the travelling sociologist

Events: Yesterday, after a long sleep I went for lunch with Dhruv, an old schoolfriend of the groom. We were soon joined by Amit, the groom, and we hung out for a couple of hours swapping live stories(bizarre connection for Dublin people - their old school does and exchange with Belvedere), eating wonderful Indian veggie food and drinking beer. Dhruv had to go to a meeting, so he dropped Amit and I off at his parents place. I met the parents, drank some tea and then went up to the roof of the building with Amit, where we sat and looked at events in the smoggy city at sunset. He told me of the parties people have up there.... of going up there with beer, weed and music and staying up till the sunrise.... we did not stay up there quite that long, though....we decended at 8 for some pre dinner drinks, drank while sitting cross-legged on a bed watching cricket....Dhruv arrived again, dinner followed, Amit went to see Sanhita and I set off in a car with Dhruv, Amit's little brother(will list name when i remember it), and some friends of his.... we sat and drank tea in a roadside stall(a cult activity for the young middle class of calcutta, it would seem) in pottery cups that you smash after usage(i saved one as an example)..... I was driven back to the hotel where I lay in the dark listening to music and contemplating my first 24 hours in India

Thoughts: Tradition, modernity & Globalisation

Virtually all the knowledge i have garnered about India in the last month comes not from travel guides, but from some of my english language students, whose company has just been taken over by a huge Indian steel company. One guy I talked to, who had grown up in an era of russian domination in eastern bloc, and who had learned fluent russian as a result said he would be advising his daughter to get very familiar with the culture of the east, to get to know India, to learn Chinese perhaps. 'In my day' he said, the russians were rising.... now it's the east'.... all of this was very clear to me almost the moment I stepped off the plane...

All the roads here.... though still a bit rough around the edges are new... within 24 hours of arrival I had a new simcard for my phone.... this internet cafe is indistinguishable from the ones where I live.... the people i hung out with last night do pretty much exactly the same as I do, just with a slight twist.... they go to elegant restaurants with impecable service for business meetings.... the grooms younger brother, who has just graduated from college, plays in a band, hangs out with a mixed sex group of people... they go out, get drunk, go clubbing, and swing by roadside food stalls afterwards for tea and food....they hang hang out on rooves drinking beer and getting stoned.....hell, i used to do exactly the same thing when I was 23. My first thought then was the Kolkata is not so strange at all.... hanging out with the middle classes I can relate very well. Their lives are not strange, they are familiar. The search for a traditional world should not bring you to a modern Indian city....the world here is not traditional, rather it is in many essentials hyper-modern. In fact, in some respects, the world I have come from, living among the turkish community in berlin Kreuzberg may be more traditional than many places here. Case in point, the honour killing in of a Turkish woman in Berlin 2 or so years ago. When I mentioned this to Amit, stitting on the party roof, he mentioned that he had heard of nothing like this in Kolkata in 10 years at least..... such are my thoughts so far....

Hi All...

My first proper entry in this blog...perhaps I should start by answering some questions, about where I am, what I am doing, and how the hell I ended up here in the first place.

As for where I am, I am in Kolkata(formerly Calcutta) in India, sitting in an internet cafe in lake view road. This cafe is not at all unlike the internet cafes i've been using in my Berlin neighbourhood, Kreuzberg, so I feel right at home....

How did I end up here? The genesis of this trip lies within a previous one, and within a complicated web of friendships and visits that all have their genesis in York. It was York that I met both Sanhita and Dave....Sanhita rang me in July to tell me that she was getting married, and while I thought about going even then it did not at all seem like any kind of real possibility. I did want to take a holiday that summer, though, and Dave was in Rome preparing apparently, to depart imminently for Kenya to work for the UN(in true UN Style, however, he is still in Rome). During my visit then, Dave told how much Sanhita would love to see me at her wedding, and we really started talking about going....I arrived back...looked at my post Italy finances and despite the fact that they were looking pretty devastated I thought, what the fuck and booked anyway...the flight cost me over 800 euros(damn berlin for not being connected to anywhere by air) and I did want to see more of India so I booked for the longest possible time I could manage, 1 month....for all of those in Dublin, yes this does mean that I will not be home for christmas....

Where will I be, then..... wedding related events stretch on for the next week and a bit or so, and after that I'm off across the country by train, possibly stopping in a place or two before hitting Bombay and Goa....

From when I booked mid october, till my departure now at the end of november I also worked as many hours as karen, my boss could possibly give me, over 120 hours in november alone of standing in front of people, teaching... along with my other side projects, this has kept me more that occupied in the last couple of months... this also meant that I thought little about India before coming here. I did little research, did not think too deeply about what awaited me here and while I did listen to others advice I have come here pretty much as an innocent as far as India is concerned..... in my next entry I'll tell you all about the first impressions of an India innocent....

Still in Berlin, not yet done with all work, frantically preparing....R