Wednesday 7 November 2012

Calcutta

A few weeks back I came across this blog by Vir Sanghvi called Oh! Calcutta. It seemed a very popular article, an obvious inference given the number of views the page had. I do not quite recall how many times I went through the article in the next half an hour that followed. I also do not recall how many times I felt a big lump in my throat. But by the time I was done, I could actually remember almost every little detail that he had mentioned about THE city. And also that I got goose bumps every-single-time. 

Okay, perhaps it was not the best of time to read a post about Calcutta- 1) because the Durga Puja was just a couple of days away, 1) because it was the first one I was spending away from home, 1) because it was getting worse with each passing day with the exponentially increasing Puja posts on Facebook (I know numbering, it's just that all were priority one). Later, I wondered if the article would have exuded the same emotions had I read it in Calcutta. Perhaps not. I mean when I used to live there, I used to get annoyed by the traffic, the noise, the pollution, the fact that garbage was everywhere on the road, the humidity and so on. But now, I crave for these very things (definitely not all, but most of them). I remember when I first came to Jena, a friend had asked what I miss the most about Calcutta and I had said 'the chaos'. Earlier, traveling with the bus or the metro would be painfully annoying and I remember how I would curse under my breath every few seconds. But this time when I went back, the first thing I wanted to do was take the over-crowded metro and go to Esplanade. And auto-ride to Gariahat! Earlier Jadavpur was one of the places I wanted to avoid, because of the terrible traffic system. But this time I took loads of pictures of Jadavpur and brought them back with me. And I payed particular attention to the fact that the pictures should capture the true essence of Jadavpur- with the autorickshaws and the buses and the taxis blocking the road, people crossing the road from every side, hawkers almost in the middle of the road and so on. I remember how I was constantly complaining about the bureaucracy while applying for the transcripts at the University, how much I was pissed because of the slackness and complete unprofessionalism of people, how much the lack of sanitation and poverty bothered me. Ofcourse they still bother me. But when I think of the city now, somehow I just look past these things. Recently I read a Calvin and Hobbes comic post about Calvin wondering if his mother would still have the nerve to love him if he was 'gray and grimy, slippery and slimy, an oversized hors d'oeuvre'. Apart from the fact that I absolutely love it, it quite echoes my feelings for Calcutta. 




Now and then I wonder if this love for the city has its source in the infinite memories and special people it has given me (Wake Up Sid, perhaps?). But then I think the city means more than that to me. Somehow the city has just grown on me, and even when I have left the city it has not left me. Clean cities, AC buses and trains, almost-perfect traffic and hygiene system, well-constructed roads, super-fast customer care services are always a delight. But even with it's drawbacks, perhaps it's the 'nari-r taan' -a strange connection that can neither be explained nor seen- that makes the city so special. To the Calcuttans. On that note I sign off, with a link to another goose-bumpish article Buffalo boy’s Calcutta crush! :-)


Sunday 30 September 2012

Happiness

When I was much younger, my brother and myself would look forward to the first day of every month.. It was not because we could get a day off from our daily routines and boring homework; neither was it because there was something special that we could do. It was mostly because baba used to bring us chocolates on his way back from office. It wasn't like he didn't bring us chocolates on other days. He did. But what made the first different from other days was that we always knew that a big bar of chocolate was 'guaranteed'. We'd wait for him to come back and then when he would hold out the bars of chocolates, we would have these big grins on our faces... 

