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Calcutta Revisited

My City Chapter I A few days ago, a couple of friends came visiting along with their 4 year old son; both my college buddies and bo...

Monday 5 May 2014

Calcutta Revisited

My City

Chapter I


A few days ago, a couple of friends came visiting along with their 4 year old son; both my college buddies and both very dear friends. The day after they arrived in Calcutta, the husband, my friend, suggested we go for a spin around the city, post lunch while my other friend, the wife, true to her nature, stayed at home with the young one. After vehement protests, I acquiesced.

Needless to say, we planned to drink a couple of chilled beers while we were at it. The mercury was soaring that week. It was touted to be the hottest summer in Calcutta yet. As planned, he picked me up, dropped his sleeping son home, picked up a chilled can of beer and we embarked on our journey around the city.

Our destination, we decided, was to be the ice cream parlour very aptly named, ‘Scoop’. As anyone who has visited Scoop will tell you, it’s a hanging structure, in that it seems to be hanging precariously over the river Ganges. Unfortunately or otherwise, neither of us had taken into account the fact that the city had changed drastically in a span of a few years. It was no longer the city that we had grown up in. The old world charm, the decadence and the opulence was still there. The new additions, the flyovers and the one way routes, had completely escaped us. Not that we would have been able to do anything about it if it had occurred to us earlier. We had no knowledge of the new road rules. My friend, a non-resident Calcuttan and I, a Calcuttan lately returned, tried to make the best of our rusty memory of the roads and routes. We hadn’t travelled 5 minutes before we got stopped for driving the wrong way on a one way road. And this was good old Ballygunge Circular Road, my backyard. My friend flashed his most amiable smile and charmed his way out of it. But not before he had coughed up Rs. 500 to avoid his license being taken away from him. At 42 degrees centigrade, he miraculously kept his cool. Maybe it was the thought of the chilled beer waiting for him in the car. I shudder to think what would have happened if the policemen had spotted the can of beer.
We thanked our lucky stars and went on our way. The air-conditioned car made its way through traffic down AJC Bose Road till we took a right on Jawaharlal Nehru Road then left from in front of Birla planetarium. By then I was enjoying the drive, quizzing my friend on policemen in the US and their practices. He had recently returned from a work trip to the US, you see. I had to ask! Gradually, the car moved straight ahead on the road to Victoria Memorial. The Calcutta maidan on our right and the Victoria Memorial on our left, it felt like that old city I used to know. The maidan, sprawling acres of greenery, right in the heart of the city, yet untouched by the ravages of time and technology, thanks to the army exerting the kind of obstinacy that only the army can exert. There were the horse-driven carriages lined up one after the other. The horses looked ill-fed and tired. I spied one rogue photographer trying desperately to capture through the lens what the senses could so easily perceive while my friend frantically consulted his phone for directions to Prinsep Ghat. As we passed Victoria Memorial, resplendent in the bright afternoon sun, standing there in all its architectural grandeur, I thought to myself, colonial hangover or no colonial hangover, it’s a thing of beauty and will always be one, irrespective of the sentiment that went behind its erection.

