Retire to India

King’s Savor is a cozy little coffee shop on the lower level of City Centre Mall in Siliguri. It serves handmade sandwiches and fresh desserts. It also serves Himalayan Cornerstone Coffee. Haven’t heard of it? Just you wait.

Fans of Jamaican Blue Mountain or Hawaiian Kona coffees may pooh-pooh the idea that the hillsides of Darjeeling can produce arabica beans as fabulous as the hillsides of Jamaica and Hawaii do. Well, I pooh-pooh their pooh-pooh. In fact, I stake my reputation as a coffee connoisseur* on it.

*Might have to spell that with a “k”.

But before staking my reputation on coffee, I need to finish staking my reputation on pizza.

Okay, enough of the Best Pizza, back to the Best Coffee Shop in India.

It’s a happy family enterprise so everything has a personal touch. Noel’s wife, Shashi and their daughters do everything from the brewing to the baking to working the register to creating the art on the wall.

There are many good coffee shops in India from Cafe Coffee Day to Starbucks but not many have that university coffeehouse feeling you get at King’s Savor. It’s what the owner, Noel, was aiming for and he hit the bull so exactly in the eye that even Covid couldn’t kill it. (And boy, did it try.)

King’s Savor. A peaceful place to sit and relax from racing around like a maniac at the mall.

PS (Remind me not to look so smug all the time. A writer is supposed to look pensive and thoughtful once in a while.)

It has been over a year since my last blog. Who’d’ve thought this Covid plague would go on so long? (Besides you, of course. I’m sure you warned us ten or eleven times. If only we’d all listened to you.)

The bad news for India is the number of cases suddenly shot up faster than anywhere in the world. At its peak, in May 2021, there were over 400,000 new cases a day. (Don’t ask why. Scientist and politicians are still getting into fistfights over why the rocket-like surge so just don’t ask.) The good news for India is the number cases suddenly shot down faster than anywhere in the world. Less than 9,000 news cases a day by Thanksgiving. (Remember. Don’t ask why. Fistfights. Just be thankful.)

The good news for me is I was back in India before Christmas. All tourist visas were suspended last year until further notice but due to the Big Drop, the government is allowing tourists to trickle back in from limited locations for a limited time to see what happens. But they’re taking no chances. You need to apply for a special visa, good for only 30 days. (I’ll take it! It took awhile to apply but the Visa was granted the very next day. Way to hustle, India!) You need to show a negative Covid test not more than 72 hours before entering the country. (Got it. My 12th negative test in the last year. A world’s record, I think). You need a special new “Air Suvidha” health declaration. Mine arrived just 12 hours before my flight. (Wasn’t really worried – it’s good to have your nails bitten to the quick once in a while.) Then, finally, off to Siliguri via Paris via Delhi.

There won’t be a lot of time to do any major exploring this trip. But after a year and a half, I was just happy to see my old stomping grounds were still there.

And my good old, good old apartment was still there.

As soon as I was all settled in again, my friend Indi introduced me to what I unequivocally declare is the Best Pizza in All India. It’s at the Dakini Cafe. And it’s just a ten minute walk from where I live! What are the odds? (I have an app for this kind of thing and it says the odds are exactly one billion to one.)

If you’ve ever had New York hand-tossed, thin-crust pizza, you’ll have an idea of how good the crust is. If you’ve ever had Chicago deep-dish pizza, loaded with stretchy cheese and fresh everything, you’ll have an idea what the top is like. Put them all together and they spell something that’s not exactly a word – it’s more like a long string of m’s – but everyone gets what you mean. I call it “Slice of Siliguri!” (Wait, no that stinks.) I call it “Siliguri Super Duper Pizza!” (Yak, that’s even worse! Might want to stick with the long string of m’s.)

Tune in next week for the Best Coffee Shop in All of India! Well, maybe not all India but definitely all Siliguri. No, I change my mind, All of India!

After a nice, long, well-fed, questionably-earned rest in Chicago, I attended a wedding in California. In fact, I walked my niece, Jennifer, down the aisle!

Then I flew up the coast to see my other dear little sister, Mary, and nephew, Hank, in Portland. (Which was still intact, contrary to the sensational, fiery images broadcast all summer.)  

