It took a week, but I finally hit my groove in Kolkata — or “Cal”, as everyone seems to say. “How is Cal?” “Are you enjoying Cal?” My Indian friends’ SMS messages all sound like wierd references to my alma mater, or my home state. But California isn’t the only Cal, and no one is thinking about U.C. Berkeley here. Calcutta is its own center of gravity.A chat with an attractive Swiss woman at an internet cafe leads to a drink at a bar. Kathrin has just finished her nursing degree, and she is spending a few months volunteering at a local NGO. She gets a new experience, and in return, people with leprosy get extra care. Meanwhile, I get a ticket out of social isolation — and into a new world of people.

It is my last night in “Cal,” and I am at a goodbye party for one of Kathrin’s peers. I meet a whole cast of characters. Lyn the Israeli who is returning home. Rahul the German-Indian Hindi teacher from U.C. Berkeley.

And after a few glasses of Swedish “glug,” a song by The Coup comes over the Ipod speakers. I’m surprised to learn that two young Frenchmen at the party like the Oakland hip-hop group as much as I do. We start talking about an angrier slice of East Bay hip-hop — Dead Prez.

My French acquaintances can’t quite relate to the duo’s defiant Black nationalist message. But they do like the Dead Prez song extolling the virtues of a vegetarian diet.