Sandy Noel's Fulbright in India: Living in Kolkata

Me & our cook, Sujita

Living here in India is definitely an experience. When we arrived to Kolkata from Delhi, USIEF funded for us to live in another very nice hotel until we decided on our living arrangements. Apartment hunting took forever but I think we made the best choice. Year after year, 20+ years now, Fulbrights have been living in our current apartment. When we first got here, we went apartment hunting to see our options but once again this apartment was convenient because of its location to our schools, the nearest metro, and it is located in a safe neighborhood.

Our Living Room

Living wise, one of the Fulbrights, Fay, lives in a guest house with her own landlord while the four (Carolina + Kara + Hunter + Me) of us live in one apartment building, where all Fulbrights have lived. In India, the apartments typically have two bedrooms, small kitchen, and common area (living room). The four of us kind of live together because we all live on the same floor and our apartments connect via the balcony. I share my apartment with Hunter (the only guy).

Our Kitchen

Our landlord is a cool professor. He lives on the third floor with his family. Sure enough, our landlord decorated each of the apartments to make them ‘homey’ for guests. As part of our rent, Sujita comes 2-3x a week to cook Indian food for us, another woman does our laundry 2x a week, someone else also stops by to clean the whole apartment once a week, and we have 24/7 onsite security. Not bad huh??

*The greatest perk to living with the other Fulbrights is that we are a unit. We can easily relate to one another in times of stress and when we want to share good news about our experiences at our respective schools.

*Let me not forget: our cook, Sujita is SUPER AMAZING. She makes me practice my Bengali because she doesn't know English andd she has agreed to give me some lessons on cooking Indian/Bengali food---post coming soon!