A Day in the Life with the Sarkar's of Surul, West Bengal, India

After a random post on Facebook, my dear friend/ex-colleague/ex-work wife, invited me to join her family at their home in India, in the town of Surul, about 100km north of Kolkata.  And, yeah, it's a big house. I arrived on the 26th of December in the midst of what turned out to be a family reunion.

A day in the life started with morning tea served as each of us awoke and then around 9AM breakfast was served.  That's Shahana's Dad with his two grandkids, D and A.

Most of the morning and early afternoon was spent up here on the roof, in the sun.

Reading, napping and getting a tan were pretty much the only activities.  Not a bad way to spend five days.

There was always some afternoon activity.  This day involved us tooling around Surul and D driving for the first time!!

Alas, it's India and sometimes the driveway is blocked by an cow-pulled cart.

Early evening.....cocktail/tea hour.  From 6PM until 9PM was general conversation, reading but ALWAYS with pre-meal snacks.  My favorite?  Muri, a spicy puffed rice with peas and nuts!

When the family reunion was happening, we would eat dinner in shifts.

I came for the Indian food, and great Indian food is what I got.  No disappointment here at all.

Then in the evening.....epic games of Settlers of Catan and Cities and Knights of Catan.  I think we played at least five complete games.  Carl won most games but paid me the ultimate compliment that he always played to stop me.

Our cook on the left and one of the servants on the right.  It's interesting that even still there are things that the servants do.  If I picked up a chair, one of the guys would come over and take it from me.  If I tried to hand them food, they wouldn't take it from me.

My favorite.....Asha!!!

So, from the roof of the house, one looks over a new basketball court, and a dirt volleyball court (left).  It turns out that S's father has started "The Surul Foundation" here in his hometown to help improve general welfare.  There is a tutoring, a doctor who comes weekly and he has built these public access facilities.

Things are so new, that when I got there, they were still tightening the rims and painting the lines.  A local team challenged us Americans to a game of basketball.  Alas, being the gimp that I am (I sucked at basketball before my injuries, anyway) I didn't participate.

S's Dad (seated in purple) holding court over his domain!

The game IN ACTION.

The locals watching the game.

We all saw this giant and were thinking, it's an Indian Yao Ming.  Turns out, his height was a non-factor as he was slow and didn't have many of the fundamentals.

Even Asha (orange saree) was out on the court hooping it up!

Final Score!  Turns out that once the locals found out that there were American's in town, we got challenged to two more games.

The Surul Foundation is thinking about installing a remote medical service (meaning a local doctor can take readings and then send data electronically to hospitals in a bigger city and get diagnoses that way).  Somehow, I was in on the discussion.

One of the things that S's Dad is interested in is teaching the local kids the fundamentals of basketball, so after the games, we would get out there and teach them how to dribble, pass and make bank shots.  I contributed by rebounding!!  That's about the extent of my basketball skills!