Summer '10 at ISI Kolkata

Warning: Not a pleasant read for Bengali’s or West Bengal Lovers

                                     

When I got the internship in ISI Kolkata for the summers, I was genuinely excited about it. We, Anurag and me, had mailed several professors of ISI. One fine day we both got a reply from Prof. Susmita Sur-Kolay that she was visiting IIT Kgp the next day and would like to meet us. She was, incidently, the Adjunct faculty of CS Department here for this semester. So we met her the next day and liked her a lot. Although she said the project would be more of a reading course on Graph theory than some real work, we still found the prospect to be a good learning experience.Infact, we started preparing for the project even when we had more pressing things to do, like for instance, prepare for endsems.

Just after the endsems we joined at ISI. I was lucky to get a room in the Guest House. It was due to Prof Bimal Roy, who helped me with the accommodation even though I wasn't working under him. Bless him, for it proved to be a huge help. As it turned out, only the Guest house had Wi-Fi facility and after one month, to my delight, I was moved into an air conditioned room. Not to mention that it was free of charge for me while others, like Anurag and Swati, lived in Hostels and had to pay for the rooms too.

Anyway, this is not what I wanted to talk about. I am writing this post to voice my opinion or rather vent my feelings about the culture and people in Calcutta.

The Taxi Drivers -

                                    

I always knew that people here were laid back. That is okay, but now after these two months I feel they are downright lazy. They would rather sit and discuss politics, life and universe than do work. Take for example, the taxi drivers here. They refuse to go to half the places you ask them to go. And if you ask them at a time when they are huddled in a group drinking tea and playing cards( which is actually most of the time), there is nothing you can offer to pay that would make them move their lazy asses. And they choose where they will go, not you. Considering you do get lucky and they agree to go wherever you want, they immediately sense that you are a newcomer here and they would literally take you on a ride, so fast that when you look at the meter reading, you wouldn’t know what hit you. According to a report by ‘The Times of India’, most taxi most drivers in Kolkata, get meter makers to tamper with the pinion so that it shows a rupee or two extra on every reading. So after spending obscene amounts on a few rides, you would swear never to get into those yellow beasts, whatever happens.

The Traffic - 

                                  


But that doesn't make life simple for you, trust me. The traffic on the roads is mind numbing. You loose track of time after being stuck in the traffic for more than two hours. After a few days here, whenever we thought about going out to eat or watch a movie, we would think about the traffic and shudder. No place was near or far, they were all separated by a sea of taxis, cars, buses and trams, all issuing great deal of smoke and honking their horns. And when we weighed our trip against all this, it never seemed worth the effort.

And every time I cross a road in Kolkata, I always have a vision of getting hit by a bus. No, seriously! Observing the buses on the roads gives me the impression that the drivers are possessed ! And the road just outside ISI always has a mad rush of buses and trucks. So I have a lot of nightmares about dying on that road.

Contemptuous attitude -

And another thing that is very putting off is that people will talk to you in Bengali no matter how many times you have told them that you DON’T know bengali. It just never occurs to them that there are people in this world who speak a different language. 

Apart from the laziness, the people here make you feel that you owe them something. It is something about the way they talk to you. Whether it is a sweeper, a shop keeper, taxi driver, guard or anyone. You ask a shopkeeper for something, he will act like you just caused him immense trouble. The attitude that they are the bosses reeks most from the people lowest in the hierarchy. That is why Bengali people make the worst businessmen. I feel they don’t want to really earn more than what they usually get. Two years in Kgp was the reason I was not surprised when I walked out in the afternoon to buy some snacks and found all shutters down. All shops here open late, shut down at lunch and don’t open till late evening. The owners give utmost importance to their comforts. Eating and taking a nap in the afternoon is what matters the most, who wants to make money?

Inside Campus -

Coming to life inside ISI, it is not as bad as what lies outside the campus. The worst part is that their is no eating place inside the campus. There is this staff canteen which opens only for lunch and whenever I went there, the food had already been finished. After getting disappointed a number of times I began to doubt whether they make any food there in the first place ! 

But once you make your peace with the fact that there is no Veggies, Sahara or Billoo’s as your escape from the muck they serve in the mess, and the fact that you cannot really go out without the risk of getting stuck in the traffic for an eternity or worse getting hit and dying. When you finally make peace with all this, you can live through it. Meals become a mechanical affair, eating only to assuage the burning feeling at the pit of your stomach. 
And life goes on.

Nothing mentionable ever happens inside campus. People with thick eye glasses and clothes that seem to belong to someone else, trudge to the Institute everyday carrying bags and talking animatedly in Bengali. They eat their food on time and disappear by night, after which there is no one on the streets but dogs. The campus is pretty small but green. In the time in which I used to walk from my room to SN gate, in that I can cover the whole ISI campus, twice!

Murphy couldn't have been more right -

Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. My laptop crashed. All my back up data on the external disk got lost because, well, that crashed too! On my way to get the hard disk repaired, someone stole my wallet! So after losing two ATM Cards, ID Card, Insurance card etc etc, I thought life couldn't get any worse. So life decided to surprise me. Anurag got admitted twice in Apollo Hospital which wasn't made any easier by the fact that I had to deal with the Bong staff there and take endless rides to the Hospital. Then Swati and Anurag, both thought it would be fun to leave me alone here and left (that might not have been the only reason though ).

The Silver lining (yes, there is always one) -

As soon as they left, I was in the danger of being engulfed in torturing loneliness but thankfully, I was moved into an air-conditioned double room. It was good to have a fellow warrior in this mortal combat, to know that someone else is eating the same stupid excuse for food, having the same road accident nightmare, finding living in Cal as difficult as you. Always good to have someone with whom you could sit and criticise almost everything :) 
Now that my stay here is almost over, I am quite relieved. There is no love lost between me and Kolkata now and that makes one thing certain- I wouldn’t come running over to Cal every other weekend, like I used to do earlier.

The so called 'project' -

Almost all the work we did here was just reading up topics, implementing algorithms – self study basically. It was good in a way, as I got to learn a lot of things, which was the reason we wanted to come in the first place, but it was also a bit disappointing. The presentations given by the other students, most of them from ISI, were actually a great test of my patience.


Anyway, after cribbing so much about everything, I must admit that I am glad I took up this subject. I learnt a lot about Algorithms, coding was fun and it gave me confidence that I never knew I could have. But whatever happens, I am never ever going to work anywhere in West Bengal after this, not in this lifetime.