Loving Calcutta

The quirky city which has forever been my vacationing spot, has suddenly occupied a new place in my heart. I hold Calcutta responsible for not having toured the hill stations, the sea beaches or the forests of India. While every kid would narrate grand tales about their visit to simla or Jim Corbet or the backwaters, i would just listen to them and take a quick virtual tour to these places in my mind. This is all because, come summer and we would pack our bags to Calcutta. Its like a ritual that I've been performing for twenty odd years. I always liked Calcutta, after all it was where my grandparents and cousins lived. But i always liked it like a vacationing spot. I liked it because every time i went there my grandfather brought home bags and bags of Bajar and my grandmother prepared treats for us. It was where i was allowed to loaf around the house all day and night without being interrogated. Being in Kolkatta was like being in a festival. Everything happened in a grand scale and royal style. And pretty much like a festival, it ended in a short time as well. Yet, no matter how terrible i felt going back home, i always loved "home" better than Calcutta. I could never imagine living in Calcutta, I grew up to pride myself over my cosmopolitan coolness and looked down upon the general crowd. It was too dirty, to sultry for my everyday living. It was a city i liked because i was treated well and made to have fun by the conscious efforts of my grandparents and cousins.

Now, Calcutta has changed quite a bit. It has definitely come up in terms of infrastructure and is climbing the steep steps of the cool-o meter! But irrespective of this face lift, the heart of the city still remains untainted. The spirit of the city is unshakable. This time when i went to Calcutta( I just got back yesterday!) i saw a different side of it. This time the city gave me a brand new perspective. Although the motive of the visit was an unhappy one, i would say this was probably my best visit. For starters, I got to spend a lot of time with my brother which made me realise how strongly we bond. I met members of the family, of whose existence i had no knowledge of. And this time i got to meet some really good people. My brother and i have a common friend and because of these two i got to meet their other friends. I had very stringent notions about the kids in Calcutta and they mostly weren't good. I exclude my cousins from this categorization, coz after all i have my own biased opinion working here. I had always heard of all these friends of my brothers but honestly, i weighed them very low on my opinion metre. I don't know why i did that, i had no reason to, but somehow by the virtual appearance of the matter and by the workings of my general hang ups i thought them nothing great. But now I've learnt not to judge a book by its cover. I think i had the best time with these people. Things went beyond my expectations and i found myself liking all of them. The very things that i disliked earlier were the things i thoroughly enjoyed and fell in love with. I never expected myself to be amidst a bunch of Calcutta kids and like them and wish being a part of them. It is still pretty surprising to me! I liked the way they talked, their lingo and the way they were. They are so different from what i have around me, and i liked this difference. They are such good people.

All of this started as a joke when i said that id like to shift to Calcutta for the food. I never meant it. And then i saw the Ganges. All my life I've been to this city with the river trickling through it and never did i interact with the river this closely. Strangely thought but my grandfather made way for this to happen. Having the Ganges in front of me and experiencing its grand beauty and the the local flavour was to die for. This was particularly very good, but also otherwise i was shocked to find myself liking things that i hated, was embarrassed of. For example i detested how bongs were always so loud, they screamed at the bus driver if he drove slow, they spoke bangla almost everywhere and they spoke weirdly too. But in Delhi if u scream at the driver he could bash you up and actually its only good that there the people are so vocal. After all a bus should be on time. I liked that. I liked that we went out for dinner and i could talk to the Stewart in bangla. I liked that i could call shopkeeper kaku and not bhaiyya/uncle, friend's parents were kaku kakima instead of uncle aunty, the kaku-kakima's were like real parents and not parents who were replica's of the "cool" twentieth century mothers on television. For the first time i lived with a pet, a big golden Labrador who is a complete brat. Sheroo who's presence in the house was a big point of apprehension for me turned out to be my bed buddy! The guy would invariably climb onto the bed once everyone was asleep and place his royal ass right at my feet coz everyone else has the gift of good height but me! So sleeping at my feet meant more space for mister spoilt! Not just that, Sheroo would very innocently place his face on my lap during every meal in the hope of making a share of my food. And God alone knows why, but for the first time i did something with him that I'd never do with anyone else. I shared my prawns. Prawns, the most precious thing on any one's dinner plate went into the guys big belly! Ah well i must say i couldn't bear to have him stare at me with hopeful eyes for that long. But now that I am back there is no dog to come home to, who would sniff and jump at you, wag his tail and follow you around.

By the end of it all i felt that I whose is so averse to change had taken a big leap! Yes, i fell in love. I fell in love with everything about that city. I know all of Calcutta is not Salt Lake but I still like it. All my life i tried to stand apart from the people of the city and all my life I lived with a myth, a myth of a fake sense of superiority. These people that were so hospitable to me, were mocked by me and then i realised that in my desperate attempt to hold myself different i was not being Me. I was trying to be someone else, i was trying to be other people who were not Me, who i thought were cool and to whom i wanted to belong. All this and all was a fake notion because in my Delhi bubble world i never realised that in my desperation of detaching myself from those Calcutta people i never realised that i was actually one of them. And now i wouldn't be lying if i said i want to shift to Calcutta. A part of me wishes i was there and a part of me craves to be there. But now i am back to my cold urban apartment, with its cold walls, cold bed, cold closet and heavy silences. I miss the warmth of the city, the voices and sounds of the house and the strange cycle rickshaw horns.
I am never as comfortably as I am in Calcutta. It seems like, my place. This is not just because of my Mashi and family who make every trip of mine every so good, or the city centre or Khadi, but Calcutta makes me happy. With all its quirkiness, abandoned tram tracks, monginis, CPM graffiti, cotton saris, palm trees, potholes, rolls and taxis; I have fallen in love with Calcutta.