a picture of bitter gourd (again, not one I took myself):



Number one it's pretty cool-looking, huh? The taste is...quite different. Jarrod used to tell me all about bitter gourd back in the states, how he didn't like it at first, but then he developed a taste for it over time, how it's super bitter, but prepared with lemon to offset the bitterness. And I would always wonder what a bitter vegetable tasted like. I mean, the only bitter thing I really consume is coffee. Is it a vegetable that tastes like coffee?

No, no. It doesn't taste like coffee at all, but it is really bitter, and that's the only way to describe it. It makes your tongue feel funny, I don't know! Sujitra, our cook, prepares it fried with potatoes, lemon, and onions, and it's really beginning to grow on me. The neutral taste of the potatoes really tone the bitterness down.

So there you go, a little lecture on bitter gourd, one of India's unique vegetables. Oh, it's also good for diabetics, apparently.

Hey, speaking of coffee though, Jarrod and I have found a new, kind of lame-o American hangout: Barista Cafe. We've gone three times in the last week for coffee and studying.



Look, I know it seems a little bit of a cop-out to be going to a Starbucks-type cafe in India, home of sweet milky cha, but hear me out! It's not like we aren't adapting to life here. Barista is just a really nice place to go when we feel like we've been trapped inside studying all day and need more people to look at than each other. It's nice, a bit small, but it has a couch and low table in the corner that we like to sit at and drink our coffees. Plus, masala cha (spicy tea) is always available if we feel the need to be "more Indian". In any case, the majority of Indian customers who come are interested in the coffee, so I don't feel so bad.

Okay, well I think I'm going to sign off for now. Today Jarrod and I are going to meet up with the two other Kolkata Fulbrighters, Jordan and Pulami (the latter of whom lives in our building), along with Pulami's former-Fulbrighter boyfriend, Brandon (who lives in the apartment next to Pulami's), to go to a lunch for the Fulbrighters to report a bit on their progress. Fun :)

--Emily

Mishti Doi and Bedana

Look at me, all awesome with my language skillz. That's "sweet yogurt" and "pomegranates". I just have to say, I've kind of developed a recent obsession for these two food items.



So, first of all, mishti doi, or as they call it in English, sweet curd. (Which I refuse to use. It sounds much less appetizing, and kind of gross, like maybe sweet cottage cheese or something.)

The picture above is actually tak doi, sour yogurt, (what we know as "plain yogurt" in the US) but you get the picture. Ha ha, quite literally! Alright, bad pun. The only real difference between sweet yogurt and sour yogurt is the level of sweetness, and the fact that sweet yogurt is slightly brown due to the caramalized sugar from the cooking process. A note on the sweetness: this was actually the first sour yogurt that we didn't buy packaged from the supermarket, and it's surprisingly sweet compared to what we had been eating. I'm not sure if all the shop-made sour yogurt is slightly sweet, or if it was just where we got it from, but in any case, this stuff is really good too.

But back to the sweet stuff. Jarrod and I had heard about mishti doi from Protima Didi, our language instructor, but had never really gotten the authentic stuff. You see, the way it works around here is that, in addition to balls of syrup-saturated fried dough and everything else they display in the window, traditional Bengali sweet shops (as opposed to the cake shops that are also pretty popular here) also have a fridge full of different-sized earthen containers of yogurt--both sweet and sour.

The earthen container is a neat phenomenon that I had intended to write about seperately, but why not just make this an extra-long post? You can see from the picture above that the yogurt is in a sort of clay pot. The cha (sugary, milky tea) you buy on the street is also served in mini earthen cups--what Jarrod is drinking from below:



What's so cool about them is how environmentally-friendly they are! I can get a cup of cha from anywhere on the street (don't worry, it's always hot enough to burn my tongue), drink it, and then just throw the cup down, shattering it to bits. It's fun, and clay! For yogurt, the earthenware pots apparently soak up the extra moisture in the yogurt, giving it a consistant texture.

Anyway, so long story short, we finally went into a sweet shop and got some mishti doi day before yesterday. It was absolutely delicious. The stuff of dreams. It even had a cream top, like Brown Cow yogurt does. I think it's Brown Cow...well anyway. Obsession #1. I will be eating yogurt every day from here on out.

Obsession #2 is, of course, the pomegranate. Here is a generic picture of a pomegranate. I didn't really have time yesterday to go out and take a picture of the piles in the market, so you'll have to be content with this.



It's not that they're an extraordinary fruit or anything. They're just really fun to eat mindlessly, the seeds are really pretty, like jewels, and they're cheap and abundant. Pomegranate season is just beginning, so I'll be able to find them for quite a while still. Oh, they're also healthy. I can't complain about always wanting to eat fruit, right?

So yeah. That's that. I'm sure you'll hear a lot more about various food obsessions in the next year, so be prepared. I like food :)

--Emily

No, Really...We're Back in Business

Alright, I've been kind of lazy when it comes to blogging lately. I mean, we did have another three-day lapse of internet, but that's no excuse for not writing for ten days!

