KoLKatA

8th April 2009:
This is the day I flew ALL ALONE for the first time in 27 years. I lost most of this landmark of a journey to overpowering slumber. The much touted “long” flight to Kolkata was not long, not when I would have liked to catch up on a few more hours of sleep. I flew across the country in just a few winks. It took a few winks to get to Kolkata! Hell!

Colin described Kolkata as “a city that is like a beautiful, intellectual woman one wants to have a relationship with”. To me Kolkata is like a melody; painfully tugging at my heart and bringing a lump to my throat. It swamped me in nostalgia even though I have no associations with this city. I am thinking Kolkata is a wrong place to be in if one is looking to get over a relationship! Or I would think it is a bad place even if one is happily in one! It rather dramatically pushes you into catacombs you thought you found your way out of! I think Kolkata rakes up sweet pain. I do not know how the real Kolkata is. I never will. My perception of it will forever be affected by Tagore’s stories and The City of Joy. Maybe these poets, authors and filmmakers made Kolkata hard to be just another city, maybe Kolkata IS difficult to be just another city. The conclusion is it is very well NOT just another city, whether it owes this to its artistic portrayal or to itself.

My first impression of the streets of Kolkata was that I will NEVER have to go WITHOUT anything here! The streets, all of them, are lined with such an abundance of tiny shops seeming like they are selling everything under the sun or almost, that all I need to do to get what I want in Kolkata is take a short walk! In an hour-long drive around the city I saw shops, cafes, multi-cuisine hotels, residential buildings, ponds, gardens, colleges, schools, hospitals, a fine arts academy (of course!), a mall, a crossword, a theatre and there was not a doubt left in my mind about Kolkata and what it got! It got everything. And it shows it. One doesn’t have to wait to get to the market area to see the market, to the residential area to see homely homes and to the corporate area to see offices! Markets are everywhere, people live everywhere and everything co-exists everywhere. In extremely narrow lanes opposite Tolly Club, are quaint houses with indecipherable names (I bet they are worth getting to know. Bengali names always are), in Bangla script, adorned with typical green shutter windows (dust coated but charming) and trees. What are not charming are the aberrant and abrupt skyscrapers. They fail to blend. They herald a new Kolkata rising with an avaricious eagerness, towering over the old city and looking tawdry next to the existing homes. Amidst bustling narrow streets, small houses, cycle rickshaws, rickety blue buses and the anachronistic trams are the anomalous skyscrapers! Kolkata appears to be in the middle of a skyscraper epidemic. In the midst of a Heightened Mania!

Kolkata, by virtue of what it means to me and does to me is NOT a place for me to be alone in. Or be “without work” in. Kolkata should not see me idle. I react to idleness in Kolkata!

This post was meant for something else. But something else takes precedence. I was groped by a hand today on my way back from work. Just a hand, because I do not have a face or form to give that hand. I was not walking “in the open” or on the streets, I was not in a crowded place like a Railway Station, I was not in a dark alley, I wasn’t in a pub getting drunk and being unethical or immoral nor was I wearing “revealing”, “vulgar”, low waist denims and a short T. I was as revealing as revealing could get in clothes suitable for office, huddled in a corner of a rickshaw, with a big bag and another bag of some purchases!

That’s where the groping happened! And I realized as I type, that I am avoiding the sentence “That’s where I got groped”. Passive voice comes to the rescue if I am grammatically correct! Framing the sentence with an “I” is like a slap on the face. But let me face it. “I” got groped by a pedestrian while I sat in the rickshaw.

Am I angry? No! Am I sad? No! There are no emotions… is that a problem? My rickshaw slowed down in traffic, when I was caught unawares (unaware and relaxing after a days work, listening to music, enjoying my rickshaw ride back home…is that a problem? Was I careless for doing that? Did I ASK FOR IT?). It all happened so quickly. My rickshaw was moving ahead already. I asked the driver to stop and got down without knowing what I was going to do…shout? Hit? Chase? I got down only to face the traffic and a sea of people. I do not know who did it!

What is the change? The rest of the journey, I sat with my bag closer than it was, alert to every passerby each time my rickshaw slowed! And I think this will continue for a long time now. Shock value maybe!

This slot was meant for a happy and pleasant post!

It has turned out to be something else…

My friends read this blog. Hell my family reads this blog. For me, my personal victory is that I can talk about it… with no shame! Because the shame is NOT MINE!

Point to Ponder: What can be done? Blogging and some more blogging maybe.......?

And what the hell do I title this post as?

DisiLLUsionMEnt

An American actress said she stopped believing in Santa Claus when a Santa in a mall she was visiting with her mother asked her for her autograph.

Disillusionment.

My first palpable feeling of disillusionment came at the age of 7. I had a runny nose and was taken to the doctor's, the only place back then where I could browse through film magazines (and of course in beauty parlors mom took me to because I was too young to be left home alone, or because mom felt guilty about getting a facial done while I was home alone. Either ways). That was the year of Maine Pyar Kiya, friendship caps, pigeons and corny one-liners about dostis. Disillusionment crept in when I saw Salman Khan with "another woman" (Manisha Koirala in a light pink dress with hair tied in a yellow ribbon) on the cover page of a magazine. That was my first vivid memory of holding a film magazine with glossy pages in my hands and feeling something akin to an ache in my heart. I worried myself sick, teary eyed, how Bhagyeshree was going to hold herself through THAT?

Disillusionment. (Bhagyeshree's seemed greater and more REAL than mine but disillusionment it was)

Disillusionments, I guess are many. Small and big.

Sometimes, disillusionments stop disillusioning. They become "the way of life". The norm. They do no elicit a reaction.

Disillusionments no longer remain a "let down".

Such a let down!

Disillusioned with disillusionments disillusioning.

CoLD HOmAGe

Our refrigerator finally departs. It was 26! It was a garish muroon or I think magenta. It was a shade I cannot name.It got that color because our kitchen has pink tiles and mom thought the contrast was good. Mom thinking about colors and how they will compliment each other was surprising enough. In my family, homes were only required to be warm, welcoming happy places. Colors and interiors werent thought as adding to the appeal of a house. The fridge ( I am now regretting not having a name for it ) was less than 5 feet high. It is the only one my house has seen and I saw until I moved out. We had it when I could barely walk. It was there when I started school. Mom would place our tiffins on it and I couldn't reach up to collect mine. Top of the fridge was a mysterious place on which a lot of things lay. It was mysterious by virtue of being inaccessible. We had it when I grew as tall as it. We had it till I could finally stand, my elbow resting on its top, chatting up with mom. We had it till I didnt have to peer upwards once I opened it. I had to bend down to peek! We had it for a quarter century and little more.During exams, last minute cramming would happen with me resting my back against it. Morning tea before I left for college each day would happen there as well. If it wasn't mom, it was the fridge we turned to for food. It always had something. It was well-behaved. I mentally go over all the "things" in my house. My house is the " HOUSE family head" and the fridge was one of the family members. It was 26. The sofas are 22 years old. The living room "showcase" is 23 years old. The black table is 26 years or more! The tiny stool is 27 years old. The kitchen cabinet is 20! The washing machine is 20 years old too! This house aint no home without them members.Me and my blog pay homage to my fridge that went without a name. I have busied myself naming the others.