Then we took a right, leaving the Calcutta race course on our left, the grand clubhouse visible vaguely in the distance. I could almost hear the hooves on the ground and the clamour and the cheer from the stands, egging the horses on. Then Fort William stretched for miles, wherever we went. Luckily, we had chosen the wrong route. We reached the Second Hoogly Bridge, a new fangled concrete monstrosity, went almost all the way to Howrah, Calcutta’s twin, paid toll without intending to, and made our way back to Calcutta. Surprisingly, my friend was still as calm as a coconut. I know the original expression alludes to a cucumber but he struck me at the time as being impervious to his surroundings, very much like a coconut.
We made our way back to Calcutta and resumed our search for the elusive ice cream parlour. Down Red Road we drove; the most beautiful road to my mind. There was not a colour missing on it. We took a logical turn towards Eden Gardens, the stadium; something we should have done at the very beginning. I thank God we didn’t. We passed the stadium and came upon the real Eden Gardens - a green haven, beautifully planned.  My astute observation that it was maintained by the West Bengal Forest Department elicited no response from my friend. His resemblance to a coconut was fading at an alarming rate. Finally, we took the left turn that took us to Scoop.
We spotted Scoop and made noises akin to those that could have been made on spotting the Holy Grail. We crossed the Circular Rail tracks, went in and settled down on the first floor with an ice cream cone each. We talked about this and that, his trip to the US, his work, the Ganges that was beating against the bank beneath and how it needed some serious dredging. All this done, we went back to the car and started to make our way back home. He had a wife and child to attend to and I had work. Our way home did not take us through Park Street this time, otherwise our usual haunt, home to many watering holes and previously called the ‘Graveyard Road’ owing to the famous Park Street cemetery.
At journey’s end, we were laughing, drinking beer in full view and agreeing that this drive was long overdue for us and the city. We had witnessed once again, that long forgotten city; Charnock city; my city Calcutta, in all its splendour.

Saturday 29 March 2014

The Festive Spirit

On this, the second day of Durga Puja, the sky is bright with the spirit of celebration! When I was a child, we'd wake up to drum rolls, Dhakis beating their Dhaks like their lives depended on it (which it probably did) interspersed with loud music. I miss the sound of the Dhak and here's something I thought I would never say...I miss the loud music.

The getting together of all my cousins and going pandal hopping all over Calcutta seems like a distant dream now...

Thursday 10 December 2009

Not so cartoonesque

Consider the word 'Marhaban'. Something inexplicably sensuous about it although it only means 'hello!'..(I think...). Actually, something inexplicably sensuous about the language. Arabian nights and Arabian days...

A foreign language, a foreign people, their thoughts, their trials and tribulations, their love, their hatred, hopes, dreams and despair, their lives..the language learns them. And when they speak it, it's poetry. It's the mirage that tantalizes and eventually leaves high and dry..because you'll never know!

Before I die, I shall have known the language well enough to have had a torrid affair with it..

Ma-sah-lama! Ilâ alliqa'!!

Thursday 19 November 2009

Skywriting by word of Keyboard

What would he have had to say about that?! John Lenon’s book 'SKYWRITING BY WORD OF MOUTH' reads very much like a blog. While I was reading 'Skywriting....' for the 37th time this year, I realised, John had done it so many years ago..only it came out in print.

I love writing blogs! You can ramble on and nobody to say no. And I don't have to add a statutory warning at the end saying, "Read at your own risk." I didn't really know anything about blogs till mid 2008. That reminds me. I need to ask one of my young, blogger friends if there are actual, legal implications to this. I mean there's got to be a catch! How can one be able to write whatever the hell one wants to and get away with it?! I mean, Johnny took a bullet in the heart for it! Sure, it was a book and all the rest of it but we all know that he wrote and sang pretty much like he spoke and thought...wait..I have a sneaking suspicion that this is turning out to be a John Lennon love fest, as everything I say and do, does.

Let me stop while I can. Fact remains - I am of the opinion that blogging is the best thing that happened to human kind since the Ford assembly line. We can all be writers now! Get in line! Too many exclamation marks?! Sure sign that I should stop right here. Enough statements for the day...

Monday 4 February 2008

First post..

I didn't know what a blog was until recently. I didn't know there was such a word, leave alone what it meant. I am told, there are conventions, practices, et al, in the world of blogs. I am also told that there is no such thing as an experienced blogger( one who writes blogs). They say it is not civil to post a comment on someone else's blog as an anonymous blogger. It is like visiting someone's home, enjoying his or her hospitality and leaving without saying "Hello!". The Blog is like the blogger's home. Or should I say asylum?!

Well, this sure is my asylum; long years after I discovered "The Lobby". For those who are not JU graduates, the lobby used to be three flights of stairs, separated by three pillars, behind the JU English building. My soul asylum, my refuge from the big, bad world outside(JU), my shelter from the madness all around. Peace...

This blog is to take its place, hopefully!