Maidan

Two or three times a week all the boarders at the school go to the large field known as the Maidan to play sport. The Maidan was originally created by the British (typically, by flattening a village) to be a parade ground. It is now a huge public park where dozens of sports teams come to practice. Known as "the lungs of Kolkata", it is an refuge in the middle of one of the noisiest and busiest and dirtiest cities in the world.

I have also heard it described as Kolkata's answer to Hyde Park, which is very misleading. The ground is uneven and the grass is often thick. Hockey balls get lost and girls swipe at them in desperation like farmers swinging scythes. Warm up jogs are interrupted by finding yourself shin deep in mud. What makes up for this is training in sight of the Victoria Memorial.

The best thing about going there is the bus journey. Think of 60 Indian kids crammed into in a 30 seated bus. Add loud Hindi music that they sing along to. Don't forget that you are driving through central Kolkata - rickshaws, prostitutes, taxis, cows. Then imagine that on the way back, all the kids muddy and sweaty, jumping off at various points. On Saturday I hung out the side door on the way back. Everyone on the street was staring at me - a white man hanging out of a bus full of singing children seems to be odd even by Kolkatas standards. It was awesome.

Pictures below. I'm going to the mangrove swamp on Tuesday, hoping to see a tiger. Back Thursday.

Lessons

Teachers have a very old fashioned style here.

When I teach, my thought is nearly always from the pupil's perspective. You tailor the lesson towards who, what and even when you are teaching. This is not to say that individual teachers do not have their own individual style and methods they prefer, but simply that the pupils relationship to the lesson is seen as fundamental to the whole exercise.

Lessons, then, need to be planned and thought through. I have been trying very hard to communicated this idea to the teacher who I am working with here. He cannot see beyond the content. Lessons have no start, no end, no variation and no rhythm. It is just content relayed through speech.

Some teachers can carry this off succesfully. But these teachers, while not proactive planners, are excellent reactors.  It takes a large amount of natural intuition (often disguised experience). But what they are doing is still fundamentally similar - responding to the signals from pupils about how the lesson is going.

I have tried both explaining this idea and demonstrating it to the teacher through my own teaching. I have made sure I taught content from the Indian textbook, to emphasise this is something he can do himself to improve his own teaching. So far, he has not seen it.

A common trait amongst Indians, unfortunately, is stubborn solipsism. This harms the application of this model in two ways. Firstly, a lack of empathy with the learner. Secondly, a resistance to learner oriented teaching as an idea.

I don't pretend to know even 10% of what there is to know about teaching. But I know too well what a bored and understimulated bunch of kids looks like, and his classes were that. Until he starts to see that as his challenge, rather than their deficiency, it will stay that way.

Apologies for something not so much about Kolkata but it has been something I have been thinking about.

Teaching

I have started teaching again this week following last week's holiday time. I'm teaching a year 12 and a year 13 class, although I haven't yet started teaching the year 13 yet because I teach them on Friday's and Friday is Id, so the school is on holiday AGAIN.

Teaching is quite frustrating here for a number of reasons:

1. The language barrier, which is often more to do with me understanding what the kids are saying rather than anything else

2. The organisation. I thought I was going to teach a lesson today to a full class. In the end there were only two for most of it because the others were in house meetings for organising house plays. During lesson time. I didn't realise/wasn't told that this would be the case. It would be impossible to come up with a practical scheme of work here. I know this sounds pathetically like just whinging "it's no Rugby!" but it just makes it difficult to make a big difference in a short period of time.

3. The content. The teacher who I'm shadowing/trying to help is quite pressured about exams so I'm trying to stick to the course content. But the actual knowledge they need is ridiculous. There's very little thought required, and learning word by word definitions is infinitely more rewarding in terms of work than any genuine understanding.

So it's enjoyable when I do it. But it's hard to really gain too much satisfaction from it.

Have a photo of a bloke with goats:

Good morning

I'm sure that you all will be astonished to hear that I got up at 5am this morning to go to a flower market. By the time that I got there at 6am it was already winding down but as you can see from the photo below it was still busy by any normal standards. Kolkata is wonderfully quiet in the early morning, with most taxi drivers still getting their night's sleep on the top of their vehicles. From then until 7.30 the city gradually woke up as the parked up cars and trucks left their resting places and took to the roads, street sellers put out their wares and beggars took to the increasingly busy crossroads.

