BrittaAbroad: 36 Hours in Kolkata

Last weekend we took a group trip to Kolkata - the “city of joy,” the headquarters of Mother Theresa’s ministries and former British capital of India.

The best train in India (so we’d been told) whizzed us overnight to Kolkata and we arrived around noon on Saturday, a bit wrinkled and smelly, but excited to be in a new place. After a long and hot battle through the horrendous traffic, we arrived at our swanky hotel (gotta love school-sponsored trips) and made a beeline for the delicious lunch buffet.

We’d met our program director’s cousin, Rahul, on a previous trip to Lucknow. He lives in Kolkata, so he had promised to show us around when we came. His secretary picked us up at the hotel after our lunch, and took us to one of the Mother Theresa centers - an orphanage and home for disabled children. Seeing the sick kids was really intense and sad, but I was thoroughly impressed by the Mother Theresa center - it was colorful and filled with light, obviously a place with a lot of love.

We next went to what we had been told was afternoon tea with Rahul’s boss. It turned out to be some sort of planned cross-cultural discussion. We found ourselves in a small room at a posh restaurant with about eight older Indian men and a few women, being grilled about philosophy and economics and religion and differences between the United States and India. We were all quite bewildered. I still don’t know exactly what the premise of this meeting was or who we met, but it was definitely makes my “top ten most awkward experience of India” list.

Then, to New Market, an area of outdoor and indoor shops. We bartered for earrings and clothing, ate thoroughly unsatisfactory soft-serve ice cream and enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the open-air market. That night, we went with Rahul and his family to his private club. We danced to Bollywood music, enjoyed free refreshments and rubbed elbows with Kolkata’s elite.

The next morning we went to Victoria Memorial, an impressive monument to the British domination of India. A plaque inside, bearing a message from Queen Victoria promising Indian citizens freedom and equality as citizens of the British Empire, was especially ironic. We then went to the planetarium, which just wasn’t quite as cool as I was hoping. Alas.

After a delicious Bengali lunch - giant prawns were a highlight - we freshened up at the hotel and then went to Park Street, a shopping area of Kolkata. The best part was definitely Flury’s - a confectionary and pastry shop. I hadn’t tasted anything quite like that croissant in a while! Of course, we ran a bit late and were a bit frazzled as we rushed back to the hotel and on to the train station - only to find, of course, that our train was two hours late. After a few rounds of euchre and III, we boarded a train and awoke the next morning in Varanasi.