I have lived in BE Block, Salt Lake, now for three months, with one more month to go.

My daily life here revolves around the people who have welcomed me here. And there are many. 

My hosts deserve credit for so much: helping me with the basics of life, and teaching me about the neighbourhood. I know from them that one gives directions in Salt Lake according to the nearest water tank, that no one calls Salt Lake streets by the names that Google Maps attributes to them, and that I can get a remarkable range of supplies from an unmarked store right near AE Market that they have been going to almost since the family moved into Salt Lake in the late 1970s. 

I also must single out the neighbourhood’s football and cricket players. Salt Lake is endowed with a wonderful set of playing grounds, and my first football game here in Calcutta was with some of the best and most fit middle-aged men I’ve ever played with. 

Games people play

I remember a 60-year-old defender who skittered around the field with the energy of a teenager. That game also introduced me to a different constant of my sporting experiences in India: that yelling at your teammates isn’t the sort of expression of deep rage that it is at home. Skew a shot badly wide, and you’ll be in for it —but it doesn’t mean your teammates are personally infuriated with you. They just want you not to play like a blind moron, for goodness’s sake!

Not playing like a blind moron hasn’t been an option for me with cricket. On a bus home one weekend in late November, I met a young man from BF Block, and he invited me to join the daily 7am games he plays with others from the block at BF Ground. At the time, I had never played and knew nothing about cricket. When I came that Monday, the players included me without hesitation. As I flailed away hopelessly as a batsman, they applauded little successes and helped fix errors in my technique. They put up with my feeble attempts at bowling with similar patience. My job’s irregular hours, among other things, have kept me from coming to BF Ground on a regular basis, but they’re always generous enough to let me join.

Houses with a view

One of the main things that will stay with me after I leave is the houses of the township. I grew up on the east coast of the United States, in Washington, D.C. and I’ve travelled throughout China and also passed through different parts of Central Asia and Europe. There are certain complexities in Salt Lake’s architecture that I have not seen anywhere else. Houses back home tend to project a flat plane to the street-front from the roof on downwards — maybe a living room, at most, will break the even facade. 

Not so here! Houses present balconies to the street that duck inwards or project outwards without even spanning the breadth of the house. Floors trade off depths as if to create a series of slats running across the surface of the house. The grilles of Salt Lake’s windows and porches, too, bring with them a spectacular array of designs: boxy functional arrangements, whirling designs interwoven like chain-link fences, patterned iron medallions interspersed amidst vertical bars....

Mornings and nights usually find me in Salt Lake, but I leave the area during the days for work. My office is in a quiet neighbourhood near Science City, but work obligations take me all over the city: Park Street, Dharamtala, Jadavpur, Alipore. I prefer to travel by bus, a mode of transport that, as a 6’6” newcomer to the city with no Hindi or Bengali skills, takes some degree of improvisation. One issue is simply knowing what goes where. 

One Sunday night early in my stay saw me hailing buses unsuccessfully for an hour straight just east of Park Circus to find one that could go to Ultadanga. 

Another issue is standing up straight. The newer Volvo models excepted, I have to crane my neck to stand on most of Calcutta’s buses. One afternoon, I boarded the 215A to Sovabazar, and the conductor took pity on me. He spoke little English, and I spoke even less of Hindi and Bengali, so he pointed to the stairs and waved at me to come down, where I could stand straight. I grabbed onto the handlebar above the bus door and leaned out into the breeze, to straighten my neck and watch the streets of north Calcutta unfold before me. That was some ride indeed!

 

Edmund Downie is a Yale University Gordon Grand Fellow at the Calcutta-based Centre for Studies in International Relations and Development, studying Indian foreign affairs in Asia. He has lived in Salt Lake since he arrived in Calcutta in late September.