End of Course, Part Three

And finally, Graduation Day arrived. As is fitting of DSSC, we were first required to go through three full rehearsals to prepare ourselves for marching on-stage and receiving our parchments. The College would pass up no chance to make our lives just a little more miserable. Anyway, although we were all thrilled to be finally done with the College and on our way back to our homes, it was bittersweet to be leaving so many new-found close friends. I look forward to visiting them all in the near future.

Some assorted pictures with friends, post-graduation:

With Vikas, Indian Army

Me and Phady, Indian Air Force

With Jose, Chilean Navy

With Job, Indian Navy

Me and Jerome, Lesotho Army

Group Photo: Tim (UK), Chris (Singapore), Jeff, Alex (UK), Ki-Nam (Korea), Ruwan (Sri Lanka), me, Zul (Malaysia), Dave (Australia), Riva (Indonesia), Shamim (Bangladesh), Ranjith (Sri Lanka), Ashish (Nepal) and Lanka (Sri Lanka)

With Roj, Nepal Army; Alim, Bangladesh Army; Ashish Nepal, Army; and Siddique, Bangladesh Navy

Me and Anurag, Indian Navy, and his wife Sonia

With Manpreet, Indian Army, and his wife Neelu

With Manish and Sudeep, Indian Air Force, Anu, and Bhushan, Indian Navy

Posing with our flags...Chris, Singapore Air Force and Alex, Royal Air Force

Me and Bhushan, Indian Navy

With Amin and Naeem, Afghanistan Army

With graduation behind us, it was time to say our final good-byes to Wellington. Before heading back to the US though, I had one last trip to make to Delhi and northern India...

End of Course, Part Two

And more parties...

With Rana and my sponsor student, Gangs

At Jeff's house: Me, Prashant, Jazna, Alex, Jeff, the Wahis and Jose

At Dave and Vanessa's ANZAC Day party...

Me and Ruslan

With my Sri Lankan buds, Ranjith and Lanka.

Group photo: Tim, Ruslan, me, Dave, Shamim, Alex, Jeff, Siti, Ranjith and Michael

Group photo #2: Alex, Dave, Ranjith, me, Jeff, Lanka and Jose

And some other last moments in and around Wellington:

Our last official social function...cocktails with the Commandant: Roj, Ruslan, Alim, me, Ashish, Lanka and Siti

Foreign officers gather for a group photo at the final Foreign Student Presentation for Zambia.

Every week the foreign officers got together to play soccer. This turned into the one thing that we always looked forward to and kept us going. We called our team the Firangi Devils (firangi sort of means foreign in Hindi) and I will miss playing with these guys every weekend.

Firangi Devil team photo

Scrimmage with the Indian officers.

Battle scars; I'm still rehabilitating my elbow and wrist.

And lastly, I'd like to express my thanks to my faithful staff, Mary and Pinto. They constantly made my life in India easier and I will miss their hard work and attentiveness. I hope they continue to work for the Air Force/Navy house long into the future.

Next stop, Graduation...

End of Course, Part One

The coming of Spring brought about the long-awaited final month of the course. To celebrate, almost the entire month was dedicated to end-of-course parties. First up was the final party at my own house. We had a packed house of over 50 people, and it was great to close the year with the good friends I'd made throughout the course.

Me, Jeff, AJ and Jose

Standing: Dorji (Bhutan), Naeem (Afghanistan), Riva (Indonesia), Dung (Vietnam), Jerome (Lesotho), Ali (Oman) and Ruwan (Sri Lanka); Seated: Celestine (Nigeria), Michael (Zambia), Ahmed (Saudi Arabia), Zul and kids (Malaysia)

Vikas, Jeff, Steve, AJ, Alex and me

Gangs, Rohit and Neetu, Jeff, Phady and me

AJ and Alex smoke cigars--they'd both be sick within the hour.

Other assorted parties followed shortly thereafter, including...

Naeem and I enjoying cocktails at Anurag's house.

