Calcutta

Calcutta is beautiful to the eye. Old houses with discolored walls, their shutters looking out into often-crumbling streets, street lamps out of a period film set, and colors of local political party posters effortlessly holding time within them. Fading architecture seems to challenge ideas of modern urban development. I don’t know how strong those walls are. But they live on, artistically unkempt. A huge city and a small world; with yellow and red nightlights and lovely evening breeze. It’s alive, yet dead. I see fire-crackers up in the sky; with the sounds of old buses roaring past sleeping Bengali homes. I could stay awake through day and night listening to transitions in sound. It’s a playful battle between the hot, humid envelope of air, and the cool river breeze periodically blowing it away. Layers and layers of living; bustling nonchalantly. Like in a colorful, populated dream.

One could fall in love very easily here, in the soft evening mood. I can imagine a beautiful girl laugh in a taxi down Southern Avenue. Sometimes the lusty glances under the lights of Park Street. Long conversations and long silences by a lake. What are we going to do with our lives, where are we going to go? Desires and pretences. The wind could languorously blow her black hair back. Taxies and thoughtful ice-creams at night and never going home. I want to stay in love. I never want to go home.

It’s modern and stagnant. It’s dirty, disorganized and dilapidated. And intelligent and sensitive. It has dark lanes and green streets. Aggressive, talkative people. Some would say argumentative. I wouldn’t venture that far. Everyone has an opinion. And most are worth shit. It’s complacent and cantankerous.

After the rains we climbed up to Birbal dada’s terrace. The dark sky with a few clouds left, and scattered night lights from the buildings far away. The shapes of coconut trees swaying to the nearly-cold post-rains breeze. He told me he used to sit there, watching life unfold in the busy street below, when he was younger. I told him I could sit there with a girl. Trying out the first tentative steps of love. Or silent and sad as the relationship vanished slowly into the haze of city smoke. And after everything I could return and introspect. That subtle sadness in my heart and the joy of freedom. The wind moans before a storm. At night, Ron and I walk around Lake Club, thinking of possible names for characters from a story. Thinking of the name of the story itself. And we come close to the dark lake, lights imprinted on its surface. The water surface glistens, manacled in calm. It looks like another sky.

I leave tomorrow for the hundredth time. When I return again, my eyes would have grown older. The city may have changed.

It takes time to go beyond that initial anger. Calcutta is not my home. It will never be. I don’t know where home is, or what home is. Except that when I find home, I’ll be calm. Calcutta is my parents’ home, their parents’ home, their brothers’ and sisters’ home, my cousins’ home. But to me, a beautiful city of love and discomfort. A little memory island; confusing, and wonderful.