Tuesday, February 24, 2009: Last night I sat through smoking the last cigarette of the day, remembering the past and trying to recollect every so small detail of my life in the past three to four years. Perhaps it’s that particular impetus I get when I am sitting in my room in my house in my hometown of Kolkata. Of course, there were the usual dominating thoughts. But that aside, there were a million other ideas I felt the need to express.
I have come to Kolkata after seven months and much has changed since I was last here. To start with, the intersections along the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass have been shrunk to allow more traffic around the ‘islands’ as it were for the local folk here. There are a whole number of infrastructure projects under way, including the East-West Metro corridor and a few flyovers near Sector V, etc. I took a walk around the Dalhousie office area and Rajbhavan. There was a pleasant coolness in the wind which was very refreshing. It would make a smoker want to postpone his cigarette to breathe in that sweet Kolkata breeze blowing ever so gently. In the bright, yet soft winter afternoon sun, the hustle and bustle of the busiest roads in Kolkata offered a peace which is absent in the quite solitude of my 9th floor apartment in Gurgaon.
This city gives me the impression of being trapped in a post-colonial euphoric first few years celebrating freedom and right to choice. I doubt if Lord Mountbatten would find major change in the city since he last visited. It is nonetheless ironic that this free people have elected a communist regime to govern them. I urge the loyal to hold their peace here. Of course, there have been many ‘developments’ including super-malls, flyovers, the Metro rail system and the like. But the mind of the city is still free and soaring. In this mindset there is no place for show of wealth – to some extent due to the lack of it – but in general since the importance of this is low. Walking down the busiest of streets and installations, there are the small tea-shops offering a nice warm ‘bhand’ of tea for a meager sum of two rupees where friends slip out of their office and catch up to discuss the unusual early advent of the summer this year. I suspect this happens every year. The formals are long gone and casuals hold sway and large markets have given way to malls – big and small. Yet, and I am very happy to declare this, the quintessential Bengali has retained his character. The ‘I-Don’t-care-what-you-think’ attitude coupled with the recognition that beauty is not just skin deep sets up a fantastic environment of comfort and a ‘chilled-out’ atmosphere. This is in stark contrast with the other metropolitan cities of the country, experience of one which I have and of others about which I have listened to carefully from the near and dear ones. This absolutely amazing setup supports the unusual mental ability of the populace to achieve happiness and content. No matter how materially poor the people are, they are very rich with happiness which is reflected in their soft and graceful smiles and their eagerness to share this with one and all, with the local and foreign. Their sense of wealth is mind-bogglingly unique and is measured only and purely in terms of intellect and personality. And every household has made it their business to be party to this richness. No wonder then that Kolkata is ‘The City of Joy’.
