Honeymoon in the Himalayas: Part II

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway started operation in 1881--the brainchild of some obsessive British engineers. The Darjeeling government bills it as "the first and most outstanding example of hill railway". Indeed, it has been dubbed a UNESCO World Heritage site and is renowned across the globe for its breathtaking views of the Himalayan mountains. Due to its small size and its antique-looking engine car, it is known affectionately as the Toy Train.

All that being said, our four-hour journey to Darjeeling on the Toy Train was shrouded in the same soupy fog that had covered us in Kurseong for two days. The train took a meandering journey up a hillside covered in towering spruce and cedar trees. To our left a thick blanket of fog and clouds covered what should of have been a panoramic vista of snow-capped mountains. Instead, we entertained ourselves by waving to villagers as we trundled noisily through a series of small mountain towns. Check out the slide show below to see images of our journey from Kurseong to Darjeeling.

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On the train, we were lucky enough to meet up with a German couple who we had seen in passing at the Cochrane Place in Kurseong. Their names we would learn were Jochen and Birgit Bullinger, but they introduced themselves as Joe and Bea. They came from the small village of Wettstetten outside of Munich. Joe works as an engineer for Audi, which has a giant production plant in Wettstetten, and Bea is a social worker counseling abused and neglected children along with troubled married couples.

It turned out that Joe and Bea would also be staying at the same hotel as us in Darjeeling--the Dekeling (see previous post for website). They each carried heavy-looking hiking backpacks with walking poles. They explained they had come to West Bengal and would be going on to Sikkim (same as us, too) for some trekking. The area is, of course, a hiker's dream with winding paths that give awe-inspiring views of the mountains (at least that is what we had been told.)

We got to Darjeeling a little after 6:30 at night. The sun had already set, but Joe strode out from the train station with the confidence of a seasoned trekker. With map in hand he walked up Darjeeling's precipitously steep streets with Bea, Jenna, and I huffing a few paces behind. After a calf-burning ten minute walk we suddenly came upon the Dekeling. It sat atop a ridge line overlooking the city, now twinkling with thousands of lights. In the darkness and the clouds we could not see even the vaguest shadow of a Himalayan peak. Yet, we knew they were out there and we hoped to see some in the coming days.

Honeymoon in the Himalayas: Part I

The blog took a couple of days break owing to the fact that we spent much of Friday night packing up after the end of our TESOL course. Then, we spent much of Saturday traveling to the northern stretches of West Bengal province. Currently, we are in Darjeeling which is a famous hill station on the cusp of the Himalayas. This city--which now numbers more than 100,000--was established by the British in the 1800s as a sort of "vacation capital" away from Calcutta's torpid climate. In Darjeeling, we are staying at the Dekeling Hotel, which is perched atop a ridge overlooking the city. Behind us is Mt. Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world and the tallest in India. We plan to walk around tomorrow and hopefully get some good views.

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Friday was the final day of our course. We taught one last time--back at the all-girls school we taught at on Tuesday. The girls were older, maybe 14 or 15, and probably had the most proficient English skills of any students we taught all week. The lesson was smooth and easy: a good culmination to the program. The ATI folks fed us a savory lunch of rise and chicken curry along with bhekti fish (fried in a sweet batter) and gulab jamun, which is now my new favorite dessert: milk, flour and butter fried in a ball and doused in syrup. It tastes like an extra dense doughnut hole covered in honey. I had five.

After saying our goodbyes, we came back to our guesthouse one last time and packed up. We both admitted that we would be sad to leave this place, which had served as a good first home in India.

****

The next day we flew from Kolkata to Bagdogra, a small provincial airport outside the metropolis of Siliguri in northern West Bengal. Some say the state of West Bengal is shaped like a chicken with Kolkata residing somewhere in the imaginary gut. The state winds and narrows northwards along a strip of land known as the Chicken's Neck. Siliguri and Bagdogra Airport lie in what must be considered the chicken's head. A map of West Bengal will give a good visual. We would be spending the first few days of our week in Darjeeling district, at the very northern edge of the state.

From Bagdogra, we drove to the nearby town of Kurseong along a pleasantly circuitous route through tea plantations. With the windows down, we noticed a dramatic change in the weather as we began to climb altitude. Our driver--who had been spent by our hotel in Kurseong--zoomed through this route which he seemed to know by heart. He wound through the switchbacks and up the narrow roads constantly pumping the clutch and ripping into different gears. By the time we reached the Cochrane it was 3:30 in the afternoon, but the sunlight was already fading and clouds were rolling in.

