Part 3 - B, Calcutta: settling in and finding lunch

We found the Baptist Mission house after walking down the street for about 5 minutes. It really was quite close. We were greeted at the gates by an older Indian man. As we explained we were looking for a room and the sisters had recommended this place, he gave us directions to the office. The grounds were considerably large, and seemed spacious and clean in comparison to the crowded filth on the streets. I didn't count how many buildings there were. Near the gate was a small gatehouse, like a tiny office. The driveway split off in two directions on either side of a very large, somewhat old, house. To the left of the house seemed to be a parking area and grounds-keeping buildings, but I don't remember it distinctly. The house itself didn't face the street, but faced off to the right, so that the right side of the building was parallel to the street. It was two stories tall, but seemed larger. Immediately in front of the house was the driveway, continuing on towards two other, much taller buildings, each maybe four stories tall. On the other side of the driveway straight out from the entrance was an expansive lawn, with hedges and trees, and a wooden/iron bench on one side. Some of the bushes were flowering, I think, but I can't even remember what color they were. In the back corner towards the street was another small grounds-keeping building. The hedges and shrubs around the lawn were arranged in a large oval/circular shape, and beyond the hedges toward the corners and edges were several trees of various ages, that gave shade to the perimeter of the lawn but left the middle part sunny.

Outside the front of the house there were two signs on either side of the door. The one on the left said in big, block letters: A SPECIAL WELCOME TO B.M.S. GUEST HOUSE THE PEACE AND THE JOY OF THE LORD BE WITH YOU. The sign on the right side said: EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR GOD (DR. WILLIAM CAREY). The only reason I remember exactly what it said is because I have a photo that comes in at a later part of the story. I'm including it here because it made a great impression on me; I felt very welcome and glad to be there. The quote from Dr. Carey impressed me, but it didn't click right away that I had read a manga biography about him in Japanese not long before going to India. I now recall learning from that book that he had gone to the Bengali region of East India, even entering India through Calcutta, and he was one of the founders of the Baptist Mission Society, B.M.S., where we were going to stay.


We entered through the screen door and wiped our feet. I think there were small signs directing us to the office, which was through a simple dining room and to the right. The ceilings were very high, which explains why the building looked so large. The office was the only room in the building that was air-conditioned. I almost felt cold in comparison to the heat we had gotten accustomed to. We spoke to the lady in charge, a very pleasant Indian lady. She showed us the dormitory room, and as we were satisfied with it, we went back downstairs to take care of business. The whole process somehow took quite a bit of time. Before leaving the office, I asked her where she usually bought her clothes -- Indian women were so nicely dressed. She gave me the names of two shops and the area where I would find them, Camac Street. Then, May and I went upstairs to settle in.

The room was large, with high ceilings and ceiling fans on long stems. There were three ceiling fans in the room. The windows were taller than they were wide, with long curtains. There were six beds in the room. Two of them obviously already belonged to two other women, who weren't there when we arrived. May and I each chose a bed for ourselves and began to settle in. My bed was next to a large chest of drawers, and I put some of my things in there. To the other side was another bed parallel, and after that the window. There were two bathrooms adjacent to the room and accessible only from our room. One was on the other side of my dresser, the other was on the other side of the room nearer to May's bed. The one near my bed had a sink at the end of a narrow corridor, another room for the toilet, and a third area for the shower, which had a very ancient-looking water heater attached to it. These three rooms shared a ceiling with our room, and above the height of the door frames there were no walls. Although the room was hot, the ceiling fans made it feel quite comfortable. The other bathroom was smaller and more crude, only two rooms, one completely open to our room and obviously used for hanging laundry. The other room had a toilet and something that looked like it could be a shower. But generally, everyone in the room used the bathroom and shower that was near my bed.

After settling in and resting awhile, May and I decided we had better find something to eat for lunch. It was already well after 1pm. So we locked things up (the room locked with a padlock and key, which we brought into the room at night and then dead-bolted from the inside once everyone was in for the night), gave the key to the man at the gate as we had been instructed, and set out.

It was a bit hard to find anything good. We were still a bit wary of trying to cross the big main road, so we just stayed on the same side of that road as our guest house and Mother house. There really wasn't anything. We saw one small hole-in-the-wall shop -- literally, it had no doors or front wall -- but thought we'd keep looking a little while longer. We could always come back to it on our way back if we found nothing better.

It's hard to describe what was there, but that's only due to the fact that there were so many things, people, sights, sounds, smells, that my brain was on sensory overload and I ended up tuning a lot of it out. Plus, at any given point on the street, it was totally different than any other place on the street. In some places there were street vendors selling things I couldn't recognize. In some places there were people sleeping on the sidewalk. At some points children tried to beg from us. At one place a building was under construction and had made such a mess of the sidewalk that everyone going past had to walk far out into the street. Although we tried to stay on the sidewalk, at many places it was impossible to do so because of people sleeping, or standing talking, or bathing in the fire hydrant. At first I was rather wary of walking in the street, but I soon realized that if you're trying to get any distance down the street, you have to walk in the street sooner or later, and you can actually cover ground more quickly if you go in the street the whole time. This was a main drag in the city, AJC Bose road, and it was very wide. I noticed that there were no lanes for traffic, but if I had to estimate, there should have been room for three cars on either side. Yet because of all the pedestrians and rickshaws moving along the edge of the street, the cars generally kept to two lanes of traffic per side. I had long since tuned out the constant honking and bell ringing of the traffic.