As I have grown up, I have realized that happiness is about the smallest and simplest things. Getting up in the morning for school and realizing that it's going to be a rainy day; making tiny paper boats and then making them sail down the waterlogged streets; seeing the brother getting scolded, and not myself, after a severe fight (okay, this one's a bit vindictive I agree); eating pieces of cakes secretly that mother had baked for some special occasion and not getting caught, playing badminton on the road on sultry April afternoons and when completely exhausted, seeing an icecream-wala approaching; making random telephone calls to strangers and then making weird voices to scare them; bargaining while shopping for Pujo and later realizing how good a bargain it was; packing for a vacation (this doesn't even need an explanation); watching the hustle and bustle of Park Street and Esplanade right before Pujo and realizing that it's just a few more days, going to the 'kumor' the day before Kali pujo to check out how well the idol has been made; bursting crackers on Diwali and on the day of immersionfriend going over to our place on Kali Pujo and showing everything live on webcam; bunking classes and going for movies and dates; gossiping about professors and their personal lives and other friends and their personal lives; copying from friends' during exams and not getting caught; going to Nicco park with chaddi buddies and getting on the cyclone; reading old Gtalk chat histories; watching IPL matches and silently craving for a KKR head-band and then a friend sending it all the way from India on birthday; boyfriend 'who-can-just-boil-water' baking a cake and writing a wonderful testimonial to make up after a fight; playing Angry birds; drinking hard liquor and not throwing up and then being able to give a presentation the very next day;  coming out of the airport and identifying familiar faces in the crowd; being depressed all day about the laptop charger not working right before an important workshop and then a friend coming over and fixing it in a few minutes... 

Happiness.. yes, that's what I call it.. 

Monday 17 September 2012

The midnight mission



After twisting and turning in bed for what seemed like ages last night, I got up and decided to clean my wallet (I'll get to the significance of my wallet in a minute). Ofcourse there were other better ways of wasting time in the middle of the night, but I decided to do something I had not done in maybe a year. So there I was, wide awake, at 2'o clock in the morning with the sole intention of giving my wallet a decent look. The task was simple: to pick out everything one by one, decide which ones deserve a place in my wallet and throw away the rest. However, it turned out to be not as simple a task as I had thought it would be.

Okay, so what's so special about my wallet? Absolutely nothing, except from the fact that it's huge. It's really huge. Friends, who have seen it, always ask me "what do you have in there?" I always tell them that women like big wallets so that they can carry their worlds in them. But that is just a lame explanation, because all my other female friends here have small and thin wallets. Ofcourse they have big hand bags and/or side bags where they carry their worlds in, but that's not the point here. So honestly, I don't even know why I need to carry such a huge wallet, because I hardly have cash in there. I mostly have my cards, the ticket from the Gerry Weber Open tennis tournament and a bunch of very small denomination coins. Apart from that, it's all apparently useless stuff: some old and torn movie tickets (they are atleast 4-5 years old), some Café Coffee Day napkins, a few Indian coins, a couple of Norwegian Kroner, quite many old receipts of restaurants and coffee shops I had visited with friends long back, a few bus tickets and a small piece of paper which has a list of things I need to buy for the ongoing week (and this one gets replaced every week or so). I really wonder how these 'few' things make my wallet look so big and heavy!

So last night, I started off by taking everything out of the wallet and putting only the selected ones back in. I put the cards, some cash and the to-buy list first back into the wallet. Now, about the rest. Most of the tickets and receipts were damaged and hazy. I couldn't even read the small letters, so there was no way of knowing what we had ordered at the restaurants or which movie we had gone to see. I could just make out the names of the shops or the theatres and I remembered going there with close friends and boyfriends. I smiled to myself and put them back in. Memories. Then there were the bus tickets, mostly for the routes 17B, SD4, S31A, S31 and E1. I hardly remembered where I was going and why I had kept them for so long. I could just remember those indefinite hours spent in the buses, cursing and abusing the infamous Calcutta traffic, texting friends, reading books; the verbal fights between the bus conductors and some fellow passengers and those regular arguments over the ‘Ladies’ seats. I put them back in too. Then there was this Gerry Weber Tennis tournament ticket. Oh this one didn’t even take more than a second. I’ll preserve it for my next hundred generations. I put it in the innermost pocket of my wallet, where it is least likely to fall off or get damaged. Then those few Indian coins which I had purposefully retained before coming here. They’ll stay, I said to myself and put them back again. The Norwegian Kroners, given by a friend when I came here. They’ll stay too, I decided, and put them back. Now the job was almost done, except for the few napkins and small coins. A friend of mine and I had this habit of writing things down on the napkin whenever we were at the Café Coffee Day. We wrote mostly about each other, what we like and dislike about each other and stuff. Sometimes when we were bored, we just made smileys or funny faces on the tissue papers and then I used to take them with me as memoirs. Going through these napkins took most of my time last night. Ofcourse I couldn’t remember which Café we had gone to. The only things I remembered were the time I spent with the few people I now consider family, the things we did and discussed, the double-dates, FOOD and so much more. I smiled to myself because I knew what I was going to do with those napkins.