My most excellent brother, Erik John, drove down from Seattle to pick me up and take me home where his wonderful wife, Darla, fed me and fed me and fed me. Especially Kavala, a Scandinavian meat and potatoes dish my family has been handing down from generation to generation. (Two generations.) 

The many enthusiastic summer rioters left Seattle standing as well – although the district I lived in during college announced that they were seceding from the union. Protest-weary city fathers just shrugged and said “Okay”. (No police, no government, just glass-breaking fun and chaos which drew plenty of nervous laughter from looted shopkeepers and terrorized home owners.) The rebels soon grew bored and let the police trickle back in. Despite law and order being restored, a few shop and homeowners could still be heard laughing nervously and hammering in For Sale signs. 

From there, I flew to Minneapolis on a flight that was surprisingly jam-packed – middle seats and all.

I stayed with my friends John and Kay and set a personal best for peaceful contemplation and whirlwind socializing – 34 pals in 16 days! (A record, if in nothing but cheeseburgers consumed). 

Then back to Chicago for a covid-consciously small Thanksgiving. The dinner was classic: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows and a Triple Berry pie I stole from Baker’s Square. (Police agreed to look the other way. Long, peculiar story.) 

Thankfully, in spite of all that galavanting, I tested negative for covid three times. 

Tested negative for lots of other viruses, too.

But nobody cares about them anymore. Only covid. It’s the new Big C. 

Good news!  As I write this, our own dear Big Pharma has just come up with two vaccines that could save hundreds of millions of lives. They’re certain to save a few million from covid and, if successful, could save the rest of the world from economic suicide. 

Bad news!  Nobody wants to be the first to take them – except President Trump (and apparently, he doesn’t count). 

So it looks like the world may be standing on the ledge awhile longer. 

In the meantime, I’ll be spending Christmas with Joe, Dan, Jenny, Jenna and my grandkids, Addie, Thomas and Joyce.

Sad news for me. This will be my last Retire to India post till I can retire back to India and get a picture of something that’s there. That may not be as soon as I’d like. India needs to make sure beloved foreigners, like myself, aren’t stamping about coughing and wheezing all over their beloved citizenry. Play it safe, India.

Finally, to all my Valued Readers who’ve made my humble travel blog such a phenomenal success, Merry Christmas 2020!

All good things must come to an end – at least temporarily. Every six months, we happy tourists are required to leave the country for a time.

Bangkok is a great place to take a break. So is Kathmandu and Colombo. But until the coronavirus travel ban is lifted, I’ll be taking my break in America.  

The bad news is there is no telling when all the restrictions will end.

The good news is I can visit all my pals and my family in their natural habitats. (All of which have better internet connections than my little place in Salugara.)

Leaving India was not only a bit sad, it was a bit trickier than usual.

You had to arrive early for the evacuation flight from Siliguri to Delhi so they could squirt your luggage with some kind of anti-covid juice. 

From Delhi, you waited for the 2am flight to Amsterdam. Nine-hours long with no hot food due to covid rules – but comfortable. Nobody in the middle seats!

I’d never been to Holland. But I knew they had windmills. So I looked and looked.

Finally, I spied one.

The wait in Amsterdam was nice and long, too. But thanks to covid, there were lots of interesting things you couldn’t do.

From Amsterdam, it was a jolly nine-hour airplane ride across the Atlantic – still no hot food.

However, there was a very pleasant surprise in Detroit.

I was told international travelers were being quarantined in Chicago. But in Detroit, all they do is give you a piece of paper with a QR code on it and advise you to click on the code if you start to feel covid-ish.

In Chicago, they were a bit less trusting – at first anyway. 

“And just where did YOU come from?” 

“Detroit.”

“Oh! Then, welcome to Chicago!”

And that was it. My dear little Chicago sister, Margo, and her lovable brother-in-law, Bob, met me at the airport and soon, I was zipping down the freeway to their house in Palatine at 75 miles-an-hour! (In India they drive crazy fast, too – but at half the speed). 

Once we arrived, they plopped me into an amazingly comfortable leather armchair. I felt like a big, tired baseball in a big, soft mitt. They handed me a freshly grilled cheeseburger, a mug of Starbucks coffee, the remote to a gigantic flat-screen television and told to make myself at home.

