Johnny Cash and close to a month

spent in Kolkata
It's been too long without updates, my apologies to those who read this. Almost a week has gone by with no writing on this ol' blog of mine.
But not a whole lot has been going on here. Hard to believe, yeah? I know. It's strange to think that I could possibly be in any sort of routine in Calcutta, India but it seems pretty regular right about now. I had a conversation with Ty on the phone the other day, we were talking and he asked me what it was like here. I paused for a second and looked around. I gave him a fairly detailed description of what I was seeing in that exact moment and here's a little bit of that conversation, cleaned up of course:

"I'm sitting outside of the internet shop, probably the nicest, cleanest store that I am in regular attendance at. I'm sitting on a patio of sorts, outside with my back to the iron-barred windows with no glass in them, painted blue and purple. The patio is cracked red cement with two steps leading down to the little lot that is shared with a small spanish cafe, a t-shirt shop, the taj-continental restaurant's back door, and about fifty stray kittens. The lot is full of trash and in fact one spot where a little shop used to sit is literally now just a trash pile that rises from the dirt and brick ground to be about shoulder height. There are six motorcycles and two cars in the lot, one a newer silver car with a brand name that I can't pronounce and one a blue van, probably from the early nineties, with another brand name that I can't pronounce.
"There are about 30 people in this lot, milling around having conversations or just walking through, most are the regular people. Gopaul is wandering around aimlessly touching the feet of foreigners out of respect and mumbling hindi slurs silently to himself. He is a beautiful man of about 45 with grey hair and salt & pepper whiskers sprouting from his dark face. He sleeps in the lot near the entrance to the spanish cafe every night. Gopaul has some sort of mental illness that keeps conversation to a minimum but his smile speaks more than words ever could. I have lunch with Gopaul a few times a week usually when I ask him if he's hungry and he nods and laughs.
"The Varanasi shop guys are sitting outside smoking cigarettes and laughing with a few french girls. They are all very fashionable, charasmatic, charming young guys, about 20-25, that all work/hangout at a small t-shirt shop right off of sudder street. Every volunteer stops in here and Melissa told me that I needed to say hi to them for her as soon as I got to Calcutta. I drank chai with them earlier this afternoon and we sat around and strummed the guitar with them for about half an hour or so.
"Abdul and Kurtik are silently arguing across the street from the gateway to the lot at Tirupati and Keeshore is simply cooking and taking orders as usual. Tirupati is a little street restaurant/cart right outside the gate of Hotel Maria that is frequented by volunteers and tourists. Abdul and Kurtik are two people that are very near and dear to my heart. Both were born deaf and mute and without a form of sign language to learn in their respective villages they made it up as they went, so naturally they "speak" a little differently than each other but with effort they make it very easy to understand them and I'm proud to say that I hardly ever have trouble understanding them. They both like to make fun of my glasses and beard and I simply take it because I'm just happy that I can understand it when they do make fun of me.
"To my right is a very small shop that is indecipherable as to what they sell, I believe that it's a restaurant (or it may be someone's home) because there are a few men cooking but there are no indications that they sell any sort of food. No signs, no menus, no chairs. But who really knows? One of the men cooking just threw three severed chicken feet about a yard in front of me, two crows swooped down and grabbed a foot each while a hungry street dog stumbled up and grabbed the third with it's weak jaw. I look down and see my bare feet against the red-painted cement and I can see a perfect line across the top of my feet, crossing through each of the tattoos is a half-tan, half-dirt line about as perfect as looking at the top of a freshly opened container of neapolitan ice cream where the chocolate and vanilla meet. There are three bugs crawling on my left foot but my right foot is pest free, for now."

With all of this, I have managed to find routine and normalcy. Less than a month ago I couldn't pick up my jaw with all my might as I took in first impressions of this strange land that seemed, and still seems, like a place lost in time. A place that seemingly is stuck in the 1920's, as one odd-minded volunteer put it, god bless her soul.

IN OTHER NEWS:
Today was Emily's birthday so we decided to party like it was 2012. Last night we wandered to New Market, a shopping complex that resembles a giant horse stable, and is about as clean. She decided that instead of receiving gifts she would rather give gifts to the children she works with at Shishu Bavahn, an orphanage run by the missionaries of charity. We went out and bought twenty small chalkboards, one for each student in her class and decided we'd get a cake as well to celebrate with these children. This morning, I stayed home from work and went on a small reconnaissance mission, to find decorations to decorate our tiny room with. I started with streamers and a cake then bought a confetti cannon and a singing birthday cake knife. All for around 6 dollars. I proceeded to decorate the room all morning and when the girls returned we had a wonderful little surprise party and handed out cake to all our new friends and strangers on sudder street. All in all it was a wonderful day and Emily is no longer a teenager, the big 20 is here... woohoo!

Enough of this, I need some sleep. Goodnight friends