Cricket in the Village

While Varanasi has an unending plethora of bazaars, temples, historic buildings and interesting stores , the one thing it lacks is greenery. In fact, aside from periodic trees, trips to the dusty fields at BHU and glimpses on the Ganga, nature is mostly absent from our lives in Varanasi. This lack of green space is made worse by the fact that the city does possess way to many auto rickshaws, cars and people, which fill the city with all sorts of dust, garbage, and pollution. Thus, when Genevieve suggested that we take a weekend trip to my family’s village we all readily agreed.
On Saturday morning the five of us, Christina, Dolly, four members of my homestay family, and a couple others (too many people to fit in two cars) piled into two cars and headed out of the city. After crossing the bridge over the Ganga, we turned off the main highway and drove into the countryside.
Almost immediately the signs of city life began to disappear. The buildings began to shrink, the number of large trucks on the roads decreased, the number of old, dilapidated, pick-up truck-style rickshaws increased exponentially and most importantly, the landscape began to turn green. After driving through this new verdant and beautiful countryside for a little over an hour, we turned onto a narrow dirt road and drove into the middle of a small cluster of mud and cement houses.
After arriving in the village, we promptly dropped our stuff and got back in the cars to go to visit a nearby waterfall. We did not return until sunset and thus, we saw very little of the village on our first day. As darkness fell, we retired to the roof at took and relaxed under the stars, taking advantage of the total peace and quiet that the village provided. At around 10 o’clock we went back downstairs and into the garden behind the house to enjoy a dinner of chicken curry that, as were proudly told by my relatives, was made with “village chicken” a tougher and more flavorful meat.
The next morning we woke, climbed out of our sleeping bags soaked with dew, and came downstairs to eat a breakfast of fried rice and peas. With full stomachs we followed my homestay father and Saurabh through the twisting maze of gulleys between the mud houses of the village, and then out into the bright green and yellow plants in the fields.
In the fields we viewed what many people we have met in Varanasi called “the real India,” or simple agriculture based life. We wandered across the small raised dirt paths that meandered through the fields of mustard, cauliflower, and wheat, until eventually we reached my family’s fields. Near the center of the fields, which stretched for a couple acres in both directions was a small diary, which housed a herd of at least nine buffalo. By the dairy we talked with the workers who farm my family’s land and munched on fresh sugarcane (a very difficult, somewhat painful, but still delicious task).
Still chewing on our sugarcane we walked out of the greenery of the fields slowly ascended a rocky hill rising above the fields. From the top of the hill we could see the entire village and all the fields stretching out into the midday haze well beyond the limits of our vision. After sitting and staring for a while, we lay back on the warm rocks and took a brief nap, before we were forced to descend the hill and head back to the village for lunch. At the bottom of the hill, however, we saw some of the village children playing cricket and decided to conveniently forget that we were late for lunch and start the game.
For me the trip to the village was most memorable because it presented me with the opportunity to play my first serious game of cricket, India’s national pastime. While I encounter cricket on a regular basis in Banaras, the games are usually confined to small areas and thus played with modified rules. The village, however, had a large, almost perfectly oval-shaped cricket field surrounded by rocks forming the boundary.

After introducing ourselves to the village children and dividing up the teams, I quickly discovered that some of my most finely honed baseball skills, namely my swing and my ability to pitch (which I will admit I am not good at) were irrelevant on the cricket pitch. Knowing how to pitch and knowing how to bowl, pitching’s cricket equivalent, are very different skills. After trying and failing a couple of times to bowl properly, I was relegated to the outfield, a position that is thankfully the same as baseball, minus the glove.

Hitting was equally difficult, as an aggressive baseball swing is not well adapted to cricket, in which the batsmen is more defensive and works to protect the wickets, as well as score runs. As I saw more pitches, however, I realized that cricket, like many things in India, is not as different as we imagine, and that protecting the wickets, while still looking to hit far, is really not very different from a “two strike approach” or hitting behind the runner on second in baseball. Thus, I made the adjustment in my swing and hit a series of singles and doubles – that is, until the other team decided to replace the twelve year old bowler with someone my own age, who promptly struck me out.

Following the game, we walked back to the village, savoring our final views of the fields along the way. After finishing our lunch we went outside and the others talked to the village children, while I entertained them with soccer tricks. The soccer tricks eventually turned into a bizarre game of volleyball with my uncle, which ended only after the ball had ended up on the roof for second time. With the game finished, we got back in the cars and began the return the Banaras, well rested and content with our mini-vacation.

Kolkata

Here is a collection of photos of Kolkata's most famous sites, such as the Victoria Memorial, the main bazar and of course Chinatown.

