Kolkata is a highly charged up place, especially if you are the apolitical sort. Political parties (primarily the Left) will make use of any opportunity to get political mileage.
As one gets out of the Kolkata airport, one sees a stall with a banner that says : West bengal Pre-paid taxi association. you know you have arrived in Kolkata. In Mumbai (or even Chennai,`Delhi), there are a series of operators offering pre-paid taxi services. but Kolkata has only one. There is somebody manning the stall, handing out receipts that say the amount you are supposed to pay and the vehicle number that you are supposed to travel in.
I wonder if differential paying because of the presence of several taxi operators would have helped.
A cab ride to my friend’s house takes most of the hour despite the lazy Sunday morning. It is an interesting ride with DLF-Hilton hoardings coupled with Mamata Banerjee slogans dotting the landscape. Tiny lanes stealing their way into people’s houses are a common feature in Kolkata.
After 4 days of Kolkata, I realise that I wasn’t very far off the mark when i said the city is green. At least, that is what I could see as the plane landed at ‘Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport’. 2 days ago, I had laughed at my father for daring to suggest that the airport was called ‘Dum Dum airport’.
The city was closed on Tuesday and Wednesday with bandhs declared by two different parties. I was telling somebody that Bengalis are perhaps the most political people in the country. The other ones would be the Malyalis. I think, it has something to do with the rule of the Left. The Left parties are a bundle of contradictions. Wednesday’s Telegraph carried an open letter to Ms Mamata Banerjee from a 35-year old Bangla woman on how much the people hated a bandh.
To be sure, the state of bandh has been declared as illegal. While much was made of it, bandhs are a way of life in this side of the world. In Mumbai, the Shiv Sena had declared a bandh just over 2 years ago and I think they were fined for it, but other schools of thought seem dormant in this side of the world.
Yesterday evening, I was at Park Street for a while. I think every city must have a road that becomes a point of reference for people. In Bangalore, i think it is Brigade Road or even MG Road. In Chennai, it would be the arterial road that passes by Spencer’s plaza, etc. I am not sure about Mumbai at all. I think, the linearity of the city creates pockets within the city. It is a little difficult to have a central road or even a ring road, isn’t it?
The rain in this city is desperate, persistent. it comes when the people don’t want it. it floods the roads and wreaks havoc. I have yet to make up my mind on what this means. The city itself is beautiful.
Rabindranath Tagore lived in a beautiful red and green brick house which has now been converted into a museum. The man himself has been immortalised in the form of songs, books, poetry and pictures. Criticising Tagore in his land is blasphemy.
Houses when converted to museums take on an air of apathy and obsolescence. They do the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do-preserve the place and leave an ‘indelible mark’ in the minds of visitors.
Some buildings on MG Road were so decrepit that there were signs stating it was dangerous to walk under that building since it could fall.
Kolkata is known for its food and at the risk of sounding like a curt entry from Lonely Planet, I will say that the reputation is well-deserved. I went to a place called Mocambo at Park Street but there were several others including corner shops selling rolls (chicken, mutton, double chicken, double mutton, double chicken and double egg and so on). I avoided the more expensive places like Fluries (known for its English style desserts).
Surprisingly, I found the city well-connected. I had been supremely confident in a way only people from Mumbai can be that the island city was the best connected in India (some even think, the whole wide world). Metro, Tram, railway, shuttle auto, cabs, cycle rickshaw, the buses. My friend informed me that they called the buses ‘living room’ buses because they had seats that faced each other instead of facing the the direction in which the bus was travelling, as is the case mostly.
Indeed, the buses could have been anywhere. Indians have a morbid fascination with Moghul architecture and so they will build structures with domes, intricate minarets and others embellishments. The buses have windows shaped like windows of a Moghul palace. I do not know what utility they serve but they reminded me of the house boats of Kashmir.
Sometimes, you have to take three kinds of transport to reach one place. For somebody living in Kolkata, that can get pretty tedious, I guess.
I had been planning a trip to Santi Niketan for a long time now but the bandh put paid to my plans and I had to remain where I was: Kolkata during a bandh. Interestingly, I met a man later on my flight back home, who was returning home for Diwali. He was an engineer and worked in Bhutan. He kept saying how much he hated the city and the intensity of it took me by surprise.
Distances create fanatics out of people. We see it all the time among non-resident Indians who tend to exalt India, even that India which does not exist in reality but exists only in memory. It is strange because we are talking about the same country, in this case.
