This is where I have landed. A little house in South Calcutta - off a major road, but removed by an alley and a dirt path, and somehow strangely isolated from the greater bustlings of the city. It’s been rather fortuitous actually, as my NGO, who was supposed to facilitate my housing, had misunderstood the date of my arrival. i.e., They weren’t expecting me when I showed up one afternoon. i.e., There was no housing, nor any real plan for procuring it.
Enter my charming fellow intern, and now roommate, Jenna, who offered up the sharing of her homestay. I thought this was rather beyond the normal bounds of generosity as she’d be not only be sharing her family experience and her room, but, the facilities being what they were, the very bed itself. Upon knowing her a little better, she really is that generous. But, then again, she probably appreciates the diluting effect of having another foreigner in the house. I divert some of the anxious smothering that seems to get generated upon viewing young, [read: helpless, hopeless] foreign girls.
Our hosts, Auntie and Uncle (introduced to me as such – I have no idea what their real names are) are a hospitable, retired couple. Their adult son is a theology professor at a local college. And together, we make a somewhat odd, little globalized family. With three rooms, we’ve got Auntie and Uncle sleeping in one, Jenna and I in the other, and the son on the divan in the family cum dining room. It’s a tight fit - all in coughing distance of each other. The TV and telephone are in “our room” (so many interpretations of “our room”), so boundaries of private space are non-existent. In my various experiences abroad I thought I had covered all challenges of cultural adaptation. But really, the final frontier of personal space has never been truly breached; trod upon, but not breached. Americans need an awful lot of it, other people…not so much. …Or any really. Despite my unanticipated, full initiation into a world of 1 billion people “in an itty bitty living space,” it seems to be working out.
So I find myself culturally immersed in ways I hadn’t planned on.
- Having Auntie wait on us at dinner as we shovel rice and curry in with our hands (right only; left is reserved for bathroom duties). I had never really paid attention to the art of using your hand as a fork before – it involves neat little movements using the thumb as a shovel/level.
- No air conditioning. The high speed, ceiling fan unsettles me at night. I envision it spinning off its mount to land with a pajama muffled thud, mincing us helplessly in our sleep.
- A massi to collect our dirty clothes every morning and pound them on the pavement outside until they’re stretched out, wet and flapping on the lines.
- Sweet, dark Chai every morning with breakfast. Glorious!
- Bucket baths. Now here I am impressed. I bucket bathed for two years straight in Mongolia (granted, only when I actually had the courage to peel off my clothes and bathe), I thought I was versed in all the intimates of the act. But the difference being, there I had to bathe inside a bucket and here, I just bathe from a bucket. Huge difference. I feel just as clean and refreshed as a shower (since I can splash the dipper over my head without reserve) and I seriously use only the equivalent of maybe a large soup tureen of water. Such good conservation!
Happily my new assimilation does not include the asian toilet. We have a western one with accompanying toilet paper. Not that I have anything against asian toilets. In fact, I rather prefer the squat style. I, however, cannot due without toilet paper.
Perhaps this is inflexible of me.
But it’s a habit I continue to hold tenaciously to.
The ubiquitous bucket of water and dipper are in the bathroom as well (separate from the shower bucket and dipper). I ponder it occasionally with a certain degree of respect and awe. And fear, definitely fear. I’m just waiting the day when I’m confronted with a pressing situation and no toilet paper.
I understand the basics: you take the dipper of water and you clean yourself off.
Left hand only.
But really, I think there is a wealth of detail in technique there that escapes me completely. Utterly.
That battle…well…we’ll leave that one for a while, I think.
1 comment:
i think going to the bathroom in another country is a really significant part of understanding the culture and really immersing yourseslf. i still remember your discription of the poop stalagmytes in mongolia. and i remember the night i decided to shine my flashlight into the bottom of the pit one night in the outhouse in costa rica, just to see what was there. in fact, i will never forget that night, and the sight of so many maggots. in fact, that was all i could see. glad that you are doing well :)
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