The flower market was an intense sensory experience, but, as is rare in Kolkata, a pleasant one. The sweet nectary smell even took over the usual smells of decay.

The flowers are sold mostly for the temples but also for housekeepers of rich properties and to be sold on by other sellers. I didn't buy any.

I then decided to take advantage of the lack of crowds and walk down to BBC Bagh, a square dominated by 18th century colonial buildings. It used to be called Dalhousie Square but was renamed after the three men who (unsuccessfully) try to kill the British Governor Lord Dalhousie. Kolkata has periodically indulged in renaming squares and roads which is very confusing when looking at a map and even worse when trying to explain to taxi drivers.

In the middle of BBD Bagh is a small 'tank' of water. This, like every spot of water in Kolkata, is primarily used for bathing and washing clothes. As I had stood looking out over a ghat (a jetty near a temple uses for burning bodies that are then released into the river) at the flower market earlier that morning, the mother of another volunteer said that she didn't think they used the riverside space in Kolkata very well, presumably thinking of pleasant docklands apartments like Annie and Dan used to have. I disagreed strongly. A window just uses it for a view. In Kolkata the Hooghly is used for birth, death and every bodily function in between.

Besides, who wants to look at the Hooghly? It's worse than the Thames!

Flower market, tank and ghat below

Traffic

The first thing about road traffic here is the huge variety of different vehicles which occupy the road. You have your standard rich person's car; shiny, air conditioned and quick. You have your taxi, which is invariably the bright yellow Hindustan Ambassador, which date from the 1950s. The autorickshaw, little three wheeled green and yellow things which go up and down specific roads. Bicycles, mostly with only one gear, carrying loads of fruit or multiple people or both. Motorcycles and mopeds which squeeze into tiny gaps. Flat bed trucks taking twenty people to a specific building sight. The busses, tiny, cramped and insufferably humid.

And finally, Kolkata's trademark, the human rickshaw, pretty much a front pulled carriage carrying carrying goods or offensively self indulgent human beings. The rickshaw pullers also function as the city's drug dealers around back packer areas. I see very few of these around where I live, as they tend to congregate around tourist areas.

You see quite a few signs saying 'follow the rules of traffic'. As far as I can tell, these are:

Beep loudly and all the time,

Don't run a red light (unless you really want to) ,

Don't go the wrong way down a one way road (unless you want to)

Beep loudly and all the time,

Undertaking is encouraged

Seat belts are for cowards

Wing mirrors should at worst not be used and at best not exist

Beep loudly and all the time

Here's some taxis and a human rickshaw

The Victoria Memorial

I visited the Victoria Memorial yesterday morning with my flat mate Tony. The Victoria Memorial, a tribute to the Empress of India, is a magnificent white building in the middle of gardens in the middle of Kolkata. It is fairly easy to forget you're in Kolkata whilst you are there. There are even parts inside where you can't hear car horns hooting.

It was interesting to match up the portraits and statues with the historical figures I've been reading about in a book about the history of Kolkata. Some of the governors really messed things up in a way that had serious consequences that we see even now. The historical material inside the new museum within the memorial was perhaps a little too generous to the British.

The thing that I found most stimulating were the paintings of familiar Kolkata streets from the 19th century. It really looks like paintings of places like Pall Mall from similar times - huge wide streets and well spaced ornate building. London is of course a long way from this now and Kolkata, well, even further. The most true to life pictures were of the area where the native population lived surrounding the regal interior. This was known to the English as the 'Black Town'. They also had a full room replica to give you the impression of life on a Black Town street. Both Tony and I agreed this was redundant as it felt very close to the streets today, especially the sense of lives being lived out in the open.

I think if the Memorial was built for a more romantic and less colonialist reason it would be far more prestigious. But, ultimately, this was a building built for 11m rupees in a city which has always had starving and homeless people. The actual funding came from a tax that mostly fell on the local native population. All this to commemorate some person who claimed authority from a million miles away and sent some real vindictive fuckwits over to do the job. You start to realise why telling someone you are British here hardly fills them with excitement.

Speed of life

Sorry for no updates: I wrote this a week ago but forgot to put it up.

The tempo of India is very odd.

One side of it is the mania of the city. Cars go stupidly fast through small spaces. Autorickshaws crowd onto the pavement. English itself is spoken at a rapid, often unintelligible pace.