Things are going pretty well here. We continue to study--Jarrod like mad, me not quite as much, but I'm doing okay in lessons, so it's no worries.

I've been a bit sick for the past...two weeks, basically. I caught Jarrod's bad cold, which I believe included a few days of fever, because I felt really stinking bad. Now that that's gone, though, I've been having stomach problems where the smell of food kind of makes me nauseous, etc. I finally went to the doctor yesterday, which was quite an experience. Not the doctor part, that was fine, Dr. Ghosh was very nice and spoke excellent English.

It was the taxi drivers that I had trouble with. The first one asked Rs 100 for the ride, which should have cost Rs 50. I agreed, since I needed to make my appointment and didn't want to argue. Then when I got out, he tried to charge me Rs 200! And then on the way back, it took me forever in the rain to find someone who would take me, and then he took me way far south and I had to walk quite a long way to get back home. Sigh. I guess it was my own darn fault, though, for not finding an auto rickshaw to drive me up to the metro on the way back.

But anyway, the doctor basically told me to avoid fried and spicy foods and gave me a bunch of different pills to take at various times for various symptoms, and if I don't feel better in five days or so, I'll call him and he'll do tests. I think I'll be okay though. Just a little bit of stomach upset, you know.

So we've been losing a battle with the critters recently. I mean, I guess it was bound to happen, but when you find ants swarming your kitchen counter and garbage, it just makes you feel like a lousy housekeeper. Well, it makes me feel that way, at least.

But it makes sense why there are so many critters. We never really keep our windows closed, and I don't think there would really even be a way to keep them out if we tried. It was just a matter of time, and of food. Of course the ants didn't bother us when we toured the apartment--they hadn't found food up here for a few months! But now that we've moved in, they've come out.

We've managed to curb the ant infestation with this magic chalk stuff that you draw a border with and the ants don't cross it. It's funny/sad to watch as they get all hectic approaching the line, and then turn around and walk back, and then come back to the line again, over and over. Jarrod said the other night when he killed a few ants in the kitchen, the colony got really angry and started attacking from their hole, so he chalked off the entrance and they couldn't do anything.

There are cockroaches too, but I've only seen one, plus the dead one on the floor that the ants were dragging away in a massive group effort. That was pretty horrible. Jarrod found a millipede in his sock one day, and I saw another one crawling across the floor a few days after that. There are the occasional lizards, but those guys are pretty cool. And then, oh yeah, there was this random animal turd in our bathroom the other day, which we can't figure out for the lives of us what it's from. I make sure to keep a wary eye each time I use the restroom now.

I'm making our apartment sound like a horrible, infested hole, aren't I? It's really not though; in fact, it's quite clean. But critters are still something I'm learning to deal with. Jarrod says they're nothing compared to what it's like in Silchar and the village, and cites horror stories of huge fast spiders, lizards falling from the ceiling, mosquitos everywhere, little red snakes, etc.

Anyway, I can deal. As my dad always said, they're more afraid of me than I am of them, right? :)

--Emily

Back in Business

Please accept my humble apologies for failing to produce blog entries for this Tuesday and Thursday. On Monday night we discovered that our internet was not working, but Tuesday's India-wide bandh (basically a nationwide shutting-down of everything) meant that we could only begin to look for a solution to our internet problem on Wednesday. Reliance (or as I like to call them, Unreliable) said we would get our internet back that night, but that we needed to go back and sign a form on Thursday. That didn't happen, so yesterday Jarrod spent five hours running around the city trying to get the required documents--a notorized letter from Jadavpur University, a proof of US address. When he insisted that the US doesn't have a proof of father's identity document, they let that one go.
Anyway, it's been frustrating, but we finally have internet again, so it's a-okay! Look out for a longer post maybe today or tomorrow. A lot has been happening here!
--Em

Potato Chips

I'll tell you what I've been getting a kick out of recently. Last time Jarrod was here, Lays India had a potato chip contest where they had four different, India-only flavors and you would vote on your favorite. The one with the most votes, of course, got to stay in production. Jarrod got very attached to the Mint Mischief flavor (as did I when he brought a bag home...delicious), but the Indian people, on the other hand, did not, and ended up voting for Magic Masala.

Interestingly enough, Magic Masala was the first snack food item I bought after I got off the plane in Delhi, as well as the snack that Jarrod brought to the airport for me to eat on the cab ride back! What can I say, there's a reason I married the guy.

Well anyway, now there's a new chip contest going on. Same rules, different flavors. And these ones are four peoples' suggestions, whereas the last contest I'm not sure who came up with the flavors.

So that's what's been entertaining me recently: trying to try all four flavors so I can vote. I only have four left. These are the flavors:

Shipra's Tangy Twist--a combination of lemon and chili, which doesn't sound very good, bit it's actually my favorite so far.

