Kolkata. City of Joy. My City. Birth Place. Enigma. So on and so forth. Thousands of people, some children of the soil, some visitors, some writers, some aspirants- have time and again written about this city. I feel baffled. One city has innumerable tags. One place has innumerable food for thought. It has it's divergent charm. It creeps inside and magnifies. Words fall short. I don't understand when I'd be able to write her out in words befitting.
The moment I think- this is it. I've described her in the best possible phrases, apt idioms and precise metaphors- I am proved severely wrong. I am dismissed and put in the rejected box. My possessiveness grows. I want to pen the best for her. I want to express her most intently. Complacently I wait for words to take their course.
One late summer evening I was proved wrong. I had to bite the dust and realise how little I knew about my city. Kolkata is NOT about Howrah Bridge, Kumortuly, Victoria Memorial, Durga Puja, Rossogolla, Phuchka, Biriyani, Trams, Hand-pulled Rickshaws, College street, Park Street and Metro Rail (and many such signatures). Yes they make her come alive. But Kolkata lives in much micro sect. Much smaller details.
She lives on in the extremity of its area, in the diversification of its regions, in the congestion and commotion that fill her bosom.
Being a hard core Northerner (North Kolkata Resident), I had a snobbery of my own. I live in Baghbazar. A place historically famous and definitely oldest in the map of Kolkata. My love for this city was never polarised to North- but I definitely formed the lion's share of my love from the part I dwelled in. South Kolkata has always been a ceremonious visit for me- An invitation, pandal hopping or maybe a dinnering out with family and friends!
Then magic happened.
I took a detour to the southern fringes- without any purpose. My only aim was to soak in some more of my city. Understand the connotation of the word MY. I was taken aback. The quiet, serpentine evening walked like sleuth behind me as I walked along the nooks and corners of Southern Avenue. With the drooping Krishna Chura and a solitary Amaltash...I suddenly stopped. Looked at my city and breathed. Herself is hidden in ignominy. The bold and beautiful is celebrated. The gorgeous and magnanimous is recognised. And in all the greatness she has withdrawn to the fallen half crescents of an untimely bloom of Amaltash, the sudden rain drenched pathways of Richie Road, the open air metro ride to Kudghat, or maybe in the kohl lined eyes of that girl who stands and stares at the shimmering lights melting into a dark Kolkata sky.
There's a myth that Kolkata breathes. If you put your ears on the roads you'll hear her. If you hug her shabby lamp posts you actually feel they hug you back- and trust me you don't have to be drunk on the cheap Olypub pegs- you'd anyway absorb it. Because she is in the molecules that fly, in the garbage corner where foul smell makes you feel appalled, in the gust of cold breeze when your mind is empty. She is emotion personified. Growing in you as you grow. Paining in you as you down your lovelorn peg in Dharmatolla, Living in you as you struggle to reach an interview battling the incorrigible traffic; Singing with you as you buy your first Beatles from Park Street; Kissing with you as you hide in Dhakuria Lake; Quiet with you as you enter Bishop Lefroy Road and shiver in the inexplicable joy of witnessing Satyajit Ray's Living Abode; Magnify your warmth as you sing "Purano Shei Diner Katha" and wonder how Rabindranath envelopes your life from your school days to your bespectacled reunions. Sheltering you as you snuggle in your bed in a rain drenched night and cry your heart out without any reason. She is the sunshine that will take you in her lap gain..as the solitary night breaks into a very Kolkata morning. You hate her because you don't know how to match her love. You love her because you are enslaved by her heart. She is you. You are her.
South, North, extended, suburb- she spreads across your being, silhouetting you- making your footfall a little more determined- even if you choose to part ways with her.
