With Bron and Ben still recovering from their long trip yesterday, we decided to go for a walk after breakfast to help them acclimatise. I took everyone past the house I used to live in (HA Block) when we first moved to Kolkata in the early 90s. The house doesn’t look maintained at all with overgrowth all around. It used to have an impressive atrium with two storey high ceilings and a mezzanine to get to the bedrooms. None of that is visible anymore with the paint peeling and a patchwork of repairs all over.

We walked to a local sweet shop (Banchharams) with a wide collection of traditional Bengali sweets. Everyone got to pick their favourites and we were quite overwhelmed by the choice and ended up with way too many sweets. Our selection ranged from the rasgullas, misti doi through to kheer kadam, kaju barfi through to mango barfi and ladoos.

After an afternoon siesta we headed out to a local shopping mall to get some new clothes for everyone. Emily wanted a new Indian dress while Matthew wanted to try on some new shirts. As we wouldn’t all fit in my parents car anymore, we ordered an Uber to make it easier. A drive that has previously taken us upto 15 minutes with my dads driver, this time took no longer than 5 minutes. All traffic signals were merely advisory to the Uber driver and he zipped along on the wrong side of the road to get past traffic, went through red lights and weaved his way between buses at breakneck speed. The ride in itself was an experience.

For dinner we went back to Rasam at the Stadium for some South Indian delicacies. We tried the mini fried idlis for starters which were surprisingly crunchy on the outside and tender within. This time Tom and Emily shared a dosa between themselves which worked out a lot better.