What's in a name? What's in the water?

Apologies for a brief history lesson, before I get to the good stuff:

I mentioned before that there are several different names for Calcutta. The reason for the confusion is the ongoing effort to establish a non-British Indian identity. Some might say it's an attempt to erase British history here, but it's a little more complicated. In this case, one of the 3 villages the East India Company rented from the local ruler back in the 1600s was called Kolikata, and it seems pretty likely that's where the British got the name Calcutta. So, like most other Indian cities, they recently changed the name to more closely match the original (but at least dropping the "i").

It didn't end there. The family that originally leased the land to the British successfully sued to have John Charnock, the British founder of Calcutta, deleted from the history books. It's certainly true that he did start Calcutta down the road towards being a city, but it's very important for Indian pride that something existed before then.

Another common example is renaming all the streets, which is ongoing. The main street in almost all Indian cities is, of course Mahatma Gandhi Rd (always abbreviated as MG Rd). Everyone seems to like that name (his face is on every currency denomination), but most of the others have been less popular.

Kolkata is also somewhat unusual in having been governed by the Communist Party pretty much continuously since independence (yes, real, proper communists - their hammer and sickle campaign posters promise free water and power for everyone, and outages of both are common as a result). They've taken pleasure in renaming certain streets after communist heroes. For instance, the short street in front of the British High Commission (sort of like their consulate, but sounds more patronizing) was renamed to Ho Chi Minh St., probably just to annoy the Brits (who were in on the war at the time). Some others have had at least 3 names since independence, and you never really know which one is in common use (likely not the one on the street sign).

That's not to say they're trying to erase all traces of centuries of British rule. They're actually trying to preserve as many of the massive colonial buildings as possible, as they realize that's what defines Kolkata.

Yesterday I finally felt like I was mostly over jet lag, and set about doing some exploring. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and almost everything was closed (the subway, oddly enough, opens at 3pm on Sundays, and most sites close shortly after). As the city's pretty spread out (with over 13 million people, no surprise), that limited what I could get to without haggling with another crazy cabbie. On the map at left, I'm located a few blocks to the right of the big park in the middle.

So I set out for the Victoria Memorial, probably the most famous site here (sorry, haven't uploaded pics yet, and like most websites here, they use all possible features). It's a massive memorial to Queen Victoria, built in honor of her death. She was the first royal given the title of Empress of India, and seemed to have an almost godlike following here. They've kept it in very good shape, helped by two layers of barbed wire fences and lots of security. That, and the 10 rupee admission for locals (foreigners pay 15x that, as is typical) keeps the lower castes out.

For dinner, I decided to splurge a bit. The area I'm staying is called Sudder St, and although decent enough, it's definitely the cheapest area that foreigners typically stay. About a mile south is Park St, where many of the trendy restaurants and hotels are located (all things being relative - they're still pretty cheap, with meals being well under $10, but that's several times what you'd pay elsewhere). It's also home to many high quality English bookstores, complete with bouncers. I managed to find a compact Hindi/Urdu/Bengali -> English phrasebook at one called Oxford (the smaller one down the street is, of course, Cambridge).

The place I picked for dinner was called Trinca's. They're known for having a live band that plays Bollywood tunes during dinner, followed by Western pop. Both the music and the food were great. I can best describe Indian pop music as sounding a bit like The Girl from Ipanema, with lots of almost Hawaiian-sounding steel guitar, bongo drums, and cheesy synth (as Cary's probably curious, they used a Roland N-35, whatever that is). It really sounds pretty cool, and the audience really got into it, especially the numbers where the singer wore a headscarf.

The only downside of the meal was the insanely attentive staff. They almost never let me move the food from my serving plate to my eating(?) plate. I think this was partly because I clearly couldn't master the no-left-hand-on-the-table rule (which all countries seem to have that avoid the use of paper in the bathroom) when using the two-piece serving utensils (kinda like mastering chopsticks for the first time, only heavier). I feared it was going to get to the "here comes the choo choo!" phase, at which point I would have had to flee.

After that one really good day of exploring the city, I came down with the almost inevitable illness that plagues tourists shortly after they arrive. Besides the usual symptom, I also had a fever of 102.2, but Advil knocked that right down. Of more concern, I'd just handed off nearly all my clothes to be washed, and they weren't due back until the next day. So, I had incentive to stay close to the only Western-style toilet I've found yet (just down the hall from my room). I think I've been pretty careful, but I'll be avoiding the street food (even if it's vegetarian) and juice stands (even if I watch to make sure they don't water it down) for a few days.

