Color, color everywhere.

The Holi Festival took place today and, as promised, it was a rambunctious display of drumming, dancing and color powder smearing. We’re taking the train north today from Kolkata, so we’re missing most of it, but what we did see (and be apart of) was a whole bunch of fun.

What we didn’t expect was the city’s closure, though. The shops have closed up, the restaurants are locked and the city is jointly ushering in spring. I guess when you’ve got this going on in front of your business – it’s safest to keep the door locked.

Check out the photo gallery & video of the colorful festival below…

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OK, OK – I know. I’m obsessed. But really, when you buy a pair of pants like this and you’re seriously going to wear them, someone needs to point out that they’re absolutely awful.

In the name of all things fashion – I bought a pair of diaper pants today. Not because I’ve had a change of heart. Oh no. I bought & wore them today so that they could be destroyed in the Hali Festival.

It’s my own sort of protest. In all honesty, though, it kind of backfired – because I had to wear the damn things in public – and no one understood that I was being ironic. Yes, they did get color splashed all over them. Yes, they’re technically destroyed. Was my point made?

Diaper pants in public

No – because I still paid someone $5 of my hard earned money for these things. And, again, I wore them in public.  I give up. People will continue to wear them, whether or not I’m a hater. I’ll continue hating in silence now (plus, they really are pretty comfortable).

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It took me a bit to figure out what it was that made them feel unusual and strange. They have been manually typed by a typist – a throwback to what office work used to be like in the rest of the world (well almost).

Street typing in Kolkata

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Take Nils’, our travel buddy at the moment, story about buying a card for his cell phone. The price had been agreed on and the paperwork had begun, but apparently he needed a copy of his passport. Before he knew what was happening, the owner of the shop was yelling at a boy nearby who grabbed his passport and went dashing down the street to get a copy. The cost of such service? 10 rupees (about 20 US cents)

The guys pictured are another example. Using no safety equipment (that I can see, anyway), these men have scaled up hundreds of feet to hang bamboo. We have no way of knowing what pay these risk-takers make, but it’s a safe bet that it’s far below what you would think. Far, far below.

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Yes, this used to be something I said out load – to people, no less. Starbucks may have been my introduction to chai, but India and Nepal have been my education in it. Here whole milk is combined with tea and spices. A few heaping scoops of sugar are added to the mix and the whole thing is boiled for five minutes. The result is a creamy, sugary wonderful afternoon pick-me-up.

Kolkata offers an especially fun element to drinking chai: the ceramic to-go cup. No joke, this is how street-vendor chai is served in this city. The servings are small, which suits me just fine since it’s so bloody sweet that you don’t want too much of it. Once you’re finished, you either toss it into a bucket that sits by the stall or, well, anywhere else on the street. Piles of these little terracotta cups are all over this city. Some are reused while others get smashed and ground back into the earth.

Kolkata Chai

While trash dumps all over the world are filling with paper Starbucks cups, Kolkata has maintained a chai drinking tradition that is not only fun but makes a whole bunch of environmental sense – and I’m OK with that.

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Celebrated by the Hindi people, the Holi festival is meant to usher in spring. We’ve been referring to it as the color festival because the basics of the celebration are color – brightly colored water or powder are thrown on anyone within range.

The first clue that the festival will in fact take place came on our walk today. Street vendors were selling powder and specially made powder guns in preparation. If this thing does go down, we’ll be there, so expect a full report – once we’ve cleaned up a bit.

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Today, hardly any ethnic Chinese live in Kolkata. Those who did – mostly merchant families brought there by the Brits in order to stimulate trade – moved to Vancouver, London and the US a long time ago.

Of the houses, nothing much is left to remind you of the people who once lived there. The exception is  the one still-standing Chinese Temple. We were let in by the caretaker: a half-Indian gentleman who showed us the altars and told us a bit about the place.

In exchange for a small donation (40 rupees/1 USD), our friend Nils got to light candles and burn joss sticks. While the caretaker rung the temple bells and banged on the temple drum, we silently hoped that  maybe this will help placate the Chinese ancestor spirits, whose relatives have all abandoned them for greener pastures.

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In contrast to other Indian cities, we’ve found Kolkata to be decidedly laid-back. The city has more than a fair share of parkland, where goats graze among old British imperial monuments. People are less stressed-out as well – it is perfectly possible to stroll around town without being outright assaulted by people wanting to sell you something.

Now, this above should be taken with a grain of salt. This is still India, and Kolkata is the world’s 8th largest city. Still, our first impressions are very promising.

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Not exactly whiter than snow anymore

In the end, we found the art section to be the most interesting: a collection of quaint, subtle watercolors, painted by unknown (to us) masters. It’s a pity the lighting was so dismal – both for the sake of the paintings, who deserve better; and also for you readers, because all the pictures we took were too low in quality to post. Instead, we present you with this familiar image of Jaime and husband (?).

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We can’t stop ourselves from talking about the food we eat on this trip. An observant person might say that when you’re unemployed, mealtime is the main focus of the day. And, yeah, I’d have to agree. We eat our breakfasts talking about what we plan to eat for lunch – and so on.

Today’s Fun with Food lead us to a hole-in-the-wall where we stopped to order Bengal’s typical fast food: the kati roll.

Constituting 75% of today’s grease allowance, this gut-bomb was SERIOUSLY GOOD. The cook first fried up a flat bread, onto which he smeared a  fried egg.

He then cooked up a little stir-fry fat and veggie wonderland that he laid onto the flat bread. A quick roll of the goods, with a  healthy helping of napkin to soak up the grease, and we had lunch. All 2,000 calories of it.

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