What with the Big 50-hour trip, the Big Pandemic, the Big Election and the Big Riots, I almost forgot to pat the dog. Almost.

Our class had twelve instructor wannabes. Of all the activities we learned for teaching English as a second language, everyone’s favorite was “A What?”

The instructor lines the class up in a circle, spots an eager face, holds up a banana and asks the individual to answer three times, “A what?” On the fourth time, he’s allowed to “get it”.

INSTRUCTOR: “This is a banana.”

STUDENT: “A what?”

INSTRUCTOR: “A banana.”

STUDENT: “A what?”

INSTRUCTOR: “A banana.”

STUDENT: “A what?”

INSTRUCTOR: “A banana.”

STUDENT: “Ohhhh! A banana!“

Then that smirking student turns to the one next to him and repeats the dialogue.

Even quiet, macho sorts who are careful to never appear foolish – especially in front of women – would guffaw and jump into the spirit of the thing with gusto.

Once back at the beginning, the teacher merely has to announce the next object, (“Shoe.” “Mouse trap.”) and off they go again, merrily teaching themselves.  

Being an instructor is a hoot. Preparing for the next day’s hilarity is…well, it’s the opposite (couldn’t find an antonym for “hoot” in my thesaurus). 

The stress of an eight-hour class followed by the task of inventing three 15 to 20-minute fun, fun drills from scratch had me wringing my head till two and three in the morning. Having to repeat the process five days a week for five long, long, LONG weeks is the reason I look the way I do. 

After a few weeks, we took turns being instructors and judging our peers.  That was also a hoot (for the judges).

Then came the eagerly-awaited but terrifying practicum (EAGER BUT TERRIFIED MUFFLED SHRIEKS GO HERE).  A full day with real, paying, foreign students. 

These were serious-looking men and women – some with hair-raising stories of escape from Afghanistan. They were not here to be amused by your stupid humor. They came to learn English and you’d jolly well better teach them some – now! I stood up and said with a slight tremor in my voice,

“This…is a…banana.”

“A WHAT?!” 

“A…(gulp)…a banana.”

By the time they got to “Ohhhh! A banana!” some of them were pounding the table laughing.  So, they all learned some English that day.

And we all graduated…

….and everyone lived happily ever after. 

As much fun as it is traipsing around the Indian subcontinent doing nothing, it occurred to me that traipsing around the countryside doing something might be interesting, too. So I considered what a guy with forty plus years in advertising might do. Remembering of course, that when you’re on a tourist visa, your job is to have fun. If you won’t do that, beat it. You are not allowed to work for money. You can’t even work as a volunteer.

I considered creating clever TV commercials for my favorite Indian product, Uncle Chipps – for free. But my keen business sense told me that the ad agency that currently offers that service to Uncle Chipps – for money – might wince. (Plus, beating their current campaign, “Sez my lips, I love Uncle Chips.” would be a challenge.)

What if I offered (also for free) to punch up poorly worded headlines? Examples were all around (e.g., this public service campaign for safe driving). 

I’d have said, “Safe Drives Saves Lives”. Then I realized, that wasn’t much better. Plus, members of the Poorly Worded Headline Writers Association of India would be hissing at me from every alleyway and trash barrel.  

Okay, forget advertising. What if I taught English? 

I mean, what if I helped overworked Indian teachers teach English?

And do it for nothing. 

So I zipped back to Delhi and enrolled in a TESOL school (Teaching English as a Second Language).

On my first day, I thought they’d started without me. I could hear people babbling English and I ran up the stairs. When I got to the door, I stopped. I had stumbled into an outsourced tech support center. (I’d called them plenty of times from the US, but had never see one. Looked hot.)

My class was on a different floor. Our instructors were Sam, Grace and Janine.

Janine is an Australian, Grace is Philippino and Sam is an American who started the program. He lives in the Far East and travels about doing crash courses like this.

I call it a crash course. Every day, after eight hours of class and eight to ten hours prepping for the next class, I’d crash. We went through four textbooks, preparing lesson after lesson all night and then teaching it in class during the day.  

It felt like a 15-week course squished into five. Not everybody stuck it out. Not everyone who stuck it out graduated. And everybody was twenty to fifty years younger than I was. I was exhausted. For the last couple weeks, things became surreal. 

