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| Kolkata is about friends who feed you till you are stuffed. And then a bit more. |
I was in Kolkata for 6 nights and 7 days.
My longest stay in the city in a while.
K was with me and we did an extended holiday in order to meet family and friends.
At the end of which we returned with my mum to Mumbai.
We stayed in a hotel while in Kolkata. On the Bypass.
The highway that runs parallel to the city. Built to ease the load on traffic within the city.
You can take one of its many arterial exits to come in to different parts of the city.
Given that many Bengalis tend to be hypochondriacs, the name Bypass is a bit of an irony.
Through the stretch you can see billboards advertising hospitals. Most of which offer bypass surgeries.
Given the low levels of exercise in our lives, high levels of refined carbs, sugar and oil which go into our diet, and heated addas on topics such as whether Pele, Maradona or Messi is the GOAT, bypasses are unfortunately not that uncommon.
As I write, Kolkata possibly has more people supporting Argentina in the world cup finals tonight than the entire population of Argentina.
Armchair supporters. Not to be caught walking. Let alone running! That’s messy. Not in our DNA.
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| Clicked this when we hit Anwar Shah Road From the Bypass to meet my uncle and aunt |
This story is not about the Bypass. The laying of which started in the late 1990s.
I had just finished B School then and had become a part of the bourgeoise class.
Taxis and car rides began to feature in my life. A change from the public transport based journey that I was on till then. The Bypass was where these often played out.
Then I moved out of the city. I took the Bypass while going home from the airport on trips back.
With each year, the Bypass was extended. Then came the flyovers which linked the Bypass to the city. An alternate universe where one sailed across traffic clogged stretches.
Our family stays in the south of Kolkata. As do our friends. Cafes and restaurants in the south are where we met the latter. The former at home.
We would set out from our hotel everyday. At times more than once a day. Down Nalban (a hotspot for lovers once, now something more ornate), the Yuva Bharati Krirangan, Science City etc. Into the Park Circus, Kasba or Ruby connectors.
One hardly got to spend time in the city. More on the fringes and then boom, you were at your destination. Wham bam, thank you Bypass.
One day we entered the city through Broad Street and then Palm Avenue. These were posh and coveted addresses during my time in Calcutta. A world beyond ones reach. Now crowded, grimy and seemingly decrepit. At least the roads we went by.
We went via Park Circus and then Ballygunge Phari to Gol Park often to meet our friends at cafes in the area. My first office was located there.
The stretch is bejewelled with glitzy malls which can give their brethren in nouveau riche suburban Mumbai, Gurgaon and Bengaluru a run for their money.
They represent the new face of the city. More Marwari than Bengali say old timers. Whether this statement comes out of hard data or just envy is hard to say.
Gariahat falls on this road. Once the hub of all things Bengali when it came to retail.
Long rendered invisible by the flyover which goes over it
It’s not all about commerce. This is Kolkata after all. The cultural capital of the country. As declared by the city’s intelligentsia.
Before the malls in the stretch between Park Circus and Phari lie a gaggle of buildings. Three or four stories Bonedi baris. Home of the post independence aristocrats of the city.
Buildings that had possibly last received a fresh coat of paint before the turn of the century. At night you could see yellow flickering bulbs lighting the rooms within. Rooms which have many stories to tell. With hardly anyone left to narrate them.
The buildings stand brave. Holding on to self-pride, even if tired and neglected. Holding on to memories of a past, not so far back, when they housed those who mattered in the city.
Till builders raze them. Creating gleaming skyscrapers in their place. A story that mirrors that of what once defined Mumbai. The new generation is in a hurry and impatient to reach the sky.
The dialectics of the stretch gets mirrored in our hotel. It once stood for serenity. An oasis of class and calm far from the madding crowd. And the Grand. Unique in its own way. The pride of Kolkata at the turn of the century.
Two decades later it stands eclipsed by its new born sibling. The one that’s modern and buzzy and huge. Meant for a world where size and numbers matter more than having a distinct voice. It’s lit brightly at night. A bit strange in a sustainability seeking world where the Eiffel Tower or aamchi Gateway of India are not lit at night. The hotel next to it used to be lit up as if it was in Las Vegas when it was new. Thankfully they don’t anymore.
A fact that’s hard to relate for those of us who have grown up amidst the load sheddings and power scarcity of A-Jyoti Babu’s Calcutta. A city then ruled by champagne communists.
Whether things are better now is open for debate. Or whether the city’s soul was more vibrant than it is today.
