Apr 01, 2012 03:38 PM
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(Updated Apr 01, 2012 03:35 PM)
I have to be honest when giving my opinion about Kolkata, find below few of the lesson I have learned from Kolkata:
Airport – The moment you get into the Kolkata airport, you will see the dirty airport inside, the toilets are dirty and not properly cleaned, good trolleys are difficult to find, it leaks during monsoon and taxi counter guys make sure that there is a long line and tries to give you less amount of change than you are supposed to receive, you know you have to be careful. There are many instance where you pay Rs 500 for taxi fare of Rs 250 but the person behind the counter would pretend that he has forgotten to pay you back.
- Railway Station – The moment you are outside the railway station, you will be surrounded by touts who will promise to make available tickets anywhere to India provided you give them some amount of money and tips, the sad truth is that they will take you somewhere desolate and threaten to hurt you or kill you so that you empty out your pockets, If you are coming out of the railway station, you will be surrounded by taxi drivers surrounding you with promise of cheaper fares than prepaid taxi stand, whic.h in actual truth will be costlier than the prepaid amount, or else they will ask you to wait for more than an hour for another passenger to split cost which in any case would still be dangerous.
Autorickshaw - Even in India, Kolkata has got to be one of the few cities where 3-4 people sit together in the front of the auto where only person is to be sitting, be careful before you sit in such Auto's, there have been cases of Auto's tilting and crushing passengers, I once had the unfortunate incident of dropping my mobile phone on the road once, one of the auto drivers promptly returned to me my phone after having taken my memory card.
Taxi - The Yellow Ambassador, an antique smoke belching vehicle where you can feel the heat coming into the cabin is the taxi of choice in Kolkata, it’s probably a copy of morris minor and a vehicle model of the 50’s nevertheless, it still exist. Most of the drivers are Bihari Migrants who borrow the Taxi, Before using a taxi make sure you use it from prepaid or you know the taxi fare, right now they say it’s double the amount in the meter eg Rs 30 would be Rs 60. But just be careful to have enough change or else it could get difficult, also make sure to note down the number of taxi’s if you have lot of luggage, because it’s unlikely they will ever return to you anything that you forget, remember to be careful because I had a bad experience.
Bus – The Bus is one of the more cheaper modes of transportation in Kolkata, it hardly ever exeeds Rs 9. They sometimes over charge me but I sometime tend to over look it as the different tends to be relatively less, they once asked me to pay a full passenger fare for a luggage once, that was a bit funny. It's important to be careful with your wallet and mobile phones inside the bus as I once had the bad experience of being mugged in a crowded bus.
Shopkeepers – Better to be careful than be sorry, if you are going to buy things from the road side in the numerous Bazars, try to find out the market price of goods or else you can be sure that they will be naming a very high price, which has to be bargained depending on your skills, but you rarely get a quote for the right price. One incident that I faced here was with regards to top up of my prepaid phone connection, the top up never happened but the shop keeper insisted that the top up happened, my Bengali was not good enough to argue with that person but lesson learnt, never pay up cash before hand.
Restaurants- Road side Dhaba & Café Coffe Day have one thing in common here, which is serving stale food, I have had many cases of stomach upsets because of the stale food served to me by these outlets, but for many of these restaurants, profits comes before customers health. You can never be too careful. If you’re having an egg, insist on fried egg, maybe it will be more fresh J
Hospital- **I had the duty of attending to a few of my relatives to AMRI Dkhauria, the infamous place where over 90 people died because of fire breakout. When I first visited, I was impressed, Central Air conditioning, huge building, spic and span surrounding but I questioned if the mission statement of the Hospital was to generate profit or help patients, let me illustrate an example- a relative of mine was to be hospitalized and be sent by Ambulance from Airport to Hospital, they made us pay the price of Force Air Conditioned Ambulance(big ambulance) but they sent us a non air conditioned ambulance. They also tend to keep they patients longer than necessary during observation and recovery so that they can generate more profit.