I remember a window display. The mannikens looked weird and misshapen.

I remember huge demonstrations. Religious marchers one day. The next, hundreds of Sikhs on motorcycles with twirly mustaches and turbans celebrating their 300th anniversary. 

I remember the martian invasion.

I remember being drenched in sweat, lugging my backpack full of textbooks up the stairs of an overpass. The heat index read 46 celsius – 115 degrees.

But I kept hanging in there. Every time I’d say, “Can’t…go…on…(gasp)” I’d slap myself, “Quit whining you big sissy-baby.”  And, clenching my teeth, I’d do what a man has to do.

Thums Up. Twice the sugar. Twice the caffeine.

Not to be confused with “Indian Pudding”. That bland corn dish popular with early New Englanders. (Current ones too, probably.)

For a civilization that’s 6,000 years old, India seems overly influenced by a measly 200 years of British rule. 

The English forced them to build a top-notch railway system,…

…adopt a legal system that’s surprisingly fair…

…and excel at cricket (beating the English at their own game in 1983).  

But there’s one thing Indians dug in their heels about and that’s pudding. 

Brittania may rule the waves but when it comes to making pudding, she stumbles – her hair gets in her eyes, her glasses steam up and her crown slides over one ear.  I see you leaping to England’s defence. “What about Hasty Pudding?”  

Sounds good but it’s just mush. Blood Pudding? Yick! It’s not even as good as it sounds. 

“Surely,” you say, “surely, you must concede Rice Pudding to be a bonafide, lip-smacker.” True enough. But where do you think they got it? Rice doesn’t grow in England. 

In India, Rice Pudding is called Kheer. Twenty-four hundred years ago, Emperor Chandragupta was wolfing it down from bowls of fine silver while the Druids were poking about for nuts and berries at Stonehenge. 

The original Kheer was so delicious, it was reserved for Hindu gods – and thereby hangs a tale.

You may have heard different versions of this legend but once upon a time, India’s greatest chess master (who also happened to be the emperor) had a standing challenge that anyone who could beat him in a game of chess could name his reward. An old sage accepted the challenge and won the game. 

The reward he asked for was simple: one grain of sand on the first square of a chess board. Two on the second, four on the third and so on doubling each square. 

With a contemptuous snort, the emperor accepted but to the surprise of everyone (except you math majors out there) before he even reached the final row, the king owed the sage enough grains to cover the entire subcontinent knee deep in rice. 

Then the sage revealed himself to be the Hindu god, Lord Krishna, who told the king he didn’t have to pay it all at once. He merely had to give one bowl of Kheer to any pilgrim who visited his temple. That custom continues to this day.

And as of this writing, if you google “How many Kheer recipes are there?” you’ll get five million, three hundred and fifty thousand results. Here, in my opinion, are the best four.

I can state, unequivocably, that Rice Pudding in India is as good as it gets.  To be fair, Rice Pudding made properly anywhere is as good as it gets. It’s  just rice boiled in milk with sugar and anything else you like shoved in. (Let’s face it, we pudding lovers are a simple people.) 

Looking through my miscellaneous photos, this Thai restaurant window display caught my eye. 

As a former adguy, I can imagine the meeting where they agreed on this marketing strategy. (CLIENT: “I don’t see any food.” AGENCY: “Everybody knows what food looks like, what people want to see is that we give them baskets of it. And our prices are so low, we’ll probably go out of business and that makes us sad. Focus groups loved it!” CLIENT: “Oh. Well, okay then, I guess.”

On a culture shock scale of one to ten, riding a camel in India gets a ten.

Riding the metro in Bangkok gets a one.

As long as we’re doing comparisons, there’s a clock tower in Kolkata that kind of familiar.

Here’s another comparison: Can you tell that the man in the picture on the left, is 107 years old? (Not the guy in the hat – the other guy.) I saw him again the following year. Can you tell he’s 108? (You can? Wow, you’re good!)

I took this fairly innocuous picture of a little village dolly but when I was going through my photos, I stopped. There seems to be a dog in the shot.