***

Much of our time in Kurseong was spent admiring the excessive fog that had rolled into the valleys below our vantage point. There was the sense of mountains and wide vistas just beyond our grasp but much of it was obscured by the opaque blanket of white in front of us. Luckily, the clouds broke on a few brief occassions long enough for us to take pictures. (The picture at the top of this post is the view out our hotel balcony in Kurseong.)

We took a couple of walks into the main town and admired the tea fields that tumbled down from the thin strip of asphalt that served as the primary road into the village proper. Houses and variegated apartment complexes were stacked haphazardly on the hillside above the hotel. Precipitous stone staircases led down to the tea plantations below. As we walked we could actually see rain clouds blow in from the east, roll over the hillside and fall down into the valley.

Due to the soggy climate, we did not wander too far and spent much of our time in the confines of our hotel Cochrane Place, a rambling Victorian-style lodge with antique furniture and creaky floors. The encroaching fog combined with the atmospheric moaning of floorboards made us feel as if we had gotten lost in an Agatha Christie mystery.

The food and tea were excellent, though, and the service impeccable. The manager ordered us a cab for Sunday morning to take to the train station in town. From there, we took the famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railroad--known affectionately as the Toy Train--to our next stop: Darjeeling.

Sugar and Spice?

We had our second day of teaching at Netajinagar--the all-boys school. This day went more smoothly, thought the problems we face on Wednesday did not disappear completely. Jenna and I taught in the same classroom, and it was a different group of boys from the ones either of us taught the previous day.

The picture says it all. They were high-spirited and eager, and at the same time did not want to show too much eagerness to their peers (with a couple of notable exceptions.) There was the definite "too cool for school" crowd in the back corner. Funny how those types always find the spots furthest from the front. Jenna and I actually had to move one of these boys to a seat near the chalkboard so he would stop talking to his brother. He got up with a sheepish grin and kept on a mask of disinterest the rest of the period.

Our lesson asked the boys to practice a conversation and then listen to another dialogue on tape and answer a few questions. My lesson focused on Cooking and Jenna's was on Birthdays. The boys seemed to grasp both concepts with ease, though getting them to answer questions and participate was another matter. However, the ones who did participate were vibrating bundles of energy. When called upon, these individuals would stand up and shout the answer (or sometimes not even wait for the teacher to call on them; they would just stand up and yell.) "Cooking, sir! Cooking, sir!" They would repeat the phrases of the practiced conversation with relish and when I would walk by they would bow slightly and say, "Thank you, sir! See, sir?"

Overall, it was a a joy. The process was still noticeably more exhausting than teaching a roomful of compliant girls, but the messages of the lessons were still received.

***

On the ride back from the school, I sat crammed in the front seat next to one of our observers--a middle-aged man named Alex Fernandes. He was a Kolkata native, with a trimmed gray beard and neatly cropped silver hair. I had to ask him: "Where did you get your name?"

"My family is from Goa, which was settled by the Portuguese. Way back, my family converted to Catholicism. Practically everyone in Goa is Catholic and we all have Portuguese names. But I am Indian. I was actually born in Kolkata," Alex said. He explained that he had been a teacher and had worked for ATI helping them observe training teachers. He mentioned that he had been active in Catholic charities. I coyly asked if he had ever met Mother Teresa.

"Oh yes," he replied matter-of-factly, "many times." I blanched. "Really?" I asked.

"My organization used to do quite a bit of work with the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa's mission). We still do. I would see her usually once a week," he nodded. "It is funny but it was hard at the time to realize how great a person this was. She was so holy and kind. But since I saw her so much..." he drifted off and looked out the window. He came back from his brief reverie: "Have you been to Motherhouse?"

I told him that we had. Jenna and I had gone to Motherhouse--Mother Teresa's biggest mission in the city and the place where she kept her home in Kolkata--the previous Sunday. We had attended mass and had seen Mother Teresa's tomb and the austere room in which she had lived most of her life.

"That is good that you have seen it," Alex said. "She was a great person."

Boys Will Be Boys...

After one of our peer teaching sessions, Sangeeta, our course instructor, said to me, "Jenna, I find you to be a little too stern. With these English Language Learners, you need to smile more." As always, I took the comment personally, but Kyle reminded me that we'd been teaching at Hogg, not India. Not smiling was my survival tool, and being businesslike in the classroom saved me from being eaten alive on many occassions.

