What is Kolkata (Calcutta) India like?
Published by Jesse Zylstra
By far, India is the most interesting country that I have ever heard of. I have always wanted to visit India, and this summer during a mission trip I was able to.
I went to Kolkata It is an important point to make that India is separated by different states, similar to that of Switzerland or the USA. Kolkata is in the state of West Bengal. Every state is unique.
India was a completely different world compared to the small world of North Central Washington that I live in. India defeats the strangeness of areas like Seattle and the storms of people in New York. If you look on Wikiedia, the census is 5,080,519 people. We were told that it is more likely to be anywhere from 10 million to 20 million. So many people are homeless and have no registered identification information, it is impossible to have a real count of all the citizens. The population of West Bengal is 80,221,171 people, quite a large number for one “State”.
India largely suffers from over-population, something that is starting to trouble many countries, including the United States. A large majority of the people in Kolkata live in poverty, and it seems to just be the way people live, it is considered completely normal. There are so few streets that are clean, street-side trash is just dumping whatever you want out on the sidewalk, and getting away with it.
It was explained to us that the Government of India is fairly well off, and has quite a bit of money stashed away and the ability to greatly improve the country. There are many laws, but they are not enforced, nor is there an attempt to enforce them.
Transportation is, by far, the most interesting part of India. The word “interesting” should not be interpreted as “fun”. Traffic is a complete disaster in India. All signs, speed limits, and stop lights are suggestions to drivers. There are few crosswalks, and most of them do not work, or they do not ever change to walk (or both the “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” lights are on, which is pretty accurate…) Instead, if you want to cross the street, you wait for the biggest gap and just go. There is no time to wait and see if the driver can see you
Cars honk all the time, not out of aggression or road rage, but just for the heck of it. The streets are always noisy, and the noise continues into the night. Much later (say, around 12AM) is India’s bedtime, and the streets suddenly empty out completely and it gets quiet. When I left India, it seemed so strange for things to be so quiet.
The most common ways of transportation if you do not have your own car are: Bus, Taxi, Tok-tok, tram, or train. Fortunately, I had a bus taking me about, however our group did take the train to one destination. With 19 people that needed to get off, the train only stopped for a total of 14 seconds. The last few people had to jump off a moving train.
The train is a mess. In fact, I do not understand why someone would want to take it. I didn’t want to take my camera out on the train, since there were so many people so close to you and it could be snatched up so easily. The train has seats, and on the way to our destination is was fairly empty. The way back, however, was packed full. The train has these metal handles that hang down so that you can stand on the train and not be thrown off by the train stopping and starting. I was wondering why there were so many of these handles, many of them right next to each-other. It turns out, they really pack the train full enough to use all of them. Indians do not seem to mind other people getting very close, in America, we all like our space. If our personal space is invaded, we are easily offended. The train takes invasion of personal space to the extreme. Being as we were a bunch of white people, most of the Indians seemed to stay away from us a bit and give us a little space, it definitely could have been worse.
Visually, the buses seemed just as bad, as well as the tram. A lot of the buses are not made out of fiberglass or metal like buses in the USA, they are made out of wood. Many other vehicles that transport are also built with a wood frame and interior.
The smell of India is just like the smell of a farm, double the stench with human waste in many areas. No matter where you go, the smell is always there. Its worse in some areas, obviously compact areas smell worse than larger more open areas.
I would not recommend India as a vacation destination. If you are just looking to see what’s on the other side of the fence, be my guest. Once you start to get out of the cities in India, it really is quite a sight to see.
