Some numbers.

Hmm. A few days. A week? A little more than a week.

Ten days.

Ten days is a long time, right? A week of camp is only five days, and if done right, it can feel pretty close to eternal. Ten days is darn close to forever.

I have this theory called India Age. Before I explain it, let me promise that it's completely flawed for many, many reasons. But I've been thinking about it, so I've decided to type it up.

Okay, so...I'm nineteen. I've met a few travelers here who are nineteen, three eighteen. And I'm friends with a lot of people who are in their mid-late twenties and early thirties. But what's strange is this: I've found that I never believe the people who tell me they're eighteen, nineteen, twenty. They look and act so much older. I tell them they're lying. They're really twenty-seven. And then when I admit to being nineteen, everyone looks at me funny and says "no you're not. Wait, really? You don't act like you're nineteen." And though they assure me that I don't seem nineteen, they can't tell me what age they thought I was.

A few days ago, I stayed up super-late with a guy from Australia, a girl from Holland, and a few other Americans (there haven't been many Americans in Paragon until recently; I don't know why they all decide to come to Kolkata in time for sweltering heat). After being generally giggly and joking about metaphysics (it was a fantastic group), we got to talking about age. Turns out there were two nineteens, one twenty-four, one twenty-five, one twenty-seven, and one twenty-eight. And the guy that I had clicked best with was, in fact, the oldest, and I was the youngest. And I didn't believe Simone when she said she was nineteen, and no one believed me until I showed them the graduation date on my IWU shirt.

Thus, I'm starting to think that maybe technical age, in terms of time spent on earth, isn't something we think about here.

I think we tend to think about age a lot in the States because it's easy to compare people by age. We're all on vaguely the same path - high school, college, job, family (which is a silly set of restrictions, p.s.), so it's easy to think of someone who's older as having generally more life experience. Here? No. We're all in India. We're all experiencing something completely new, and it's as if the moment our planes land our age hits the reset button. And I've noticed that it seems we all interact as if we're exactly the same age, with one clear exception: those who have been here longer are communicated with as if they're older, and the people who have been here for less time act more like worried children or teenagers concerned about their impression on others. Which creates an odd social conundrum for me, because I'm technically the baby of nearly every group, but I'm treated as one of the oldest because I've been here for four months.

Hm.

Second topic involving numbers: the temperature. It's freaking hot. This hot. But it feels hotter. I've never felt this type of heat. It feels thick, like constant damp heaviness pressing in on all sides. It's hard to breathe. It's near impossible to sleep. I've been waking up with migraines from the pressure. I asked Reshma (at Apne Aap) if it gets hotter, and she said yes. Much hotter. The forecast is 100 for the day I leave.

Third topic, then I'm off to Kalighat.

Money. Gosh, money is weird. For the next two weeks, I'm literally living off of two dollars a day, not counting rent. This is quite easy to do here.

Walk to Motherhouse: free.
Breakfast: free.
Bus to Kalighat: 4 rupees.
Tea at Kalighat: free.
Metro to Park Street: 2 rupees.
Lunch at Apne Aap: free.
Auto to Park Street: 6 rupees.
Dinner at Khalsa, Tirupati, wherever: approximately 25 rupees.
Water during the day: 20 rupees.
Internet: 20 rupees.

Actually, that's 52 rupees. Which is a dollar.

And then there's rent, which is 125 rupees a day.

That's around 180 rupees a day, which is about $3.50.

The exchange rate is so screwy.

I'll write more about this later.
About how McDonald's is one of the most expensive restaurants in Kolkata.

It's Kalighat time.

Love and numbers,
Stephanie