So, I've embraced her advice these past two days of teaching. Like Kyle said, I have "actually enjoyed" teaching, and we have both found this teaching practicum to be the most enjoyable part of the course. The rides home from teaching have been jovial--filled with feelings of success and unadulterated adulation for our adorable Indian students. Kyle and I both commented on how fulfilling it was to just "teach"; management just wasn't an issue. It was heavenly, and I was finally feeling like I really could "smile." That is, until today...

Packed into the van, we drove down the winding streets of Kolkata. We were all equipped with our materials. I would be teaching our students about Movies, and Kyle would be teaching about World Travel. We asked our observer, Sangeeta, about our school. "Well," she said, "it's an all-boys school. Your classroom management is going to be tested. Girls are good; boys are trouble." Our honeymoon with Indian schools was over. We, or at least I, arrived at Natajinagar Vidayamandir more nervous than

when we had started out that day.

The warm-up to my lesson (Simon Says) went smoothly. They all wore short-sleeved blue shirts and navy bottoms and were equally adorable as the female students that we had taught the previous days. However,that's where the similarities ended. Whereas my smiling face and saying "OK, eyes up here and listen" turned the girls into silent wonders, those same words did nothing for the boys. Instead, there was pinching, yelling, squirming, and laughing. Things completely fell apart when I tried a partner-activity where the boys lined up in two lines facing one another. I asked them to reach across the aisle and touch hands with their partner, which quickly turned into a mosh pit of 20 boys. Needless to say, the lesson was unfinished and unsuccessful at the end of the 40 minutes.

When I walked out of the room, the "smile" that I had easily put to use the past two days had disappeared. The feelings among my classmates were similar,who used adjectives like loud, squirrelly, and inattentive to describe the boys. Instead of the usual optimism, comments like "How am I supposed to get them to be quiet when they can't understand me?" and "They just wouldn't listen" filled the ride home. Kyle and I both remarked that this experience more closely resembled what teaching is really like--a fact that our classmates didn't seem so thrilled about .The mood became even more sullen when we found out that we would be returning to the same school tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a new day, but I've definitely learned some things that will help me tomorrow. Boys will be boys, whether in the U.S. or India. And, smiling isn't a management system; I'll be putting my "smile" in my back pocket-- at least for tomorrow.

"Teacher? Autograph?"

We took a less adventurous ride on our second day of teaching in Kolkata. This time, the school we taught at was only about 20 minutes away from the ATI offices. We passed through some more affluent neighborhoods to get there, with smoothly paved four-lane roads and apartment buildings with security guards and locked gates. We also passed a sprawling complex with a high brick wall and concertina wire all around. The front gate let us know this was the main training ground for the Kolkata Police.

We turned down some side streets and made a typically circuitous way down some narrow lanes--nearly side-swiping pedestrians, dogs and bicyclists along the way--and reached Khidderpore Ballika Vidyavathan. This was another all-girls school. It sat clustered on the end of a crowded block across from a park. The building was three stories high and the school itself comprised only the second floor. We trudged up a twisting set of stairs and found ourselves in our classroom.

Really, it was one large room--the size of a small gym. The space had been divided into three smaller "classrooms" by plywood dividers placed at intervals to split the room up into thirds. We would be teaching three at a time in these boxed-in areas.

The girls filed in excitedly, beaming and squealing. The school's teachers--dressed in bright saris--led them to their assigned spaces. They tromped in loudly on the hardwood floors and plopped their backpacks on the rickety wooden benches that served as seats. After a chaotic few minutes, all the girls were set and the first three teachers began: Summer on one end of the room, Philip on the opposite end and me in the middle.

The girls we taught today were slightly older--maybe sixth and seventh grade. Yet, their English skills were not as strong as the girls from Day One. Still, they were enthusiastic and polite. They all were dressed in matching teal skirts with white, collared undershirts. They had all braided their hair in tight pigtails and had teal ribbons in their hair. The lesson involved a lot of listening, and the space was not great for this purpose--hard floors, high ceilings, concrete walls and three loud teacher voices talking at once. Yet, the girls remained poised and on-task. Every so often I would catch some girls talking or whispering while I was teaching, and I would look closer to redirect them. (My teacher instincts told me, of course, that they were off-task.) However, on closer examination I realized the girls were invariably talking about the lesson or practicing the English I had just gone over on the board.