Can you see him? (Look to the right of the girl.) I don’t remember a dog being there before. You have to admit, that’s a bit out of the ordinary. Then I noticed, as I’m writing this, it’s almost Halloween. Is this a ghost dog? (What other explanation could there possibly be?)

And what about this monkey? Could this be a ghost monkey? 

No. It’s a real monkey.  Would a ghost monkey be hanging onto the wire like he’s afraid he’ll fall? You’re letting your imagination run away with you. 

But don’t feel bad, I’ve seen whole cities let their imaginations run away with them. In Bangkok, for example, you can find post-nuclear war architecture – even though there has never been a nuclear war! (Except for the end of World War II, of course.)

Since we have a little extra time, here’s a quick review: Is this a harmless snake or a poisonous one? 

Check the color of the bands and figure it out. But hurry, he’s getting closer…red, black, yellow, black…whew! Harmless. Go ahead, pick him up. Give him a cute name…Snaky, Stripey,…No wait! (Red, yellow, black, yellow,…) POISON SNAKE! RUN!

A few months ago, I was visiting some friends when we heard a commotion in the henhouse. Cobra! Some young men and I grabbed machetes and rifles and dashed to the rescue. A swift battle ensued and behold the dreadful result.

Are you concerned that some pal of this cobra might seek revenge? That he might chase me down no matter where I go? Or that he might drink my milk?  Allow me to allay your fears with this myth-buster chart I saw at the zoo in Darjeeling. 

In India, pedestrians cross the road in a single leap at the first beep of your horn. Not goats. Goats know who has the right of way – they do. Charge up as abruptly as you want, it doesn’t faze them a bit. Screech to a stop as dangerously close as you like and honk as many times as you please, they will neither accelerate their pace nor even acknowledge that you exist. 

This is a picture of six kids playing pig pile. Can you see them all? I can’t.

India has the same roadside litter problem America had in the 1950’s.  So,  which do you think will best solve the problem – monkey garbage cans or seal garbage cans?

It’s only been about a century that Man has been able to see things from  stratospheric heights with his own eyes. 

Even after decades of plane rides, Man (me) still gets a crink in his neck from staring goggle-eyed at sights that, for 99% of human history, only angels were privileged to see. But on many flights now, you’re instructed to close your window so passengers can watch reruns of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.

Eventually, Man (me still, I hope) will be cruising in starships among far flung galaxies like this one.

And while I’m happily hyperventilating, I expect some annoyed individual will tap me on the shoulder and say, “Would you please shut your window? We’re playing ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’.”

More photo flotsam next week.

Saw this in Sri Lanka on the way out of Colombo. It looks like the government paved the roads to all major destinations and had a bunch of pavement left over. So they built the Etc Lane which, my guess, takes you to all the places in Sri Lanka not worth mentioning. 

As you may have figured out by now, I haven’t been traveling around India much lately thanks to the SARS CoV-2. That’s the virus that gives you the new (novel) disease known as COVID 19. (That’s the novel COronaVIrus Disease of 2019. Isn’t the internet great?) The whole messed up world thanks you, SARS virus version 2.0.

Most of my travel blog this year has been me expounding upon all the thrill-packed touring I did before February. But I’m beginning to run low on material. Therefore, this post is dedicated to some of the miscellaneous pictures I haven’t used yet.  So you’re kind of in my Etc Lane.

Here’s a tiny batch butter churn I saw in Darjeeling. An invention that let Indian pioneer women crank out a stick of butter an hour. 

Indian trains rock along most pleasantly, and each sleeper bed is provided with a brown paper package filled with freshly laundered linen. Unrelated facts to most of us, but not to this mom.

And in the Changzhou airport, they were broadcasting the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Don’t try to count all the people in this single float display. (After about a million, I lost track.)

And here’s that frog band you’ve all been waiting to see.

You’ve probably done this before but if you stand in the middle of two mirrors just right, you can see an infinite number of yourself! That’s right, an infinite number! And, according to legend, the last one of you is made of chocolate. (If I read the Book of Random Legends correctly.)

I have a few more random photos to show but my nickel’s worth of internet time has expired.  

PS (If you saw a shot I’ve already used in a post, feel free to write a scathing comment. Or be magnanimous – pride yourself on your great memory, shake your head at my poor one and click the thumbs up.)