Views from Home

It has been a month since our arrival in Kolkata and we have now transitioned to our apartment that will be our home for the next 22 months. To introduce you all to our new home we first have to create some perspective. Take a tour of the views from our front ‘porch’ as we moved from Duluth to the Oberoi Grand Hotel in the heart of Kolkata to our view from our new apartment.

Although you can see the ‘sights’ from the pictures in the post you can’t experience the sounds and the contrasts. While only being here can provide that contrast I will try in words.

The Oberoi Grand Hotel

Imagine sidewalks crowded with street vendors, heavy crowds of people sauntering by, each vendor hawking their wares, street boys tapping your arm with their insistent ‘auntie come look’ as you walk by, stray dogs sleeping in the shade, heat, humidity, taped Hindi music playing from the small shops in the arcade, rows of yellow taxis waiting for a fair, cars moving by all beeping their horns. Then you take a turn into a cobblestone driveway. You see palm trees, uniformed doormen who greet you with ‘namaste’ (which is ‘Hello’ in Hindi) who open the large mahogany, leaded glass paned, brass handled door way to usher you into the air conditioned lobby tiled with polished marble tile in colors of deep green, black and white. The air smells of rose petals because of course everything is scented with rose water. The front office greets you by name and wishes you a good afternoon. You walk past the pool. May be you stop for a cold Coca Cola and chat with the waiter about his home town in Karnataka or Goa or Kerala or Shimla. He tells you of his favorite place of his home area and of his family and you realize everyone is very much the same around the world, proud of where they came from and they miss family and home when away. From the pool you wander to your room passing 100 year old antiques left over from the British Raj, leaded ornamental mirrors, marble topped tables, pictures in elaborate frames….. This was our first home in India. How can I describe what it was like living in the Oberoi? Well, if you have ever seen the Celebrity Cruise ad where the man and the woman state, ‘I once was royalty….fresh flowers in my room every day. The waiter knew how I wanted my tea……’ that was what it was like to live at the Oberoi. Truly the staff became like family as they greeted us every morning for breakfast or as we saw them in the hallways. While we were quite ready to move to our apartment, it was hard to say good bye.

We ‘shifted’ to our apartment on Friday morning. It really didn’t take much work since all we had to move were our suitcases and clothes. We have a small two bedroom apartment in a ‘suburb’ of Kolkata named Salt Lake. While initially we wanted to live in Kolkata to be in the heart of things but we quickly learned that commuting in a city of 17 million people is something that you may want to avoid. Even though my office is only 10 miles from the center of the city it takes 45 minutes to an hour to drive there. So we opted for living in the same area as my office. We are in a complex that is part of a shopping mall area. We are on the seventh floor and our front view over looks the core part of Kolkata. On a clear day we can see both bridges that cross the Howrah bridge. As you can see in the picture there is a part just below our window and if you look carefully you can see the cows that graze there in the morning. Our sliding glass door faces west and we get so see some awesome sunsets.

We have shopping literally just outside our doorstep which does make life much easier. One thing about Kolkata, you can find almost anything you need if you know where to go. Unfortunately we know where some things are but others……well, we need some local assistance to find them. Yesterday Cole needed an extension hose for our washer so we could drain it where we wanted it to drain. He found the ‘hardware’ market but Cole needed the driver to help him find the ‘hose’ stall. Of course the hose stall didn’t have clamps to hold the pieces of hose together. Cole never found the clamp stall and we’re still looking for the duct tape stall. That’s life in India! No Home Depot here!

On our first grocery run at our local grocery C3, we could not find yoghurt in the store. For a frame of reference, yoghurt is a staple of cooking here in India. Many of the gravy type dishes are made with yoghurt so it was surprising to me that the grocery didn’t have yoghurt. As we were checking out I asked the clerk if he knew where we could get some curd, which is the local word for yoghurt. He then instructed the bag boy to escort us to get some ‘curd’. As we left the store the bag boy, with our groceries in a cart, headed off down the street the exact opposite direction of our apartment. A block later I was standing outside as our bag boy was negotiating with a sweets vendor for 500 grams of ‘curd’. After we gave 25 rupees (50 cents) to the vendor we were handed a home made clay pot filled with freshly made curd. Now that’s service. You can see Cole enjoying the curd in the pictures posted. After we purchased our curd the bag boy then carted our groceries back to our apartment. Now that’s carry out!
Tonight Cole and I had our first meal in our new home. We tried out our new rice cooker and our new blender/mixer. For those of you who know Cole well you know he is Mr. Gadget. Well, now he has a whole new world of gadgets to buy. I have to say the rice cooker was wonderful. Expertly cooked rice in 10 minutes! After dinner we made Mango smoothies with the blender and they were excellent too. Sometimes gadgets do make life nice.