Kolkatta Weekend

Sam, Amy, Hilary, and I decided to go to Kolkatta (Calcutta) for about 4 days this last weekend- February 3 to February 7. It was insane! Now, I would never dream of taking back a trip to the former capital of India and seeing Mother Teresa's Tomb or Victoria's Palace, but the whole feel of being a tourist is so foreign to the life I've grown accustomed to here in Vizag. In many ways it all felt a little unnatural.

Kolkatta= pollution at a new extreme + 16 million people + American Food + dirty street children/ beggars + 17 hour train rides there and back

This is the definition of comfort food :)

This is my "I freakin' hate trains" face.

Note the brown skin... yeah, that's not a tan: it's Kolkatta pollution. GROSS!

That basically sums up the ironic and/or low points of Kolkatta. Now let's consider all the amazing and life changing points, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Number 1: Kolkatta International Bookfair (the main reason for our adventure)

This book fair was huge! I'm from a place called Indio, CA (go figure) and it is called the City of Festivals - naturally I consider myself conusierr of fine festivals. Needless to say, I was really excited to see how the Indians would do an international fair of this size. For those of you from the Dirty D the fair was like the International Date Festival except take away the rides and carnies, replace them with more shops and stands (like the ones in the Taj Mahal -old fart- section of the fair) and fill them all with really cheap classic books!
This is a definite shout out to my sister Jesi - I felt like such an addict! You would have died! Amazing books for less than 500 rupees ($10). I got "100 Years of Solitude" Marquez, "My Experiments With Truth" Ghandi, "The Ramayana" Indian Epic, "The Bhagavad Gita" Hindu scripture,  "The Man in the Iron Mask" Dumas, "A Romance With Chaos" some obscure Indian wanna be novelist (it was one of those crappy literature reads for long and boring trips), "Speeches that Changed the World" legit folk. It was glorious!!! I've already finished "Romance with Chaos" and I'm currently on "Man in the Iron Mask". I love DUMAS!

Number 2: The remnants of Colonial England at its height (Victoria's Palace)

Victoria's Palace is the gem of Kolkata! It  is breath taking and I wish I could have stayed there forever! I felt like I was in a Jane Austen novel while I was sitting on the grounds. The inside has been turned into a museum of the progression of Kolkatta with the influence of the British. It was very interesting to see the progression and the different artifacts that have been saved from so many years ago. The art and artifacts however were second rate to the amazing architecture and statues inside the palace. The statues were phenomenal! When you first walk into the palace you enter the entry atrium which then leads to a large circular rooms with high vaulted ceilings and exquisite frescoes on the walls and ceilings. The cherry on top of the ice cream for this room is the huge marble statue of Queen Victoria located at the very center to the room. The combination of all of these factors creates such an elegant and refined ambiance that I almost felt a little unqualified to be allowed in the room. Victoria's Palace was by far my favorite stop of the trip.

Across the street from Victoria's Palace is a large field where may people play soccer and horse roam freely. There's a bunch of street peddlers that have a colony of under fed and poorly trained horses to attract tourists. I was able to ride a horse while I was there and I was so frustrated! The trainers try to vocally train the horses as well as bridle train them. While I was riding the owner of my horse kind of freaked out when he realized I knew how to ride and then started yelling commands. The poor horse (probably poorly trained in the first place) had no idea what commands to listen to - mine or the master. It was fun regardless and the video is way funny of the peddler chasing me down as I trotted away. So funny!

Number 3: The remnants of Colonial England at its height  (colonial buildings/churches)

The old buildings and churches of Kolkatta still exist and are in use today. Churches like St. James Church on MV Bose Road. We took a little diversion there and actually received a private tour from the caretaker. It was rad. The church itself is under extensive renovations and is one of the oldest buildings in Kolkatta. The whole place looked like it might collapse at any moment, but, of course, we didn't care and we explored the buildings with excitement. We went up spiral staircases and stood on the roof right outside the main rose window. Way cool! We ended the tour sitting in the front pews. I began to think how cool it would be to sing with these type of acoustics and then I realized... duh! I can sing right now. So I sang "Nearer My God To Thee" and I've never heard my voice make that type of full and resonant sound (obviously, completely due to the building and vaulted ceilings). We ended up donating a little bit of money to help rebuilding the dilapidated church.

 

Number 4: The remnants of Colonial England at its height (Park street cemetery)

All over Kolkatta you see the ruins of the British occupancy of the area. Kolkatta was the original capitol of India, before being replaced by New Delhi, so there are many official government buildings and the like. It was definitely a little history lesson to experience the city. While we were walking from Mother Teresa's Tomb to Victoria's Palace we found the Park Street Colonial cemetery. Oh my fantastic! I felt like I was in a jungle discovering the ruins of history. The oldest grave we were able to read was 1836(a large number of the tombstones had fallen apart and were crumbled preventing us from reading them). Everything just made history more real to me and I even wished that we would have had more of an emphasis in the curriculum on British Colonized India.

Number 5: Mother Teresa's tomb and life story

Being able to learn more about Mother Teresa, her life and story was inspiring and a very spiritual experience for me. She was such a self-less and Christ-like person. We could all learn more by studied what exactly she did in her life. “God speaks in silence” is written in flowers on her tomb and she said the Christ “thirsts” after us and when we understand that we can come to understand his life and ministry. I cried a couple of times reading the stories of her service. I still can’t believe that this little woman from Albania came to India and changed the world through love. I was able to see her Nobel peace prize up close and in person and many other artifacts. Outside the mission it has her placard that was used to indicate whether or not Mother Teresa was at the mission or not:  it is now always switched to in.

The Catholic doctrine may, in my opinion, be incorrect in some points, but I would be flabbergasted if Mother Teresa doesn’t receive exaltation. This idea sparked a conversation amongst our group about whether or not Heavenly Father intends for everyone to be LDS while they are here on this Earth. We came to the conclusion that He doesn’t intend for that to happen. If Mother Teresa hadn’t been a Catholic nun she wouldn’t have changed the world in the way she did. I believe the Lord uses many good people as instruments in his hands even if they are not members of the LDS church.

The whole experience was one I would never take away, but also one I would never repeat again. I’ve come to learn that I do not like big cities and lots of people. Being in those places, however, does open my eyes to the way that so many people do live and the awareness I believe will allow me to empathize and be more understanding to others who do and their plights.

With love from India,

Jaci