100 Years of Indian Cinema, Soumitra Chatterjee, and Street Food Festivals: Exploring Kolkata

Yesterday I went with two other Fulbrighters to an event held by my school. Every year, they hold a quiz contest. My coordinating teacher told me that although many schools hold large competitions like this quiz bowl, they're one of the only schools hold a themed event. It looks like I applied to this program the right year because this year's theme was "100 Years of Indian Cinema." Sounds perfect for the only cinema major in the program, right? Well, it gets even better (I know, you're probably wondering how could it get any better?!) The special guest was Soumitra Chatterjee, an actor who has been a presence in a large amount of Satyajit Ray's films. He was also a close friend of Ray's and spoke a bit about their relationship, though much of it was in Bangla. If you don't know who Satyajit Ray is, I implore you to do some research on him and his work. His films are absolutely remarkable and actually sparked my desire to live in India.

Soumitra Chatterjee's signature

I wrote about Ray in my Fulbright essay, so my coordinating teacher told Soumitra Chatterjee about me and arranged a meeting. Our meeting was quite brief... he was late to something so as he walked over to his car, making his way past all the people taking pictures of him and asking for his autograph, I hesitantly wandered over to him. I couldn't stop nervously laughing, but eventually I stopped when I had his attention. It was clear he was somewhat intrigued and excited by my being the only starstruck bideshi (foreigner in Bangla) there. I heard my coordinating teacher yell out "tell him about yourself! Give him your notebook!" So I quickly told him my name, that I studied Ray's films in college with one of my favorite professors, and that he was an extremely talented actor. Something like that anyway. He smiled and carefully wrote out a brief message, signature, and date. His writing was very hesitant... I doubt he writes in English much. I really appreciated the time he spent on it... I'm lucky my coordinating teacher was so aggressive on my behalf! As he finished, trailing off on the '3' in '2013,' I thanked him and we said our goodbyes. I watched him walk off to his car, continuing to push through the small crowd around him. I stood there staring at his signature, then him and his signature again for what felt like a while. Stacia, an ETA with me, and my coordinating teacher started to lead the way, both of them clearly very excited for me.

Stage of the "100 Years of Cinema" Quiz Contest

After that, Adizah, another ETA, joined us at the event and it really picked up. My favorite part of the quiz bowl were the questions on music. They would sample parts of songs and virtually all of the students passionately clapped, screamed, sang, or even jumped to their feet and danced. The room was filled with so much energy! I'm sure that was also partially inspired by the chocolate bars (with glucose energy!) that were being tossed and thrown to the most enthusiastic. The competition was fierce by the end, but eventually, my school won! I was so proud, even though I haven't officially joined their ranks yet. The girls representing my school were very young too. There were 2 Class IIX girls and 1 in Class IX (so 2 in 8th grade and 1 9th grader).

Adizah had read in the newspaper about a Street Food Festival taking place on Park Street, a relatively "happening" (or whatever the kids are saying these days) area. At this point, we hadn't experimented too much with street food, but we'd had futchka. We all reasoned that futchka was a big enough leap and decided to try and find it. We walked around for what felt like an hour, maybe more. I had chugged my water already a few hours earlier because I didn't like how heavy my bag was, and was starting to feel lightheaded. Two of us were losing hope (not admittedly at the time), but Adizah powered on and eventually led us to the right place.

We ordered every veg option

Much to our surprise, it wasn't a bunch of food stands--it was a lunch special at a restaurant in a hotel. We really didn't mind at this point since two of us weren't feeling so hot (although in a literal sense we were). We ordered all of the vegetarian options and to share. It took the waiter a while to understand that we wanted to order 5 dishes for 3 people, but eventually he got it. Everything was delicious! It was pretty spicy, but we enjoyed it. At the end of our meal, the waiter asked to take a picture with all of us. It was sweet, especially since he had been so helpful.

We tried to find a market that one of our Bangla teachers had told us about. After some unsuccessful wandering, we asked a young woman dressed in western clothing and a backpack for help, assuming she was a student who knew the area and spoke English. She told us that she didn't know of a market in the area, but suggested we take an auto conveniently located right next to us to another huge market. The auto(rickshaw) ride over there and wandering around the market was exactly how we wanted to explore Kolkata. We were able to experience so much of the city. The market was packed and full of lots of interesting items. People seemed more surprised than usual to see westerners. Most of the attention was pretty harmless, meaning mostly "HI!"'s and comments like that. There was one young boy, maybe middle school aged, we passed twice who was really excited about us. Normally I don't respond to people talking to me because a. it's usually not a good idea to respond and b. usually it's kind of creepy, but this boy was very genuine and seemed to have good intentions. He really wanted to shake my hand, so I obliged. I don't mind indulging attention like that sometimes, but usually only with children (or genuinely friendly people who are just curious about where you're from/why you're in Kolkata). Unfortunately, you also find some older men that come off as a bit creepy... they either touch you/follow you/say strange things to you. All of these happened to us this trip to the market, but as long as you're smart about it, it's not a huge problem.

Taking the metro home was a bit of a hassle, but it would be naive to expect anything less on a Saturday. I'm still full from the street food festival even though it was 7 hours ago. All in all, it was a really great day! I really love exploring Kolkata. There's so much to see, we've barely tapped into what it has to offer.