Oh! Kolkata!

I feel there is hardly any thing more or new to say about Kolkata today. So many things have been said and so many number of times about the soul, about the feel and about the heart of the city. Its enigmatic liveliness, its rich history, its never-say-die cosmopolitan demography, its prides and its shames. Yet it never fails to surprise you. There are new stories being grafted each day, each moment. Each new one different in its spices from the earlier. Like a variation of the same recipe being made with a touch of novelty that makes it unique.

It has always created a strange love-and-hate relationship with me. And staying away for so long (just more than a year, though) had made me look into the love part of the relationship more closely than the hate ones for an obvious cause. And even though for the umpteen number of difficulties that you face in your everyday life, so many hurdles, so many barriers to good living, yet it mesmerizes you look forward for another day. And in the last one week I have felt a welcome feeling from deep inside.

The eternally crowded streets, which have “Roads” against their names with a lot of pride.  The bandhs and strikes for god forbid reasons. The back-dated policies and systems which sometimes take us back by almost a century. The laid back attitude of the society which sometimes is the cause of their own downfall. The reasons to hate the city goes on and on for a hundred pages. Yet, the reasons to love are also enormous. And since I am back may be at the cutest season of the city, just before the peak winter, (though the winter never peaks here in the real sense) I am falling in love all over once again. The lazy early morning haze with an aroma of “fulkopir singara” (samosa filled with cauliflower-potato mix) as if yawns out aloud every morning with you. You start to gear up and get ready for a busy day, and nostalgia creeps in when you hear “joynagarer moya” being sceamed out at the near by street. The eternal “pachpachey” fish market, somehow never shifts to a place where there will be no mud. You receive so many greetings from so many people and almost all of them unknown and never-to- be-seen-again faces the all day through it makes you feel special and blessed.

It is so much better now in Kolkata, with the metro getting extended and yet keeping time yet it could have much better. It is so much easier now in Kolkata with the new and bigger buses running across the city, yet it could have been much easier. Life has become more modern now in Kolkata with new Malls opening around the city (the latest being the City Centre-II in Rajarhat), yet it could be made more modern. But when you love something so much that you cannot stay without, you tend to forget and forgive a few of the “sins”. And when I feel that it’s really good to be back, something deep within hears someone saying, “it’s really good to have you back as well!”

PS: The Photo at the top has been taken by Somanth one of my very dear friend, and I hope I am not violating any copyrights law here!