Jenna and I taught in the same space. It was fun to observe each other. We had different sets of girls. At the end of my 40-minute lesson, the school headmistress came in and ordered the girls to file out and a new group of rambunctious pre-teens came in and sat down. Jenna's group was a year older and slightly more proficient in English. Still, Jenna agreed that today's lesson was a bit harder to get through than Monday's. Still, the girls brightened our days. Jenna says she has "actually enjoyed" teaching the past two days.

One thing I will remember from this day, though, is what happened at the end of my lesson. As I wrapped up and the girls got ready to go, several of them got out notepads and pencils. They hurriedly thrust the pads and pencils at me, fighting each other for space. "Teacher! Teacher? Autograph? Sign?" they said pleadingly. They were asking me for my autograph, as if I was some big Bollywood star like Salman Khan. The ATI trainers had actually warned us about this phenomenon, and they had told us to politely decline. For if we signed one girls' paper, then we would be stuck for hours signing every girl's.

As we left, one of the ATI trainers laughed and said, "There will only be a few times in your life when you will feel like a rock star. That was one of them."

Teach For Kolkata

For the first time in nearly four months, Jenna and I stepped in front of a room-full of children and said, "Good morning, class!"

It was a wild day, one that needs some explanation. In short: it was a day only Kolkata could produce. We got to our training headquarters at 9:15. Fifteen minutes later, ten of us--six teacher trainees, three observers, and one driver--packed into a Tata jeep meant for six. Two crammed up front next to the driver. Three jammed in the middle seat and four of us (including Jenna and I) somehow squeezed ourselves into the carriage seats in the back. We got on the road--a gut-churning affair as always--and zipped into the single maddest bit of rush hour I have ever experienced. (Though, to be fair, I have never been to LA.) As we swerved between cars and nearly nipped several motorcyclists, I asked our observers how long it could take to get to the school. "Two hours, depending on traffic," one of them deadpanned. "You're joking, right?" I said. She wasn't.

I thought back to my time at Teach For America's Summer Institute in Houston. The bus ride to the school I taught at that summer was a 45-minute jaunt, in a half-filled school bus that was air-conditioned. I remember complaining at the time (along with all the other TFA trainees at my school) about the inconvenience of the drive, the uncomfortable seats, and the heat from the sputtering AC. In the back of our Tata jeep today, I dreamt of that bus.

About an hour into the ride, we hit a standstill. One of the observers suggested I trade places with Matt--another trainee and my roommate who was of much slighter build than myself. He was sitting right next to the driver up front. In the middle of stalled traffic, we got out and made the exchange. I plopped into the front seat only to find that I was straddling the gearshift. Traffic commenced and the driver downshifted right into my crotch. This is how I spent the second hour of the journey. By the time we reached Anandaashram Sarada Vidyapeeth--our school--my left leg was numb and my inner thigh was bruised. Not to mention, my back and armpits were drenched and a dark V of moisture cascaded from my front collar.

We walked into the building, a breezy rectangular structure with three levels painted mustard yellow and trimmed with dark maroon. A quiet courtyard sat at the center, filled with the bikes of students. Its open plan and cool hallways reminded me of a Greek temple. The steady din of high-pitched voices in another part of the building let us know school was definitely in session.

Within two minutes of walking into the building we were led to the classrooms in which we would teach our lessons. Jenna and another trainee Summer were led down the hall. Philip and I were brought to the first door on the right. Without a chance to catch my breath, we walked into a room of 54 fifth-grade girls. They all stood at attention when I entered. The teacher whose class this was, stood as well and said,"Class?" The girls all recited in unison, "GOOD MORNING!" Then, they sat down in one motion.

I taught first, and I realized as the teacher who had greeted us walked out of the room, that I was on. I put my backpack down and wrote my name on the board. I turned and found 54 pairs of small, wide eyes staring back at me. It had been too long since I had felt this. A tingle ran up my spine. I was teaching again. I introduced myself and quickly got into the lesson.

I won't bore you with logistical details about the lesson--it was a simple recitation of some common jobs and their descriptions. It involved a lot of call-and-response. With 54 students, it was hard to play the game I had planned but it still managed to work out. Things went smoothly mainly because the girls were perfectly well-behaved. They volunteered. They raised their hands. They repeated what I asked them to repeat. They answered questions when I gestured to them. They called me "Sir" and smiled when I said "Good job" or "Excellent".