Yet at the same time, many aspects of life are very slow. Sorting things out takes forever. People have an enormous bureaucratic self importance, going into great complex length where brevity will do. An example from today; 'awards' became 'prize awardance ceremony'.

Service in bars and restaurants is glacial. It's not rudeness or incompetence - just a complete difference of expectations. It is slightly reminsicient of Corsica in the sense that the service economy has not yet really arrived, although this is less to do with how they treat foreigners and more to do with how they treat everyone. On that note, there are basically zero tourists here. I have seen literally one white person not from the school walking the streets.

Here's a photo.

Cobblers

In Rugby, I got the sole of my left shoe done at Sheep Street Cobblers. It's run by a friendly looking bearded man and cost £15. It was very well done.

A hole appeared in the right shoe a day or so ago. In my trouser shopping adventure my right sock, originally white, became brick red coloured and soaked through. It smelt of Kolkata; a mix of soil, sweat, a rusty bricky kind of smell, cinnamon, cumin and faeces.

The cobblers just sit by the roadside here, doing the job as you stand and wait. It seems mostly that they polish shoes and fix sandals, but they have all the kit they need to do any other repairs too.

I went to one just outside the entrance to the complex of flats where I am staying. Rather than bearded and friendly, he was a gnarled looking old bloke with no teeth wearing a sarong. He barely spoke any English but I showed him the shoe, he nodded, grabbed it off me and went to work.

His main tools (along with an iron last) were a very sharp razor blade, a bag of various rings, pins, nails and tacks, and most strikingly his bare feet which he used to hold things while cutting them with the blade. For burnishing he used old polish tins that were punctured with holes going out to give them a cheese grater kind of edge.

The whole thing took about thirty minutes and I stood there and watched. The sight of a white man standing in his socks getting his shoes done amused more than a few locals.

He did a decent job all considered, even if not as good as Sheep St. He even polished and waxed them afterwards. The total cost was 100 rupees which is about 90p. I could have haggled but wasn't inclined to - the same goes for taking a photo.

My flat

I'm very happy with my flat. It is quiet and clean and has some air con to keep me cool. It is definitely a refuge from the chaos of the city - if it wasn't nice I think I'd go mad as the city itself is overwhelming. I went for a walk yesterday to try to find some trousers to buy, found none and got a bit lost. I was very happy to get home into the dry, cool and calm.

I went to the red hot chili pepper last night and had tofu and egg fried rice. It was £8 rather than £2 but it is a dining hot spot!

Day 1

Dubai airport is very shiny.

Kolkata is not.

I arrived having got half an hour's sleep and was driven from the airport to the head's house by a member of staff. Driving in India is genuinely as bad as it looks or you have heard. There are no lanes and anything (cyclists with bags of okra on the back, rickshaws, cars, cows) could be coming the other way.

They have a genius system in Kolkata where all the one way streets change direction at 1pm. Some two ways become one way. Some one ways become two ways. A good idea for dealing with rush hour in an underbuilt overpopulated city, but absolute chaos to navigate.

I had breakfast (pancakes and local mango) and was shown to my flat (pictures coming soon). Aircon! Bought some bread and some butter. Had a shower but half an hour later I may as well not have. Very very humid. Genuinely like having poured a cup of water over your head after about forty minutes in it.

I then visited the older boys house (17-18 yr olds) and had some lunch. I broke many food hygeine rules in about a ten minute period of time - hadn't washed my hands, ate with my hands, drank tea...it was paneer in some green stuff with rice and pakoras. Everything was nice except the green stuff. I talked to the boys but struggle with their accents.

Next it was on to the school and met the younger ones who are very excitable - they run up to you straight away, hold your hand, try to jump and hold on to you. Then I had a quick chat with the head about what I would do when I was there - working with a business studies teacher as a kind of shadow but with the intention being to help him as he is not doing very well. Lots of diplomacy needed.

Done for the day now. There is an internet cafe opposite my building. 15 r an hour which is 7p.

Packing

Things I have packed lots of:

Shorts

Sandals

Shirts

Things I have packed none of:

Jumpers

I have also packed a lot of medicine.

In a couple of hours I will take the first of 44 daily doses of Malarone. Common side effects include nausea and vivid dreaming. 

I am currently feeling quite nervous due to the large number of unknowns, including the journey.

Weather in Rugby: Sunny, 27 C, 40% humidity
Weather in Kolkata: Hazy, 27 C, 80% humidity