The capital city of Orissa, Bhubuneswar, was somewhat of a reality check after the constant chaos and excitement of Kolkata and Puri. No towering monuments, mobs of overeager devotees, or sprawling commercial hubs were to be found here. This is your standard Indian city, where the people work hard in order to maintain their seemingly humble lifestyles. We checked into a hotel, the Arya Palace, so that we could get some rest before our overnight train back to Kolkata. Initially the guy wanted 2000Rs for the room, but I managed to get the price down to 1600Rs with some simple Bengali tactics in not bad for my first legit haggling experience in India. The "palace" was adequate, and had all the essentials, but the transition from the absurdly luxurious hotel in Puri to our mundane temporary dwelling in Bhubuneswar really gave us a perspective on things.
There wasn't really anything to do in or around the hotel, so we just chilled for a while on some quality Oriya produce and shot the shit. We had an especially good conversation with Thampu about life and the various things our family will have to do in the future to maintain its strength. As I always say, shit got real, real-real fast. Eventually, Arny and I decided to get out and explore the surrounding area. We would walk down a main street, take some random turns, and repeat. After a while we realized there wasn't much going on at all, although we did manage to cross the street a few times in an extremely nerve-racking but exciting endeavor in India.
After some more random exploring of the city we were just about ready to call it a day when we finally found something of interest. Even the most humble of cities can have its hidden gems, and for us it was the New Race Bookstore of Bhubuneswar, a tiny place we found in a completely isolated alleyway within the city. It felt good to be surrounded by stacks of books once we were inside, even though half of them were in languages unknown to us. One of the employees was particularly infatuated with us, and followed us around the store making occasional small talk and picking up books we would pick up first, looking at the descriptions despite being unable to speak in English. Who knows, maybe our friend couldn't read at all in a sad reality for many parts of underdeveloped India.
After at least an hour in the store we finally checked out with our selections. We bid farewell to the intensely quiet but friendly bookstore staff of four and rolled back to Arya Palace. Following some sub-mediocre to mediocre room service food, we were once again off to the train station, Kolkata bound, only this time in a three-tier train car in even more ghetto than before. Chyooooooo.
It's just an everyday thang in da hood,
Jeet
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