Day 5:
Today is the day of rest for us. But I was up as usual around 5 and around 5:30 I noriced that work life starts very early in Kolkata. There were labourers out at this time putting up a fence along the road.
The others woke up late. Late breakfast. Lazy swim. And we packed up for our departure tonight. Akshaye took this snap of an eagle / kite perched on the hotel window.
We decided to take in a movie, we took a cab and asked for Metropole Mall which was supposed to be close to this hotel around 6 kms. The cabbie was an old catankerous soul who scowled at us and said Rs 150. We decided to take him since there was no one else around. He drove his cab like a tank and blocked the traffic on the byepass by taking a U-turn on the wrong side and making all the drivers brake and curse us.
He barked at us for asking him more details about the mall and what other malls are there in the vicinity and said the hold up in traffic is because of our incessant questions. We held our peace and allowed him to skeeter skatter towards our destination. He finally stops at Metro (the massive wholesale store) and tells us that this is it. We refused to buy that and said he has to drop us only at the Metro Mall. We'd given him exact directions and landmarks such as Opp. Peerless Hospital thanks to the GPS on my phone and he couldn't fool us on the lack of a metro mall. Finally after asking passerbys for directions we reached the mall fought with him when he asked for more and sent him off. I'm glad we did it because the metered charge was only Rs 120 for this distance.
Metropole is a small mall and the theater there didn't have properly functioning Airconditioning. So we hopped on to another cab to go to South City Mall and this time insisted on meter. For just Rs 90 we travelled a 5 kms distance and we discovered the secret of handling the Kolkata cabbie. Just insist on using metered taxi and you'll be fine. It's really cheap. Cheaper than our autos and in slightly more comfortable conditions.
South City Mall was a blessing for our heated up souls and we loved the cool interiors and the massive layout of this place. And yes Fame Cinemas are here and though we couldn't get Ironman which was our first choice, we got Star Trek and this was first day for that movie here. We hung aound eating junk good till our show at 5:00 pm. The theater was like any of our Escape or other screens but the 3D was fantastic. Many a time we blinked, ducked and moved about as though we were in the scene. Did I tell you though that the ticket costs Rs 280 per head. On a friday. Thank God for our theaters which are still affordable. here the theaters are expensive and the malls are prohibitively priced. Wondered how our Sundarband folks would have reacted to this place and its prices.
The movie was fabulous and we had a great experience of 3D here, but we were getting late for our train and had to hurry to get to it in time. Grabbed a metered taxi this time, picked up our luggage at the hotel and reached Sealdah Station by 9 pm for our 10 pm train, the Darjeeling Mail.
But we haven't had time to grab dinner. So I leave my family on the platform at the far end where our bogie was to stop and trudged back almost a km to the food stall. It took me half an hour to get the food because of the crowd, the mismanagement of tokens, the lack of packing materials, etc and I just barely managed to get back to the train.
I noticed that in restaurants here in Kolkata and in Sundarbans, they don't seem to stock up enough for the day and are always running out of items. Also the people who are the bottom of the employment ladder do not behave as savvy and street smart as our Tamilian counterparts. This was an observation after several such interactions with waiters, peons, drivers, shop keepers, etc. The educated ones are supposedly so bright but the uneducated ones seem to be missing some common sense.
Ok, no offence to any of my bengali friends, I may be completely off the mark, but this was the impression I was left with after a few days in West Bengal.
Tonight we spend on the train and tomorrow we reach Siliguri (NJP station) to go onwards into Gangtok and Sikkim.
Today is the day of rest for us. But I was up as usual around 5 and around 5:30 I noriced that work life starts very early in Kolkata. There were labourers out at this time putting up a fence along the road.
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| Work day starts early at 5:30 am |
 |
| View from the window |
 |
| Avian visitor |
He barked at us for asking him more details about the mall and what other malls are there in the vicinity and said the hold up in traffic is because of our incessant questions. We held our peace and allowed him to skeeter skatter towards our destination. He finally stops at Metro (the massive wholesale store) and tells us that this is it. We refused to buy that and said he has to drop us only at the Metro Mall. We'd given him exact directions and landmarks such as Opp. Peerless Hospital thanks to the GPS on my phone and he couldn't fool us on the lack of a metro mall. Finally after asking passerbys for directions we reached the mall fought with him when he asked for more and sent him off. I'm glad we did it because the metered charge was only Rs 120 for this distance.
Metropole is a small mall and the theater there didn't have properly functioning Airconditioning. So we hopped on to another cab to go to South City Mall and this time insisted on meter. For just Rs 90 we travelled a 5 kms distance and we discovered the secret of handling the Kolkata cabbie. Just insist on using metered taxi and you'll be fine. It's really cheap. Cheaper than our autos and in slightly more comfortable conditions.
South City Mall was a blessing for our heated up souls and we loved the cool interiors and the massive layout of this place. And yes Fame Cinemas are here and though we couldn't get Ironman which was our first choice, we got Star Trek and this was first day for that movie here. We hung aound eating junk good till our show at 5:00 pm. The theater was like any of our Escape or other screens but the 3D was fantastic. Many a time we blinked, ducked and moved about as though we were in the scene. Did I tell you though that the ticket costs Rs 280 per head. On a friday. Thank God for our theaters which are still affordable. here the theaters are expensive and the malls are prohibitively priced. Wondered how our Sundarband folks would have reacted to this place and its prices.
The movie was fabulous and we had a great experience of 3D here, but we were getting late for our train and had to hurry to get to it in time. Grabbed a metered taxi this time, picked up our luggage at the hotel and reached Sealdah Station by 9 pm for our 10 pm train, the Darjeeling Mail.
But we haven't had time to grab dinner. So I leave my family on the platform at the far end where our bogie was to stop and trudged back almost a km to the food stall. It took me half an hour to get the food because of the crowd, the mismanagement of tokens, the lack of packing materials, etc and I just barely managed to get back to the train.
I noticed that in restaurants here in Kolkata and in Sundarbans, they don't seem to stock up enough for the day and are always running out of items. Also the people who are the bottom of the employment ladder do not behave as savvy and street smart as our Tamilian counterparts. This was an observation after several such interactions with waiters, peons, drivers, shop keepers, etc. The educated ones are supposedly so bright but the uneducated ones seem to be missing some common sense.
Ok, no offence to any of my bengali friends, I may be completely off the mark, but this was the impression I was left with after a few days in West Bengal.
Tonight we spend on the train and tomorrow we reach Siliguri (NJP station) to go onwards into Gangtok and Sikkim.
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