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.