A love in progress

For the ‘A’s. The one who reads all my writing and the one who is travelling to Calcutta soon, taking my love back to the city.

One of the few reasons I started this blog way back in 2011 was because I wanted to write about Calcutta.
I had just finished school and moved to Bombay from Calcutta after a rather difficult year. At that point of time Calcutta and its beautiful people had given me solace. But I could never write anything that could do justice to what it had meant for me.

However, recently I got nostalgic about it for the umpteenth time and ended up writing something rather flippantly. I think I was trying to tell someone what it meant for me.

I try to not be too attached to Calcutta. I don’t know the city well enough. I don’t know the streets as well as I should. And most people mistakenly associate me with Calcutta- asking me if I am going back to Calcutta for the holidays and which part of the city I grew up in. Questions that trouble me, because I really wish I had grown up there or went back there for the holidays. All I can do then is give them a sad smile and say I am not from there and then go on to explain where I actually go back home to for the holidays!

However, this blog was meant for me to be honest about things and to also document my journeys. So here it is. My insufficient ode to Calcutta (or Kolkata, whatever it is that you prefer) – a list of things to do there, to get to know the city better.  

Isn’t Calcutta beautiful? Stop the buses in the middle of the street. Or scram about the city in the yellow cabs. Or the trams if you so wish. They’ll listen to you.
Go to North Calcutta. Go to Tagore’s home and know what inspired him! Walk in the bylanes of Kasba. Have phuchkas near Max Mueller Bhavan. Go to Swabhumi for Karaoke. And Nicco Park to be a child again. Go and shop at Gariahat and New Market. And go to Victoria Memorial and Botanical gardens, to soak in a bit of its ancient history.
Go to Chinatown for breakfast. And to Rabindra Sarobar. Go rowing. Or wake up some early morning to see the school children at it- the only city in India where rowing is a school sport, I suppose.
Go to Kalighat or watch a Mohun Bagan v/s. East Bengal match to know what real frenzy and hero-worship looks and feels like.
Go to all these quaint little cafes that pop up around the street corner on rainy days. Or just stop for rolls at Arsalan. Go for a ferry ride at Princep or Babu Ghat at sunset- it’ll be the most beautiful you shall see in your life. And click those artsy silhouette pictures.
Maybe go attend a lecture at Jadavpur. Know how politics and academia throb in the veins of the city, and co-exist. Have coffee at College Street Coffee House and shop for books there. And find a book with a long forgotten note from some kindred spirit you’ll never meet. Many greats before you have done that. People-watch in Esplanade as they go about their lives in a fashion that it seems like you’re a part of some poetry being composed.
And just walk down Park street at night holding hands with your girl. Pub hop there. Duck into the park street cemetery and maybe kiss her there, around all those long gone stories.