Me, Naeem, Ali, Anurag, Mohammed and Amin at dinner.

Bangladesh National Day and Alim's son Arik's birthday. L: Alim and Lia hold Arik; R: Alim, Dung, Celestine, me, Michael and Santosh

Posing with the Bangladeshis...Siddique and Alim

Party at Jeff's: Me, Tim, Jeff, Mohammed and Ruslan

Another highly-anticipated end-of-course event was the Mounted Gymkhana. This exhibition was put on by the riding club and showcased the many equestrian events at the College. Though I didn't participate in the riding, it made for an interesting morning and no one fell of their horse.

L: Mounted ceremonial guards R: Regimental pipers...who knew there were so many Scottish Indians?

Polo exhibition

Tent pegging--basically, charging down a line and spearing a block on the ground...preferably without falling off of the horse or turning yourself into a pole vaulter

Equestrain team parade

Show jumping

The College still holds traditional fox hunts...here they display riding to the hounds.

Calcutta

The end of the fifth term at Staff College brought about our final term break. My friend Alex (UK) and I decided to head north to the city of Calcutta, or Kolkata as it's now called. Calcutta is a city of around 15 million and the third-largest city in India (behind Mumbai and Delhi). Calcutta also has a storied history as the one-time capital of India during the British Raj-era. Calcutta is polluted, dirty, over-crowded and full of poverty. But it's also a vital part of India with a vibrant culture, loads of colonial architecture and intense spirituality. After settling in at our hotel (the Oberoi Grand, which I now highly recommend), we took a quick walk around the old British administrative part of town.

The Writer's Building, now an Indian government office building.

The General Post Office, built over the site of old Fort William and the Black Hole of Calcutta incident.

L: Posing in front of the memorial for the victims of the Black Hole.
R: In the cemetery at St. John's Church...lots of memorials for British colonials who died of exotic diseases

View of a small boat crossing the Hooghly River at sunset.

The next day we hired a car and driver and took a half-day guided tour of the city. First stop was the Motherhouse, the house where Mother Teresa lived and still the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa's living quarters are still maintained as when she was alive...a very simple, small room with just a cot and a desk.

L: Mother Teresa's tomb
R: Grotto in the Motherhouse

Door to the Motherhouse.

Next we visited the Pareshnath Jain Temple. Jains are an offshoot of Hinduism that stress the sancitity of all living things. The whole temple was decorated with mirrors and semi-precious stones, and to be honest, gave off a bit of a garish Velvet Elvis vibe.

L: Front of the temple, R: Posing with a statue of the temple's builder

An easter-egg colored museum attached to the temple.

We also stopped at the Victoria Memorial, a huge classical stone building filled with statues of famous British figures from India's colonial past. Alex felt right at home.

Calcutta's vibrant culture can best be seen in the cities markets. College Street is right near Calcutta University and is full of stall after stall of used book sellers.

The flower market is located underneath the Howrah Bridge along the banks of the Hooghly River. This market is filled with vendors making and selling flowers for religious rituals.

After checking out the markets, we moved to the south side of town to visit the Kalighat Temple. This temple is dedicated to the goddess Kali, and is responsible for the city's name. Like most Hindu temples, Kalighat was packed with worshippers straining to see the goddess idol. Kali is a goddess of death and destruction. There was an altar behind the temple where worshippers could pay to sacrifice goats to the goddess. Interesting. Unfortunately, photos weren't allowed inside the temple.

The streets around Kalighat with the temple in the background.

Right next to Kalighat is Mother Teresa's Home for the Sick and Dying.

Overall, the chaos of Calcutta seems uniquely Indian and is worth the trip if you can deal with the filth and masses of humanity. Some final scenes of chaotic Calcutta streets...

Streetcar traffic jam...the tram is coming towards the camera, but no one's in any of those cars...

Busy intersection, count the different types of taxis...regular cab, auto-rickshaw, bike rickshaw and foot rickshaw.