This is some weird Bengali dance where they beat the drum and wave around some pots of incense. There is no real reason for it to us, but it means something to them it seems. Whats funny is the way the people run around picking up the hot ashes so the dancers dont step on them, its actually more fun watching the ash pick up people.
Well its loud, how loud, really really loud. I don’t know why it has to be so loud but it is! We are on the 11 and 12 floors of the building and watch the video you can see how loud it is!.
This is the Puja Idol at our apartment complex:
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Every day from about 10am they start singing and dancing, talking over the PA and dancing and wailing thru the speakers. It must be fun for them but its not for us.
Driving down the street last night, it looks like christmas in the west, all the buildings have lights and music, and lights…oh did I mention music, its like the competition is to have the loudest music.
Anyway here is some of the dancing spectacular last night (if it doesnt load I am working on it);
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Pumpkin not so happy after getting a wash. She managed to get some insect or mite on her this week which has bitten her all over, poor girl
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Take a look at this, would you walk across this drain/sewer, there is a homemade bridge they are walking on but its submerged with the recent rains, and look on the road there, can you see the garbage neatly laid out on it! I have no idea why or how its there, but the next morning it was gone.
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This is the Puja pandal, where the idol will be placed this week at our apartment complex…it looks like some kid has made something out of some bamboo!
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From our balcony we can see some rice paddies and people toiling away in the midday heat
Well last night we went to have dinner with Kim who Cindy worked with in Evergreen at Friendship Bridge, the non profit that gave micro loans to women in Guatemala , Kim now works for Water for People and they have a office here and serve the poor people here giving them fresh water and toilets.
So Kim was staying at the Tollygunge club, a old colonial era golf club, which also for some reason has a small hotel on its grounds called the enclave. The company I work for has a company membership at this club and we as employees can use it, but we dont as its 40km away, and as last night proved it took 1.5hrs to get there and 2 hrs to get home! And to we left at 10pm to drive home and it took 2 hrs!!
The club as you can see is pretty much stuck in a time warp. It has about 5 restaurants, hard to find they are, just like the hotel. There is absolutely no signage in this place, and for some weird reason there are hundreds of stray dogs lieing around the pathways. The place looked pretty cool, but was not anywhere near as cool as the last place we went to the Calcutta Cricket Club. It has a lot of amenities, pools both indoors and outdoors, tennis courts, squash courts and the golf course . And there were people everywhere, so really I wouldnt like to be a member as I doubt you could ever use the facilities. We also found something strang inside there, a Spencers supermarket…why is there a supermarket in a members only club is good question we will never get answered. It also had shops, like a icecream shop, a bakery and some clothing stores, like a little tiny town all by itself.
Dinner was different, there appeared to be only 2 places to eat open, one inside and cool and one open air restaurant. So we choose the air conditioned restaurant, which turned out to be chinese food, well indian chinese food… The food was cheap, but so was the quality, the menu wasnt vast, and we are still wondering what the Honk Kong Chicken is, or was!
But for a mere Ruppees 700 ($14) we got dinner for 3 and a fair amount of beer, so it wasnt too bad, I wouldnt rush back there, but I would go back there.
I cant believe we havent been coming here since day 1. That is the Hyatt hotel in Salt Lake City Kolkata. Its a little oasis of the west in the hussle bussle and smells of the unloved lost state of West Bengal! We went for our birthday dinner, we had been meaning to come here for dinner for a long time.
It was really strange driving there and then arrriving, like coming from the desert to the beach. The roads are all washed away from the recent rain storms, so its a slow bumpy ride, what normally takes 20 minutes, takes 1 hr thanks to the holy road! But we arrived, its smells nice, the place is spotlessly clean and the staff are way too nice and friendly, to the point of being annoying actually.
W need help to find the restaurant. Thanks to help of a bell boy we find the restaurant (if you go there, walk in then turn immediately left and just past the bar its next, kinda , hidden away in a non distinct doorway in the marble wall of the lobby). But we are seated in a split second, its surreal the place is full of whiteys, most speaking american, there is some pommie being spoken in the back corner too. The wait staff really want you to buy wine, but we pass as the cheapest bottle is US$65 ! And in the USA this wine would cost just $7 ! So we stick to beer…. what was weird was the wine menu, where they had the Italian wines they didn’t list what type of wine it was, just the winery!! Huh! We so much wanted a bottle of Chianti or some nice light red Italian table wine, but it was not to be.
But the menu, wow its great, not a curry in sight! So its the old favorites of deep fried mozzarella and calamari for starters. YUM, its perfect, and what makes this place cool is the kitchen is in the middle and its open, its also the first time I have seen a clean kitchen since I have been in India. This restaurant also has a huge wood fired (with the help of a big gas flame) pizza oven and they are constantly pulling out baskets of hot fresh baked bread from it, and they have oils and dishes on the tables…its heaven, bread that tastes normal and dipping oil and balsamic.
The entrees/mains too were, great, I found a beef lasagna, hows that beef in Kolkata! There were some really expensive things on the menu, like the ‘special’ lamb shank from New Zealand, at $40 we passed on that one! But the mains were around INR 600 each, thats only US$12 each! The starters were about $5 each, so overall its not too expensive. They had great looking pizzas, so I think we have found out our new hangout, well my new hangout when Cindy returns to the USA next month.
If you are in Kolkata and need a fix of good food, visit La Cucina Restaurant at the Hyatt, you wont be dissapointed.
Oh one thing, the bakery at this hotel… not so good. Its down beside the cafe in the lobby, its full of things that look good , but looks and tastes are different things. We bought a sourdough bread loaf, told it was baked fresh at 5pm, but it was hard as a rock, we did manage to revive it with lots of water and putting it in the oven, but it was so sour it was disgusting. Really Chef, please take note , sourdough bread shouldn’t taste like a old sour grape. We also bought 2 ‘fresh’ baked banana muffins for desert…. well that was a big bad disappointment. Maybe they made them in the vicinity of some bananas… there wasn’t a hint of banana in them, instead it was a stale hard and dry lump of a muffin, that had a distinct taste of ginger… strange and really not nice.
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