Bottom-line: I spent a couple of hours dissecting my wallet, and now my wallet looks and weighs exactly the same (both from inside and outside) as it did before I went on this mission. Agreed, I could have thrown out some of the coins but then I didn’t know how else would I have paid at the Espresso bar ‘Rossi’. So I kept them too. Maybe I'll throw them away the next time I try cleaning my wallet. And I don’t remember when I went to bed finally last night :)

Thursday 13 September 2012

Memories

Missing the life we once had.. the energy, the patience and the intimacy we once shared with friends. Quite a few pieces of the puzzle have gone missing as we have grown up.. Gone are those days when we blabbered non stop in the metro about things as unimportant as the color of the shirt of a fellow passenger, shamelessly rated guys on a scale of 10 even after realizing that his girlfriend was glaring at us, talked about censored stuff and giggled nonchalantly in the middle of a class, whined about the profs, abused and cursed the damn distance we traveled everyday, discussed the infinite problems in our personal lives.. never having the slightest idea on how to solve them; when we called each other atleast 100times a day before the exam, trimmed the syllabus 'n' number of times based on our intuition, discussed every single question before answering.. promising never to deviate from the nash equilibrium in the exam hall; when we took the up-down metro several times a day and stood on the vestibule, or walked quite a great distance just to spend time with people without actually spending a single buck; when we poured our hearts out to friends over cups of brewing coffee or a couple of sizzle dazzle brownies at cafe coffee day, to new-found acquaintances while taking a tour of an institute campus and to lovers while walking past the new market area and simultaneously checking out the earrings, the bags, the shoes as well; when we secretly indulged in some not-so-good practices somewhere near a 'gowal' enjoying every minute of it and swearing not to do that again. when we chatted over the phone for hours at night or exchanged countless texts.. talking about nothing in particular or sometimes cribbing about life.. yet feeling a sense of great companionship..

The life has changed since then.. Over time we have realized the importance of self-dependence.. how not to be sad even while having lunch all by yourself in the middle of a crowded canteen or a cafeteria, how not to feel nostalgic while watching others do exactly the things you used to do with your lot and how not to miss the life you once had with your loved ones. Change is one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting it's toll on people's lives... circumstances change, people change..what doesn't change is the memories.. all of which come rushing back when you least expect them to....

Monday 10 September 2012

Growing up

There comes a point in life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won't anymore and who always will... Sometimes at night you stay awake and think of the years gone by, what you did and what could have been done, what you said that you shouldn't have, what you should have said and you didn't, how you trusted people whom you shouldn't have, how you fought with people who loved you, how you compromised and never got acknowledged, how you had held on when you should have let go.. It's then when you wish you had an eraser.. which could have erased all the mistakes you had made. But then again life writes everything with a permanent marker which is almost impossible to erase. So you decide to learn from your mistakes and move on. But you never really learn from past mistakes. You just keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.. with the hope that things will be different from last time, until you find yourself pushed up against a wall. It is only then that you realize that you have a choice to make. You can either stand there and pray that the wall doesn't collapse on you, or you can push yourself above the wall and emerge as a stronger person on the other side..... 

Some people make the choice in a day… and for people like me, it takes several years to learn and accept these few simple facts of life..