We enter from the Ruby connector past an artificial floating market, Ramgarh, Garia, Naktala and then Bansdroni when going home.
Roar is where our apartment is. My mother stays there alone, when not in Bandra with us or at Gurgaon with my brother.
Then there is khaaler opar where my didu lives. Alone most of the time in the company of hired help. In a house built by her husband who is no more. A house housed her children and their children. All of whom have flown the nest.
If you commend her on how brave she is, the 94 year old will smile back wanly. As if to say, what option do I have?
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| Didu the reluctant rockstar. |
The neighbourhood in which I grew up, Bansdroni, was once an outpost in the south that no one had heard of. Today every second person I know in Kolkata lives there or has lived there. And has shopped in la Bansdroni Market.
Its lanes are dotted with air conditioned and well lit showrooms selling brands which are in vogue today. To meet the needs of its new inhabitants. They don’t need to go to New Market to shop anymore. The world is their oyster.
These look incongruous in a stretch where nothing has really changed. The roads have not been widened. The traffic on them has become more frenetic. Life more pressure cooker-like.
Houses and apartment complexes of yore still stand there. They once signified a sense of achievement for those in the service class who had finally achieved their dream owning a house.
They are retired now. Their kids have grown up. And left. Only to return for the Pujos. Or during winter. To what is wryly called ‘old aged homes.’
The next generation has moved to the New Town. To modern condos which begin where old Kolkata ends. The ones who have not left the city of course.
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| Enough of this Kolkata nostalgia says Baby Loaf |
Staying in a hotel by the Bypass means that one does not get to go into ones old haunts of Park Street, Lindsay Street or Esplanade.
Calcutta’s downtown glory which have faded into the annals of the past with the city spreading at a frenetic pace. A bit ironic given that their emergence had been the death knell to the north of Calcutta which once upon a time, defined Calcutta!
I rarely get to go to college para on these trips. College Street. Where I went to college. And B School. Surrounded by hope and dreams of the youth, stories of revolution and those of unrequited love. Where educational institutions, publishing houses or even eateries are a century and more yong (young).
As becoming a city that’s all about culture. Jobs and commerce be damned.
A city that many of us left in search of earning a livelihood. Leaving our loved ones behind.
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| The Daily became our hub in the trip. Reminding us of the cities we call home today. |
It is easy for those of us who have moved out to wallow in nostalgia and to talk of how things were better ‘in our times.’ The best example of this is how Vir Sanghvi’s article on Calcutta gets recycled in whatsapp groups during the Pujas every year. By those who love to hold on to the image of a city that’s long gone.
It is important to set cynicism aside when you look at Kolkata. If you dig deep, you will find green shoots that one needs to nurture. These are the future. Not the past.
The area around Gol Park for example. It has in spirit become the Montmarte, Greenwich Village, or dare I say, Bandra west (specifically Pali Market and Turner Road), of Kolkata.
Take its eateries and cafes such as the Byloom Canteen and more recently Sienna Stores and The Daily, Kolkata.
The former showcasing jolkhabar in a more refined obotar. The latter two bringing Kolkata into consideration when restaurant stories of modern India are told. Even if they are not in the reckoning of tunnel visioned restaurant awards
And it’s not just about the food. The number of small shops in the locality, including Byloom and Sienna, which proudly advertise themselves as the repositories of the handicraft and produce of Bengal is truly impressive.
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| When our friends and the staff at Sienna waited well after closing time as I kept eating. |
I am sure that there are many such examples across the city that we do not know of. What gives me the confidence to say so, you ask?
There is something in the breeze that wafts across the Eden in the post tea session of play… in the water of the Hooghly on which stands the iconic Howrah Bridge.. in the street corner chai-er dokan addas and the earnestness of the readers fund libraries that are worse for the west and yet proud, that ensure that Kolkata lives on. Reinventing itself with time as it has often done in the past.
That it is anything but the ‘Dying City’ that a former Prime Minister of India had said out of frustration of not being able to breach what was once a red bastion.
I won’t be surprised if a quarter of a century later, a pre-teen of today, who is greyed and wizened by then, laments and says, ‘cry my beloved Kolkata,’
For here’s the thing you need to know about Kolkata. It’s not a mere geographical entity. It’s an ‘emosaan.’ Beloved for ever.
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| The author (me) lived in Calcutta for 17 years After spending the first six years of his life abroad He has lived in Mumbai for 25 years since then. He keeps returning to Kolkata to visit his Didu. Has no idea of what will happen later.. |
