India: Day 1 – Arrival in Kolkata

I departed for India on the very morning after my graduation. As though it meant to taunt me, the weather in Oxford was cool but sunny – a far cry from the torrential rains yesterday.

My flight was to leave from Gatwick Airport, and it was there that my travel troubles began. For one, it was too early to check in for my second flight. This did not seem to me a problem at the time, but I forgot that my layover in Dubai was only an hour and a half (including, of course, the time that it takes to exit the plane and go through a second round of security). The second problem, which then seemed more important to me, was that upon reading the print-out confirmation of my E-Visa, the flight attendant asked me whether I planned to renew it on the eighth, since that was the day it was set to expire.

Now, I was quite sure that this was not what the document said, but I nodded along and told the attendant that I would go to a government office the next day. Sure enough, when she returned the document to me, I confirmed what I thought it said all along: that I must not arrive later than the eighth, but that the duration of the visa would be a month from that date. In retrospect, it surprises me that a flight attendant charged with something so important could be so poorly informed.

My flight left with a slight delay, but we arrived in Dubai more or less on time. As soon as we left the plane, those continuing to Dhaka and Kolkata were collected by an airport member of staff, who assured me that my lack of a boarding pass would not be a problem. Unsurprisingly, it was. We arrived at the check-in counter at last call, where I was told I was not checked in for the flight. When I blamed the wrong information I had gotten, I was referred to the attendant’s superior. Nervously, I stood behind her counter as she looked through my documents and compared them to what stood on her own screen; in the end, my luggage and I both made it.

Running on about an hour of sleep, I picked up my luggage and started to worry about how I would fulfil my next task: getting from the airport to the house of my friend Sparsh. We had agreed I would order an Uber to his place but much to my annoyance, neither the airport WiFi nor my international data were working. Falling back on plan B, I decided I would exchange some money and take a taxi from the airport to the address I was given.

This was easier said than done. There did not seem to be any currency exchange outside the departures area, where I found nothing but a tourist information desk. Upon hearing my inquiry, the man behind it stood up and led me outside the building; I did not have much reason not to follow him, but soon found myself handed over to another man holding a thick wad of oily banknotes. Declining his help, I walked along the platform for a few minutes looking for the entrance to the airport. I was turned away everywhere.

Once I made my way upstairs to departures, I found that one can only enter the airport with a boarding pass for an upcoming flight. Explaining my plight to several airport officials, I gradually fought my way to the director’s office, who very helpfully suggested that I should have exchanged money in the departures hall. I told him what I had told everyone before, which was that employees at the help desk were sending people to unlicensed currency exchanges (clearly with the administration turning a blind eye to this problem). It seems that my persistence eventually wore the staff down, as they scribbled something on my boarding pass to show the airport control and sent me – in the company of an official – to the licensed currency exchange inside.

While all this was happening, I noticed that although I could not connect to the internet, I was starting to receive text messages from hours before. This meant that I could call my dad to ask him why our family’s international phone plan was not working and – more importantly – to call Sparsh and explain the situation to him. Not long after, I was finally on my way to Sparsh’s place in an Uber he had booked.

After dropping my things off at Sparsh’s house and washing myself, we continued to Sparsh’s office in the centre of the city. Over lunch, I met his father and grandfather, who both work in the family’s tea business, and I witnessed many playful little disputes. Sparsh offered to get me a cab home so that I could sleep, but I thought it better to hold out until the evening to help combat my jet lag. Instead of going to sleep, therefore, I made a trip to the Birla mandir and the Kalighat mandir.

The walk to the Birla temple was eye-opening: the chaos of the city assaulted all the senses, including the sense of self-preservation, which was heavily tried amidst the rabid traffic. For a while, I enjoyed skipping on and off the pavement, unexpectedly coming across small temples, roadside eateries, and walls overtaken by the roots of banyan trees. Quite soon, however, I felt tired of the never-ending stares and of sweating through my shirt.

To my dismay, the Birla Temple was not due to re-open until 16:30, and I did not intend to wait around until then. I caught a cab to the Kali Temple instead, but I found that temple closed too. As I would find out throughout my stay in Kolkata, life in the city is rather relaxed. Many people only show up to work at eleven, and a lot of activity stops after lunch for several hours. On my very first day, however, I felt unsettled by the stagnant atmosphere, in which the stares of the people on the street became much more noticeable.

I returned to Sparsh’s late enough to feel very tired but not early enough to go to sleep. For dinner, the family prepared a Burmese curry. Many Indian merchants returned to Kolkata from Burma during the Second World War, bringing this dish with them. It was considerably different from our lunch dishes, which included white bread dipped in tomato sauce and a kind of bowl made of crunchy thin bread with rich filling on the inside.