Calcutta revisited

i love Calcutta. It does not have anything to do with the fact that i have stayed here for so long. i love it because it has a soul. Can a city have a soul? i don't know but this place is where i feel at home, home away from home. i love Imphal too but it is a love tinged with angst, of a love that somehow feels unrequited, unfulfilled. Like mooning for something that you know you can never have.

Calcutta has changed - what with its swanky malls and numerous flyovers zigzagging everywhere. The geography has changed - i can no longer find familiar landmarks, shadowed as they are by newer landmarks i do not recognise. But there are places still untouched, still the same as i left them years ago. Like the 8B market. Still the same murghir stall, the same dada who recognises me after 5 years, who fondly complains that i no longer buy from him and says i have become too thin, who tells me 'abar aasben kintu, didi' (But you must come again). The same vegetable vendor who always ask me where i have been, who throws in a lebu extra.

And then i know why i love Calcutta. Because of the people. Them fish eating, adda loving people. Sometimes, i forget that i am an outsider. But like SN tells me 'Tumi toh ekhon Bangali' (You are now a Bengali). She believes i have become one now that i can speak Bengali!

i love this place for having given me the few friends i have -M, SN, SM,SC, SS, ...Oh, i have only five friends!! Eeeeks.....And yes, him.

i went to New Market the other day. i have never gone there alone before. It has always been either with friends or him. i went searching for this shop called Elegant located near Globe. And it was no longer there. Empty space where it once stood. i felt sad. New Market is the kind of place where i can be guaranteed to get lost and never emerge - but then i have been known to get lost even in the office. i mean, you can enter from one side and emerge at another end from where you have no idea where the other end is. So i went in, came out from another end, dazed, lost...Went in again, came out at yet another unfamiliar end. In the end, i was able to emerge with my sanity intact, with almost a triumphant swagger!

Gariahat is almost the same. The footpaths still spills over bedsheets, t-shirts, shoes, bags, leggings and almost anything you can ask for. People still haggle.

One place i have not visited is my Alma Mater. It is but 5 minutes from where i stay but something stops me. Maybe i am scared of encountering ghosts from the past still roaming about the places i loved/love. So i just gaze at it from the car window and imagine nothing has changed inside - that the basketball court would still be stained with our footprints, that the jheel would still ripple with the sounds of our laughter....

But for whatever reason, Kolkata, ami tomake bhalobhasi.