Oh Calcutta...

This city will never cease to amaze me.

Even though I lived the first full twenty years of my life there, I can spend another twenty years there, and them another twenty years until it is eternity. Everyday that I have lived there has met my expectations – justified and unjustified, the old and the ancient and the most modern, and I could have banked on a new environment that was just perfect to suit my mood everyday for all these years.

It was not as if I was always in love with this city. Five years back, I thought that this was rotten and beyond its expiry date with all its smoky narrow streets choking having been clogged by vehicles of all shapes, sizes and age, some dating back to my great-grandfather's time. The city seemed to be a mess of political rallies, processions and numerous strikes that seemed to be on forever. The buildings were all ancient and a fear of being crushed by one such superstructure engulfed me every time I passed one such dilapidated house. Though, It was a different story that such buildings existed on every nook and corner of the city, sending me into cold shivers every ninety seconds.

Now, as a carefree youth, it really hurts a lot when there's no place to freak out near your college. And I had to bear this twinge of pain everyday, as the only cafeteria around closed just twenty minutes before we left our classes. Another painful memory was how the cafeteria waiters shooed us students away every time the owner saw us there during college hours. Negotiation was enjoyable but not everyday and I missed those fancy malls that my cousins, from Bombay and Delhi, used to tell me of. But, I really hated the rains that bring a joy to everyone else, because the streets were slushy poodles of water with every shower – however light or heavy that might have been.

But what I absolutely hated were the hunger pangs between meals when all I could find around myself was the spicy jhalmuri, the monotonous puchkas, and the all pervading, present everywhere, rolls with anything under the sun stuffed in them, right from raw onions to dripping fried chicken, and when you are a strict vegetarian, and when everything everywhere smells and contains, either egg or chicken at the very least, it really ticks you off. At least, it did trouble me every time.

So, I was not the one who fall in love with the place they are born and brought up. On the contrary I was the one who criticized everything there – the casual people, the Bengali food, the non-trendy gals wrapped in salwars, an ancient infrastructure that was crumbling down with those bumpy black roads laid out of burnt black stones.

Was there anything that I liked? And I got no answer of myself, when I had asked this question myself three years back and all I felt was that I was staying in there only because of my home and my family. But when every now and then, my cousins visited us, the pain was revisited, as they bragged and boasted excitedly about Bombay and its life, thus grounding my last remaining positive perception of my home-town. And it was one such evening that I had promised myself that I won’t turn my back again towards this city, only if I am able to get out of there. And lo behold, it was a miracle, I left Calcutta in exactly a month after that.

But now when I look back at it, it all seems an act of voodoo and of black magic than of a miracle, but only now when I look back at it. Three years of eating out across cities, I quickly learnt how it was the quality of the ingredients and the hygiene and not only the ambience contributed in the determination of the price of the food, as I had thought and experienced in Calcutta, before coming out. It has been three years since when the surroundings seem oblivious of me, unaware of my mood, remaining the same monotonous self of them day after day, everyday. For three years, I searched for a place alone for myself, to sit and to think of the routine that my life had become, but the mob of the blind dead zombies pulled me and pushed me wherever I was, sweeping me in their deluge to whichever direction the things were headed then. The fancy malls have now lost their charm as they all look the same hollow, steeply priced impersonal places that they are, fleecing the dazed customers not of their wallets, but their senses.

Eating out between meals, what seemed dreary once only turned fearsome as now, all I have available are some poorly made dishes containing nothing but loads and loads of red chutney, as mighty and omnipresent as my accumulated dissatisfaction over the last three years. The small memories of the puchkas, that seemed monotonous once, now seem what I can only dream of, as here they are filled with everything under the sun – mineral water, yoghurt, and even… you guessed correctly… the red chutney. The rolls cannot be replaced by the so called frankies of the day – a blatant but unsuccessful imitation of the Calcutta rolls, similar to a vada pav being an Indianized cheap look-alike of the successful burger. The rains might have brought slush and poodles in the past but now they have become synonymous with halted trains, and only inculcate a sense of fear, replacing the vacuum of the lack of joy that I suffered in the past.

Yes, I miss Calcutta; I miss all of my past, all the years that I spent there. So, when I went home this time, I made it a point to hog on the food there, to gorge on all that was environment, to live and remember every moment of the one week I was there. But, now I am back, missing Calcutta, missing my past, missing my life, and missing myself.

This city will never cease to amaze me!

My apologies for the delayed post, as some work on the office front kept me busy for a while. Will be back soon with something sentimental/funny. Adios!