We walked along the street for another ten minutes but found nothing. We tried going down a side street a little ways, and although it was less crowded, it was obvious we weren't going to find anything. So we eventually decided to go to the hole-in-the-wall we had seen. We went in and sat down at a counter along the wall. I don't really remember if there was a menu. We noticed that some men who came in after us were able to put their orders in before us, or maybe it was that we managed to order, and they they ordered, and then they got their food, and finally we got our food. But we didn't really know what we were supposed to do. Both of us were more used to the Japanese style of prompt service. But we were also on an adventure. I later learned that May had done a considerable amount of traveling, the most unusual country she had been to that I remember best is Mongolia.

Eventually we managed to place an order, and then eventually got our food. We ate with our hands; May offered me a wet tissue she had with her for the occasion. We got a thin curry soup with meat and a thin, flat bread with a salad. It was delicious, but spicy, we could eat the meat out of the soup using the bread, and I think we both ended up ordering more bread. The salad was cabbage with julienned cucumbers and onions. I ate some of it, but then noticed that May wasn't eating hers and only then remembered that it's not safe to eat raw vegetables in India, if you're not native!

After lunch, we headed back to Mother house to go to volunteer orientation at 3pm. On the way, May suggested we stop at one of the sidewalk carts and buy a cup of chai. It was an excellent idea, fascinating to watch how they make it, and very delicious. While we were drinking our chai, we started chatting with two Korean men who were also on their way to orientation, but they weren't sure where it was. We thought we knew, but in reality, we only knew where Mother house was. Orientation was at Shishu Bhavan, a children's home, down the street from Mother house, and actually quite close to where we had our chai, so we ended up walking to mother house and back again.

Finding Motherhouse -- (Summer 2009) Calcutta part 3A

August 12 2009
(This is the continuation of my journey through Thailand and India from last August. My apologies for posting it so very long after the event. To start at the beginning, go to http://betsyfrick.blogspot.com/2009/08/adventure-2009-part-1-niigata-farewells.html .)

My Japanese friend and I spent a very pleasant, comfortable night in the boutique hotel. We each had a twin bed to sleep on, and took turns using the shower. She used it before going to sleep, as Japanese people often do, and I used it in the morning. Breakfast was provided for us in a little courtyard through the hallway outside our room: toast with jam, fruit, and coffee. After breakfast we prepared to leave to go find motherhouse. Although my friend was interested in exploring a little, I convinced her that we should find motherhouse first and get a recommendation for where to stay while we are volunteering. We signed the guestbook of the hotel because they brought it to us in our room and asked us to sign it. As I read some of the comments from other guests, I couldn't help but notice that the staff had made notes as to how much of a tip that guest had left. So, since my new friend had only asked for 1/4 of the room cost, I offered to leave the tip. After writing some comments and signing their guestbook, I put the tip in the book and returned it to the responsible staff person.

We set out to find Motherhouse, not really sure even which direction to start going. I had several printed out maps of the city and of the crucial places, but it was still difficult. We got directions to a subway station, and took the subway a few stops closer to where we were needing to go. Unlike Tokyo, there weren't any helpful tourist maps in the subway stations. I can't even remember how we figured out which station to go to, but by asking people and making educated guesses from my maps. Once we got out of the subway, we continued trying to ask people where to find Motherhouse, trying to figure out where we were on the maps. In the end, my friend, I'll call her May, managed to hire a cab for us and the driver took us the rest of the way. It was quite a distance yet to go, and although I felt a little embarrassed at the thought of arriving at Motherhouse in a taxi-cab like some rich tourist, in the end it was the best thing to do. Not only did it get us there faster, but it assured us that we got to the right place. All the streets were so busy, filled with cars and buses and rickshaws and bicycles and pedestrians. It was also starting to get hot.

We arrived at Motherhouse just after 10am. Upon arriving at the entryway we were greeted by two of the sisters, who welcomed us and showed us in. A little ways in we were showed where we should remove and store our shoes before entering, and then were told where to find Mother Teresa's tomb, and a museum about her life. We spent a few quiet moments in the room where her tomb is located. Then we went to look through the little museum. Although it was hot, and I was still carrying all my luggage, which, although small, was starting to feel heavy, I felt compelled to read everything I could. The space wasn't very big, and yet it was filled with rows and rows of tall, movable signboards that went in order, telling the story of her life, sometimes with pictures. They had some of her belongings in a case. After I had read all I could, I went out to the courtyard to sit down. May found me and sat with me. Although I knew we were asked to keep complete silence, we whispered briefly about what to do next. One of the sisters asked us where we were staying, and I said I didn't know but asked for a recommendation. She asked us to wait while she found one of the two sisters who are responsible for helping volunteers. We waited perhaps 10 or 15 minutes before someone came with a book listing places to stay, and that sister recommended the Baptist mission house, and gave us directions to find it just down the street. We thanked her and set out.