Oh Calcutta!

You smothered me for 18 years but you knowingly harboured a rebel. The sounds of the Leftist Movement, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the Naxalite Movement and Rabindranath Tagore resonate through you.

Speckled with political graffiti representing anything from propaganda to limericks to witty banter. Adda sessions over ‘cha’ involving the exchange of freestyle intellect. From Para Cricket to Para Pujo.

The dying but resplendent Victoria Memorial. The largest and the oldest Indian Museum. The evergreen Maidan. The ancient Howrah Bridge. The more contemporary Hooghly Bridge. The brave Ganga flowing slowly but surely.

College Street with the notorious Presidency College and the Calcutta University, overrun with used bookstores. A potpourri of literature and text books. The radiant Park Street. The haunt of fine dining and nightlife.

From Satyajit Ray to Aparna Sen. From ‘Goopi Gyne Baaga Byne’ to ‘Chokher Bali’. From Bankim Chandra Chattopadhay to Kazi Nazrul Islam. Lasting impressions forever left in the soul.

From Rabindrasangeeth to Baul. Music to the ears.

The Statesman. The Telegraph. Anandabazar Patrika. Your eternal stalwarts.

The Kolkata Book Fair. The Dover Lane Music Festival. The Kolkata Film Festival. They come to you once a year and leave us gasping for more.

Durga Pujo every waxing moon in the month of ‘Ashwin’. You vibrate with the beats of the ‘dhak’, the priest, always just skin and bones, melodiously reciting mantras and the ‘dhoonuchi naach’ performed by the married women, all within the elaborate ‘pandals’ that are temporarily sprayed all over you. And the ‘bhog’. Food of the Gods. Literally.

Cricket at the proud Eden Gardens with the smell of fish fry and cigarettes lingering in the air. Football in the Maidan with screaming, hard core fanatics. Golf at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club for the old world Calcuttans, peppered with the urban youth. Equestrian Races and Polo matches at the Royal Calcutta Turf Club for the hoity toity as well as the quintessential gamblers.

From Macher Jhol to Rossogolla. From Mishti Doi to the urban Katti Roll. From Mughlai to Momos. From Rahmania to Azad Hind Dhaba (made famous by M.F. Hussain, mind you). From Park Street to Tangra. A gastronomical wonder.

From ‘shari’ clad women with thickly laden ‘shindoor’ on foreheads and red and white bangles clinking on their wrists to opinionated tie-n-dye kurta and ‘dhuti’ clad men with the occasional monkey-cap.

The Bengali belief in homeopathy, Marxism, fish, sweets at every excuse, education and politics palpitating at every corner of every street.

Colloquialisms often heard. ‘Bhadralok’ for gentleman. ‘Dhop’ for stuff and nonsense. ‘Backside’ with reference to behind something. ‘Pleej’ for please.

Founded by Job Charnock, the ‘Land of Kali’, pimpled with trams and the Metro and freckled with black and yellow ambassador taxis, it is in You that I will forever be rooted.