India

[whale]

So, two people I work with are in Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) India for work. When prompted by e-mail for how the trip was going we got this response. It is pretty depressing......hard to imagine.

"I am trying to forget this place, even while I am still here, so I haven't felt like describing it. We don't really ever want to leave the hotel. Abject squalor, open sewer (literally - people just pissing in the middle of the streets, next to buildings, etc. And I don't mean that sometime during the night a bum had to take a leak - everywhere you look someone is just standing around relieving themselves. Might as well be in the Fenway bleachers). Cows meandering everywhere blocking traffic. The nastiest, mangiest dogs lying around everywhere. Big piles of trash mounded up all over the place and filled with people picking through them. The scariest roads and traffic you will ever see (I am being very liberal with the definition of "roads", and the traffic here makes China's look like driving through Utah during church services). Knarled up filthy people lying around with blank stares in lean-to's made of sticks and trash and erected randomly all over the place. Dirt and mud everywhere. Swarms of bugs. If you think of the most despairing third-world pictures you have ever seen, this is worse. With the surreal juxtaposition of professional business people living and moving amongst this seemingly unaware that it even exists.

And all of this is in the business district!

The nicest thing I can say about the place is that it is very hot and humid. To be fair, we haven't gone into "downtown" Kolkata yet because we are working in the high tech business sector, so maybe things improve there. I'm not too hopeful because today for lunch we left the business sector and went to the new financial and cultural sector and it was much worse there.

Tomorrow, we fly two hours south to a seaside resort for the weekend. I'm hoping that will be much nicer because I would hate for all of India to be like this place."