Apologies for this too-long post about nothing really important. As I write this I keep remembering more and more trivial details, so I need to stop now before it gets even worse.
Twenty-four hours in India
I spent 7 weeks in India in the fall of 1990. It was my first time ever overseas. Landed in Madras, spent 3 days there, and then on to Calcutta. I had two Indian friends in the US. One arranged transportation to and from the Madras airport and gave me a crash survival course, basically a laundry list of tips to avoid catastrophes while there. The other arranged for a driver to and from the airport in Calcutta. If it were not for these two good friends, I'd probably still be over there, lost. The 24 hours begins at the Madras airport when I was to leave for Calcutta.
It started out not so good. There was a long delay partly because of an airline refuelers strike. After several hours we became packed in the lobby like sardines as more flights were delayed. An otherwise healthy-looking middle-aged Indian man collapsed and died there while we were waiting. They took his body out on a stretcher. The plane finally boarded around 2 am. It was now scheduled to arrive in Calcutta just before daybreak. I was too nervous and excited to get any sleep on the flight.
The airport in Calcutta was small. We were given our bags outside near the plane. A group of boys followed me to the parking lot, each offering to be my guide. I was swept past them to a car by a man who spoke no English, but who I chose to trust was my driver. The guest house where I was supposed to stay was 6 miles from downtown Calcutta, but still a heavily populated area. The ride from the airport was uneventful. The streets were deserted, except for a few very large cows, because the city was still asleep.
A guest house is like a small hotel, but run more like a bed and breakfast. Mine was a concrete building inside a large compound surrounded by a stone wall with a big front gate, which was never closed. There were 2 floors of rooms for visitors and a 3rd floor completely reserved for one very important gentleman who visited occasionally, or so I was told. They put me on the first floor in the last room at the end of the hall. The door to the room was like those in the saloons you see in old western movies---double swinging doors open top and bottom. The floor was granite. All I cared about at that point was that it had its own bathroom and a window AC unit.
It was early September, but unseasonably hot and humid, and the clothes I brought were too heavy for that day. Shorts or even dresses above the ankle would have been completely unacceptable. Even long pants on women were frowned upon in Calcutta. I was warned by my Indian friends to NEVER drink anything that hadn't been boiled. Not even ice cubes. Not even bottled Indian sodas. Not even at any but the most fancy restaurants. The only thing available was hot black coffee. So I was pretty exhausted, hot, and drinking a lot of hot coffee to boot. But I realized everything had worked out pretty well so far, in spite of the flight delay. Things would be fine because I now had a home base.
But then it started to rain---heavily. It was the tail end of the monsoon season. There was a large pond in the courtyard just outside the guest house. As the rain continued the pond rose out of its banks, eventually reached the front door of the building and began slowly creeping down the hallway toward my room. I asked to change to a room on the second floor. They said not to worry, the rain would stop, the water would recede, and everything would be back to normal by morning. Eventually there was 4 inches of water on the floor in my room. Even a tiny little fish came by to visit. I went down the hall in flip-flops and begged for a room on the second floor and they relented. It wasn't so much the water, but when it receded would there be little fish, dead or flopping around everywhere? Amidst all this the power had gone off but the rain had cooled things down.
While moving to the second floor, I passed by rooms with open doors and young men reading books at desks with their feet up on stools to avoid the water. So this indeed appeared to be normal, and probably why all the electrical outlets were at shoulder height. Apparently I was the only female guest. The rooms had high ceilings, which was good because my new room also included a medium-sized lizard clinging to the wall but way up high. We eventually became friends---I never bothered him, he never bothered me, and I think he ate lots of mosquitoes. This room had an oversized AC window unit with a broken thermostat. It was either freezing cold or you turned it off, or, as I would learn later, there would be both scheduled and unscheduled power outages throughout the city almost every day, and you had no choice. But there was always strong hot black coffee because the stove in the kitchen ran on gas.
It was still a long time until evening, so I decided to roll up my pants legs and go wading out to the front gate to see what was going on outside the compound. This in spite of warnings from a couple of the staff who insisted it was not safe, but nothing bad happened. All I could see was water everywhere up to knee level. Large drainage ditches, and garbage floating in the streets along the main road, convinced me this was a stupid idea. So I headed home.
I missed breakfast and skipped lunch because I didn't know where to go or when, but figured it out by dinner time. Meals were served at a big long table with guests coming and going at random. Most times you were eating by yourself. The food was very good and they even served meat---chicken drumsticks---on request. These were the longest skinniest drumsticks I had ever seen, but they were very spicy and so good. I didn't know it then, but one of the favorite places for mosquitoes to hang out was under the dining room table. I also learned that no matter how cold it got in the room because of the AC, you should always leave the ceiling fan on to disorient them. But I could cope with all that. I finally had a home above flood level, warts, lizard, and all. It would be smooth sailing from now on.
I was to stay here for the next 6 weeks.
Btw, the staff was correct. A good cold night's sleep, and in the morning the water was all gone, floors had been mopped, and everything was back to normal.
That's enough of this subject. I don't remember anything else that happened on that trip as well as I remember that day.