I'm feeling a lot better than yesterday, and if it's not gone by tomorrow, I'll visit the Western-style clinic recommended by Mother Theresa's nuns for their insured volunteers (can't go wrong there!). 3 days seems to be the recommended waiting period for getting medical help if it's a minor case, and I've learned my lesson from Syria not to wait too long to get antibiotics if it kinda lingers.

I still want to see more of Kolkata before I head out - I only really got one good day of sightseeing in during my 4 days here (once the jet lag cleared up, I got hit by this thing). I especially want to see Kalighat, the blood-strewn temple of Kali that's this city's namesake ("no human sacrifices in almost 100 years" - just goats now). The botanical gardens are also supposed to be quite impressive - founded by a British soldier back in the 1700s, and where they figured out how to grow tea (before that, everyone had to buy it from China).

Before I forget, I should also mention some of the other guests I've met at my hotel and in the neighborhood restaurants.

Krysta from Salt Lake City (oddly enough, the big, wealthy suburb east of Kolkata is also called Salt Lake City, though I suspect there are fewer Mormons in this one). She's studying in Kerala, which is the opposite corner of India from here (far SW coast). She was a little frustrated by how cheap her fellow Western students were (they won't even go to a museum, because the foreigner prices is always 15x the local price - used to bug me on previous trips, but I've gotten over it, since it's still usually only $3). She'd finally gotten a Czech classmate to join her for a little exploring in northern India. She suggested I contact her if I made it that far south, as she's been itching to explore some of the canals that Kerala is famous for, since everyone else she knows is too cheap to join her on a tour.

There are also lots and lots of young Japanese folks. Unfortunately, I remember very little of the Japanese I learned, so I haven't even gotten a name straight yet. Coming to Kolkata seems to be almost a right of passage for them.

Next door to me are a young Canadian woman from Sudbury, Ontario (way, way north somewhere), and her uncle. He's come here annually for many years, to spend a month working for Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity, at the home for the dying (next to the Kalighat temple, which devout Hindus want to be close to when they die). The previous Hindu hostel there went under, and after much debate, the city let her take it over. Now there seems to be almost universal appreciation here for the work they do. As he's been told many times by people on the street, "We're so glad you're here. Our own people would never do this."

His niece joined him this time and is working at another Missionaries of Charity site, an orphanage for developmentally disabled children, where she tries to teach them rudimentary Bengali, as she learns it herself (the most important phrase being "Sit down!", but I've already forgotten the Bengali for that). At the regular orphanage, they try to teach them English as well, but these kids will be lucky to absorb one language. She described it as feeling like she was getting even more out of it than they were.

She almost had me convinced to at least drop by for the orientation meeting at The Mother House. It's certainly something I'd considered doing here. She said men almost never volunteer, and the boys are almost desperate for some sort of male role model. However, after my one semi-disastrous day as a Headstart volunteer, I doubt I'm up for the challenge!

At breakfast today, at the Blue Sky Cafe (don't let the exterior put you off - it's quite nice, if rather cozy, and the only restaurant in the neighborhood with A/C), I met a Brazilian/Canadian woman from Dawson's Creek (not the TV show, the town at the far northern border of BC that marks the start of the Al-Can highway). She'd spent the last several months enjoying Thailand, but wasn't enjoying India nearly as well (complained that everything was so dirty). Still, she'd seen a fair bit in her month here, and recommended a really nice, reasonable hotel in Varanasi (being lazy with another wikipedia link) that took her much trial and error to settle on. As that's a city I'm planning to visit, I happily took their card.

If I'm feeling a lot better in the next day or so, I'm planning to visit Sunderban Tiger Camp, located deep in the world's largest mangrove swamps, way south of the city. It's beyond what I'm normally budgeting, but I think it'd be really fun to see a Royal Bengal Tiger in the wild (and any of the other critters down there), and this outfit comes very highly recommended.

After that (or instead of that), I'm going to head north to Darjeeling, the former British summer capital in the foothills of the Himalayas. From there, you're supposed to be able to see the sunrise over Mt. Everest (I might even get up for that!).

I'll try to get some real, actual photos uploaded for my next update, not just pics lifted from others. It looks like it should work at this nice, air-conditioned (hence my lengthy updates) place called Netfreaks.