This is my fourth time in Kolkata. I first came as a four-year-old tourist. Some of those memories remain. Of relaxing on the lawns at Science City, settled on a low branch of a wayside tree having idli that my mom fed me; of walking along the white walls of the Birla Planetarium, eating something I did not like at a very crowded and dirty corner near a red building… Photographs had been clicked in abundance. They went missing during a shifting, only to reappear years later to give me an unexpected, pleasant shock. I got the assurance I needed. That yes, I had been made to sit on a tree to have my idli. That yes, I had posed in front of busts of god knows who. Yes, I had been terrified by red-eyed dinosaurs whose tails and heads moved.
And mom had to hold on to me as we walked through the place because I began to walk with shut eyes. There were photos of a big white church, a boat ride on a mighty river with umbrellas to escape the heat, of mom in front of the face of a bearded man which was actually different pieces that came alive when looked from the front.
Calcutta had charmed me from a young age, though very little of the adoration survived the metamorphosis I underwent since then.
I grew up to be a Physics student in love with literature. Surfing through that untouched section in the college library that housed torn books with brown pages, something caught my attention. The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre. I had already got another book issued, so I could not take this one right then. I did not want to lose sight of it either. Anxiety made me hide that book behind a row of others so that the next time I can come straight to the spot and get the book issued. I did this despite being convinced that nobody else will come near that shelf of old books, let alone select that particular book to read.
A constant companion
The City of Joy must have been the first book of its kind that I read. Needless to say, the book became a constant companion from the moment I began reading it. It was the tale of a family of farmers in a village in Bengal that, impoverished by the wrath of nature, had shifted base to Calcutta. The family represented lakhs of others who had left behind their home and hearth and come to the city in the hope of being able to feed their children. The book took my hand and led me to Calcutta. I spent sleepless winter nights with the family on the Howrah bridge, which had become home for the dispossessed migrants. I walked with Hasari Pal as he hunted for a job. I bled with him when he, starving for days, donated his blood for money. I ran with him when he pulled his rickshaw. I sat silent with Hasari when, one by one, his comrades fell, spitting blood and dying because of what was called Red Fever. I wept with Father Stephen Kovalski who had come to the city to serve the poorest of the poor. The book had taken me deep into the heart of Calcutta. And by the time I finished reading it, my imagination had blown up with the Calcutta that I had woven out from Dominique Lapierre’s depiction.
That was my second time in Calcutta. The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics is a research institute that bears the name of Meghnad Saha, a brilliant physicist from Bengal. One day in January last year I got the surprise of my life when I received an e-mail informing me of my selection for the undergraduate associateship programme of the institute. I had applied a few months earlier, and forgotten all about it. The institute is, as is obvious, in Kolkata.
The summer was at its peak. It was a hot gust of wind that first welcomed me to the city. Deep within, I was full of smiles. I was here again, borne by the soil, breathing the air and sheltered by the sky of Calcutta.
The sights
For a month and a half I devoured every moment spent here. A visit to the Birla Planetarium brought back images of the four-year-old sitting on those steps. The name of every scientist under his bust ticked a column of familiarity in my head. Meghnad Saha was one among them. This time I knew the world well enough to identify the bearded man at the Science City as Rabindranath Tagore. I wasn’t very comfortable with the dinosaurs this time either, but Phuchka had become a favourite — unlike then.
The St. Paul’s Cathedral looked exactly as in the photograph. The metro, the tram, the yellow taxi and the rickshaw, everything was as I had heard. I walked across the Howrah Bridge, where Hasari’s children had slept, starving and shivering. I saw a couple of the old-time rickshaws that had taken the lives of Hasari’s friends.
Right below my balcony at our guest house were little huts and a public tap. I spent hours watching from my third-floor balcony, like god, the days of the people there. The naked baby whose time out was when his mother washed under the public tap, the women who skilfully bathed there with their clothes fully on, the men who occasionally bickered and involved themselves in fist-fights.
I witnessed Kolkata’s reverence for Ma Kali a number of times. At Gariahat there will be one framed photograph per stall, or one shared by many. Every man, mind you, every man, begins his first sale for the day by first offering the item being sold to Ma. Facing the photo, he shuts his eyes and takes the item near his forehead and bows in front of her. He does the same to the first currency note he earns for the day. If this is how they adore their Ma on a routine day, I can only wonder how the city would look during Durga Puja.
This city has immortalised Rabindranath Tagore. On calm breezy evenings, The soft Rabeendra Sangeeth flowing out of the corners in the Victoria Memorial Park, soothes your heart in ways that cannot be fully explained.
Kolkata kept me truly happy. I was alone and independent and that gave me a glimpse of who I actually am. That was a big step towards the moulding of the living, thinking being in me.
That was the third time.
The latest
Now, I am here for the last time in this story. I left Kolkata when it was burning hot, and now isn’t it a sight to see her shiver! Everything else is the same. Only the laziness has taken on a higher degree with the dipping Celsius.
Time is running out. After my fourth time, I have begun the countdown to the return journey. So what? Wherever I am, the lessons of Physics, of life, of beauty and independence you, Kolkata, have taught me will forever radiate out of my persona.
Something tells me, you will beckon again. Again and again. You will tap me on my shoulders, and as I turn back, you will pull me into your lap and smile at me as I fall onto it. You will come in my dreams and ask me why I am away. You will send reminders all around the world, wherever I am. You will tempt me with your charm, and even without your call, I will find myself coming towards you.
Until then, for all those time you have called me, oh Calcutta!....Ami Tomake Bhalobashi….
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