Travel Day 876 – Kolkata, INDIA
Today was unfortunately the last day in India for my Tabla brother I had been studying with, but at least we were up to something fun…
Hazy View of the Ganga in Kolkata, India
First off we paid our Tabla teacher a short visit for a last little lesson and a fare-well for my friend. But afterwards we had accepted a kind lunch invitation by one of the Tablaphilia members and we had gladly accepted it, excited about the prospect of having a meal with a local family. They actually lived even a little bit further north of where we were located and so it took us unfortunately a little bit of time to actually find the exact location of the house…
Once we arrived, we had to meet the entire family and we were served coffee with crackers. After the coffee and a tour of the house, we were then seated in the dining room and served a delicious lunch. It seemed only appropriate for us to follow local customs and so we shovelled the rice, daal, vegetables and delicious home-made mango chutney into our mouths with the bare right hand…
After the meal we went for a little walk though the adjacent area, to see the family goddess and finally down to the Ganga. It was overall a very nice area with many crumbling old houses, but for me personally what was more interesting than the sights or the meal itself was the interaction and the conduct of our visit…
A few things were interesting to note because they seemed quite different from any customs that I was used to so far. For example we had brought a box with fresh sweets for all of us to eat as desert after the lunch, but they were kindly accepted and put away. Actually the same thing happened on a family visit with our teacher before, where the sweets brought with us were put away and we were offered something else…
Lunch with the Family in Kolkata, India
Then it seemed unusual to be served coffee before the meal, since in western culture it would be rather after the meal together with the desert. Along with the coffee came some salty crackers rather than sweets and the host family would not have coffee themselves, they only served us and watched us enjoy it. The same thing happened with the lunch. We, as the guests, were served and told to eat while the hosts were watching us, but we insisted that they would sit down and join us as well…
So while the husband and daughter finally sat down with us, the wife was still running around, watching us and making sure that we all had enough to eat and enjoyed the meal. Some of these customs seemed a bit foreign to us, but it was definitely great to be able to observe them and for that, as well as for the kind invitation of a meal with the family, we were very thankful for…
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