FIRST WEEKEND UPDATE FROM KOLKATA

KOLKATA AT NIGHT. It is Monday night. Kolkata is smokey at night. It must come from the vehicles, small cooking fires beside the roads, incense being offered to gods, and lanterns that are used in the small shack shops along the roads. It's a heavy haze that smells like, well, all of the above (and a little bit more, given the lack of sewers in the makeshift dwellings).

CHILDREN ON THE STREETS. As I see school children, I miss my own children and the children at our home church. All the school children here wear uniforms. They are so cute. I saw two little boys rolling bicycle tires down the street, pushing them with sticks. Things seem ancient here. A man weighed my purchase with a hand-held scale with weights and measures. Also, I saw a man take up his sleeping mat and walk away.

CONFERENCE IN KOLKATA. We just finished three days of teaching at a conference that was held at a Catholic retreat center here in Kolkata. Some of the 200 participants will board trains this evening and travel between 12 and 18 hours to get back to their homes across India. I spoke this morning and taught four sessions over the previous two days. I spoke through a translator. Sometimes it was for Hindi and sometimes for Oriya. Very interesting.

SINGING BY ALL. You should hear these conference participants sing. No accompaniment other than a drum and tamborine. Imagine 200 men and two women singing Indian songs they love and know well in their own languages--clapping, some dancing. It is inspiring. Joe James and I sang as a duet to them on Sunday, the participants joined us for a well-known song in their respective languages.

TWO KOLKATAS. Kolkata is at least 14 million people. There's no way we will see it all before we leave for Nagpur early on Wednesday morning. We plan to visit Mother Teresa's mother house of the Missionaries of Charity on Tuesday. There are two Kolkatas. One is an up and coming, middle class, high-tech Kolkata. New buildings and office developments are rising on the city's edge. But this Kolkata exists side by side with people who have nothing but bikes, carts, and baskets. They literally live underneath the billboards announcing new condominium developments. A man pulls a cart laden with cabbage next to a sign advertizing Ford automobiles.