Another trainee--Colleen--asked one of the teachers at the school later what type of families these girls come from. She responded that they came mostly from nearby slums and that their parents were typically the poorest of Kolkata's citizens. Yet, they came to school immaculately dressed in dull lavender dresses with red belts and red bows in their pigtailed hair. They carried backpacks or tote bags and all had supplies ready to whip out if they needed to write anything.

I admit that it was a small sample size. I only instructed them for 30 minutes. However, I came away astonished at their work ethic, their enthusiasm, their apparent desire to want to be at school. Shamefully, I must say that I had rarely experienced such impressions teaching in the US. Jenna and I both agreed that the experience today made us nostalgic for teaching. We wanted to stay and we want to go back tomorrow. However, we have a different appointment with a different school. And this time, we will be teaching teenagers.

High Culture in Kolkata

From the mass culture of Dabangg to the decidedly more high-brow realm of Bengali classical music: that was the journey that Jenna and I and our new friends took this week. A day after seeing Bollywood's biggest masala hit--Dabanng--we made a short walk to the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture to see a group of studious men play sitars and tablas and harmoniums.

The concert was free and was held in a dimly lit auditorium that smelled of old wood and incense. The Ramakrishna Institute bills itself as a cross-cultural organization--a kind of apolitical think tank--dedicated to the teachings and philosophies of the great 19th Century mystic Ramakrishna (a man many followers believe was actually a god in man form). For more about the Institute, check out its website. In essence, though, the saint himself taught that all humankind was of one faith and one ambition. Secular and religious difference needlessly divided people and created conflict.

The crowd at the concert appeared sedate and intellectual: well-dressed men in collared shirts with a scholarly air, women in fashionable saris, a few younger people with backpacks and notepads. This was clearly a concert for the well-informed, the lovers of Bengali classical music. The entire thing--including the introductions and the short spoken digressions between songs--was in Bengali, so we understood none of it at the time. I had the good fortune of emailing the primary singer after the show. More on that in a bit.

The music itself was vastly different from what our Western ears were attuned to. Each song started off with the singer Sugata Marjit playing on his harmonium (which is like small organ that lies on the floor) and chanting a single phrase. As he repeated the phrase he would add baroque flourishes to each word or line and change it subtly, adding vocal embellishments and diving into pitch intonations I had never heard before. After a short time, he would nod slightly to his tabla player--the tabla is similar to a set of bongo drums but with a higher resonance--and the tabla player would start beating out a rhythm. The song would pick up. Another harmonium player would add his drone. And underneath all of it was the vibrating, twittering picks of the sitar player. To get a good idea what it sounded like, watch this video of Sugata Marjit performing. (This video is not the concert we went to, but the man singing is Sugata Marjit, the singer we watched. To the right in the video is a harmonium. And the woman in the background is playing a sitar.)

Some songs were slow and darkly melodic with a clear conveyance of sadness and longing. Others were more quickly paced with brighter chord structures that left the listener feeling ebullient. Overall, it appeared to be a fairly theoretical exercise. The singer Sugata would stop every so often after a song had started and explain something in Bengali. He would lead the band through a few musical phrases and continue his explanation. Heads in the audience nodded in agreement. A few audience members even raised their hands and asked questions or made comments.

After we left, I felt I needed some more information. I wanted to know what the songs were about and where they had come from. I emailed the Ramakrishna Institute the next day and they eventually forwarded the message to Sugata himself. The artist responded with a well-spoken email. He said at the concert from the previous night he had played some of his own compositions as well as some "legendary" songs that had been "wildly popular" in the 1940s and 1950s. He said most of them were devotional in nature--songs about God, nature and love. Like classical music the world over, he said, Bengali classical music was running into the boundaries of modern culture. These are his words, quoted from the email:

Bengali classical still holds its ground , but talents capable of performiong both pure classical type and Bengali Versions (popular music) have become really really rare. Markets are also looking for quick successes, parents are looking for quick fame. Original renditions of Bengali Classical music are taking a backseat. But at the end of the day , it is dearth of talent. Raw talent that mimics popular songs will be ineffective . It requires the same training and practice as in pure classical music. Talents who will endure hardship for years are rare.

But there is a huge pile of listeners, just waiting for that good
voice, well trained and pleasing.

Its a genre that never dies but wait for the right catalysts for a flare up.

I felt after this, that I had visited the two extremes of Indian culture--the Bollywood glitz of a mega-hit movie and the patient intellectualism of a classical music concert--and had come out all the better for it.