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