The Search for Chinatown

Never ask a Kolkatan taxi driver to take you to Chinatown. If you do they will assure you that they have heard of it and know where it is, convince you to get in the cab, and then drive you to a neighborhood that is not Chinatown. When you get out of the cab they will give directions that are incorrect and in fact lead you farther away from Chinatown. Eventually, you will find yourself asking a crowd of people on the street where Chinatown is, only to discover that it is six kilometers in the other direction.
To be fair to the cab driver, Chinatown is not a popular tourist destination. The Lonely Planet describes it as “ragged” and “little,” but it also mentioned some cool Chinese temples and massive garbage dump with houses built into the garbage, so after finishing our visit at the Victoria Memorial, Kolkata’s most famous tourist destination, we decided to get in a cab and head across the city in search of Chinatown.
Half an hour later we found ourselves being told by a crowd of men that Chinatown was still six kilometers away. After consulting our map, however, we realized that this crowd of men was as wrong as the cab driver had been. Chinatown was not even close to six kilometers away, and thus we decided to go back to the main road and take one of Kolkata’s ancient trams to our desired destination.
When we arrived at the main road there was no tram to be found, and so discouraged by our previous experience with cabs we decided to walk. As we began to make our way along Kolkata’s congested streets we quickly noticed that we were very far off the tourist track. Thus, we did what we do best in India and blended in, spoke Hindi and enjoyed the life on the streets.
Our act as non-tourists lasted only a couple blocks, however, because we noticed communist posters (the state of Bengal has a communist government) hanging on the sides of the streets and had to stop a steal some because, honestly, who doesn’t want a poster with a hammer, sickle and Bengal tiger for their dorm room wall. Much to the confusion of the various vendors on the street we went to where the rope holding the posters was lowest, stood on our tip-toes and tore a couple off the line.
Only minutes after grabbing our new wall hangings, we discovered heaven, in the form of a street vendor’s stall. Much to Andrew and my chagrin most street vendors in Banaras are relatively vegetarian and will only cook eggs (we had bad experiences with the couple who do make meat), but right in front of us was a street stall with every kind of meat you could imagine. Confused about where to start, we took what the man offered us, Kolkata’s street food delicacy: the egg roll (this consists of bread with an egg fried on one side rolled up like a burrito around vegetables sauce and, if you chose, chicken). After devouring one each, we began to sample the vendors selection, until we had consumed solid quantities of chicken pakora and chicken momos. With full stomachs, we set off to resume our search for Chinatown.
After walking for a while and not encountering any street signs or landmarks that could have steered us in the right direction, we decided to ask a policeman for directions. After registering his surprise at our knowledge of Hindi, he informed us (incorrectly) that Chinatown was still six kilometers away and that we would have to pay a taxi driver 150 rupees to take us there. Realizing that he was incorrect, we politely declined his assistance and made some jokes in Hindi before walking away.
Further down the street we decided to ask a paan-wala for directions. Unfortunately, the paan-wala like everyone else had never heard of Chinatown and told us it was far away. Just as we were about to move on, we heard a voice behind us yelling “mujhe rasta maloom hai” (I know the way) and turned to find a drunk man staggering towards us. He began yelling directions, gesturing wildy at us and told us to follow him. Needless to say we decided not to follow him (a mistake as we later discovered that he was taking us in the right direction) and resumed our walk going the opposite way.
Eventually, when we were on the verge of giving up, we found a street sign and were able to locate ourselves on the map. Realizing the drunk man had been right, we began to walk purposefully in the direction he had indicated asking everyone “kya aap Sun Yat Sen Street jante hain?” (do you know Sun Yat Sen street) until we encountered a man who told us we were standing on it.
From there the journey was easy, just around one more corner and there was Chinatown, in all its glory, right in front of us. The only problem was Chinatown appeared to consist only of an open square with a few chairs and stage set up for a Chinese New Year celebration and a closed restaurant. Dismayed we quickly ran around the next corner to see the wondrous garbage houses and the rest of town, only to see a couple small shacks no different from tens of houses I pass on my bike ride to Hindi class everyday in Banaras. After snapping a picture or two of our surroundings, we took note of the fact that it was time to head back and meet the others and decided to take a cab back to the hotel.
While the state of our destination, or lack thereof, originally disappointed us, a further assessment of the day led us to deem it a success. The walk had been excellent, we had seen a neighborhood most tourists in Kolkata never see, eaten the best street food we have found in India, got communist memorabilia, and even though it was unimpressive, we had found Chinatown despite the conspiracy perpetrated by sober Kolkatans to keep it hidden. In short, it was an excellent adventure, and, despite my previous advice, the next time I go to Kolkata I am definitely going to ask a cab driver to take me to Chinatown, but only after making sure that he doesn’t know where it is.

The Ghats

Here are some photos of our attempts to row a boat along the Ganga, a failure, and our walk during which we tried to docuement all the ghats, much more succesful.