Sagar's Mastana Mango--a spicy chip with mango undertones, Jarrod refused to eat any more after his first chip. Yeah, they were weird. Unfortunately, they're winning the contest. Oh wait, according to the website, it just won the contest. Dang.

Shouvick's Hip Hop Honey and Chili--similar to Mastana Mango, but instead of the sweet mango undertones, it's just plain sweet.

Mansi's Cheezy Mexicana--This is the last one I have to try, provided I can find it, since apparently the contest is done!

Anyway, it's funny, because on the bags are pictures of the originator of the flavor with a painted representation on their cheek. But it's weird...because all of them are pale-skinned. Jarrod and I were discussing this. Are the people on the chip bags actually the originators, or just models? Or did Lays choose several flavors, and then chose the final four based on the paleness of the originators' skin? Or maybe they're just photoshopped to look pale.

There's something I'm not mentioning here if you're confused--India loves pale skin. Women walk around with umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. All the actors and actresses here have pale skin. There are advertisements everywhere for "Vivel Fair Cream", a cream that turns the glum-looking dark-skinned model very happy and fair-skinned. Jarrod even got asked to be an extra in a film yesterday...because they were looking for foreigners.

So I don't know. It's interesting. Anyway, here's the commercial for the chips. It's pretty silly. There's also a website with interviews of the flavor creators and tons of other stuff. I've got to go now, because Jarrod needs to conduct business on our one functioning-internet computer. But I'll be back Tuesday with more awesomeness.



--Emily

Reflections on Learning How to Read

Whoo, it's late, so sorry if this isn't as long a post as you would like (mom). I promise I'll write more on Thursday, and maybe even put up some pictures of actual Inida! Right now I'm still kind of babying our new camera, meaning that I haven't taken it out at all, since I'm scared that it will get stolen. I'll have to take it on a trip to the market tomorrow ro something. Anyway.

This is funny. Jarrod is on the phone with Dr. Ahmed, our Indian friend, saying "I study and study, and sometimes I feel like I'm not making as much progress as what I'd hoped I'd be making..." Which just so happens to be what I wanted to write about today!

Last Monday we went to meet our language instructor, Madame Protima Dutt, at her office. She then walked us to her house, sat us down, and gave us our first lesson in Bangla. Since then, we've had three other lessons with her, and one drilling lesson just today with one of the junior teachers.

It's been hard work, and as Jarrod says, it feels like we are getting nowhere, but we have to remember that we've been studying seriously for only a week. We already know a lot, really: the days of the week, the numbers 1-20, along with every tenth number up to 100 after that, how to tell a cab driver "left, right, straight, stop here", a few colors, the major body parts, some words from nature and around the house...

I think the trouble is that we don't know how to use the language yet. Just this evening we began to learn the personal pronouns for the objective, possesive, and subjective case (meaning: I, my, to me, etc). I believe we're going to begin learning verbs soon, which should add a whole new dimension to our skillz.

But here's the thing: It's not like learning German or Spanish. To make things even more difficult than learning a new language already is, we're having to learn to read again. I touched on this a few posts ago, when I was still in America learning the letters, but it really hit me when Madame Dutt was grading our exercises where we had written Bangla words written in Roman script, in Bengali script. So for example, the word for "ear" is "kan", which we would have to change to কান. Fun, huh?

I noticed that Madame Dutt was just flying through the grading, making checks and corrections like nobody's business, which was really impressive, but then I thought about it. If I was teaching an Indian how to write Roman script, and the exercise were backwards, I could just as easily fly through correcting misspellings in a list of words like tree, flower, nest, fruit, soil, etc.

What I'm trying to say is, you don't remember how difficult learning to read and write was back in elementary school, perhaps because it was so long ago and now it comes so easily. But try learning a new script when you're 23 years old, and the difficulty of it all sort of comes back to you. Well, it doesn't exactly come back, but at least you can take pity on the little kids going to school every day and tediously copying letters in their wide-ruled exercise books.

I remember when I was in fifth grade, we had reading buddies in first grade. I always thought it was kind of pathetic how all the first-graders would sound out their words like, "Buh...bah...baaat. Bat." And I would be thinking in my head, "Bat, it's bat. Duh..the word is BAT!" But I totally do the same thing here (the first-grader thing, that is). If I'm sitting in an auto rickshaw in traffic, I glance at a sign and try to read it, but it takes time.

Yes...it takes time, there's my lesson for the week. Maybe a year from now I'll be able to look at a page of something written in Bangla and be able to read it as easily as I can read what I'm typing on the screen in front of me, but I just need to be patient and keep working on it. Too bad there's not a Treasure Mountain Bangla version*.

--Emily

*Apparently I learned to read from a really awesome computer game called Treasure Mountain. I was too young to read what the dwarves were saying, so I guess I just sort of taught myself? This is what my parents tell me.