“You are such a Kolkatan. Where is your monkey cap?” chortled a writer friend.
I was trying to fashionably brave the Jaipur Literature Festival’s Writers Ball at the opulent Rambagh Palace Hotel. There were smoky Talisker whisky and salted maple cocktails with names like the Pregnant King. An entire goat was roasting fatly on the spit. But all I could think of, in the chilly night air, was that I should have worn a cap.
We are Bengalis. We were never equipped for winter. The monkey cap is a joke and a cliché. It’s also not untrue. I spotted the pioneering writer Manoranjan Byapari, winner of the Hindu non-fiction prize for 2018, in the authors’ lounge at Jaipur. He had on his monkey cap. I congratulated him for winning the prize. He replied “How are you? Isn’t it very cold here?”
Yet winter is also Kolkata’s season of content. Goibibo says, “It is the best time to visit Kolkata as the weather is cool and pleasant too.” That’s when the migratory birds arrive from London and New York and Mumbai and Gurgaon. They gossip and drink and have devilled crab with a dash of nostalgia at Mocambo restaurant where no reservations are allowed.
Jolly & holly
The clubs are jolly with ho-ho-ho Santas, the lines for plum cake are long and Park Street is dressed up in lights for a Didi-ordained Christmas festival while its ‘continental’ restaurants are offering duck specials.
Sweaters are out, quilts have been sunned, and the bazaar is filled with cheap local broccoli as opposed to ‘imported’ expensive broccoli. Clay pots of nolen gur or the new date palm jaggery, show up in the market glowing darkly, a promise of the all too fleeting taste of winter. Winter reminds us of a time when mothers sat in the balcony in the afternoon sun knitting sweaters and baby bootees and well-oiled kids were made to run around the terrace before bath time to absorb the sunlight.
Winter sees not one, not two, but three literary festivals for Kolkata in the space of barely one month. Some might think it’s a little excessive but all three persist, jam-packed with authors, sometimes to the confusion of the writers who forget which one they signed up for. But it’s just part of winter thrills and chills.
The sunlight is buttery gold instead of scorching. The dahlias are in extravagant bloom at the Horticultural Society show. Snippets of cauliflower show up in the regular aloo samosa. The Dover Lane Music Conference, gets under way though no longer in Dover Lane. It’s long gotten too big for that. Our neighbourhood association sends us a flyer with plans for the community picnic.
Car rallies & dog shows
Winter means something in this city. It’s a remembrance of things past, a more cosmopolitan city of polo matches, vintage car rallies and dog shows, a nostalgia for a more happening city. For a few months, winter, ever-shrinking as it is, reminds of the city Kolkata wanted to be. We dream winter.
But it’s not yesterday once more in that city. The mist is pure smog. An early morning jog sounds healthy but it is not. Neither is the marathon. Its Air Quality Index even managed to trump Delhi at 380 PPM whereas the capital only managed 300. A satellite picture shows ominous sulphur dioxide clouds hanging over the city. The city is full of masks these days. But Kolkata’s politicians are loath to stir into action, smugly content that Delhi has it worse. But the persistent ugly hacking cough never goes away, a phlegmatic reminder of the new grim underside of Kolkata’s happiest ‘season’.
We always wanted winter to last longer, much more than we want the carnival madness of Durga puja to last forever.
Over the years though winter has become shorter and shorter, arriving late, leaving early, making a mockery of the quilts brought out of storage and put out into the sun. I have never known a pleasure as enveloping as crawling under a quilt at night.
But like a Kolkata winter it’s a short-lived pleasure. Just like the nolen gur that heralds winter and which we eat dribbled on everything, from rotis to cocktails, our own maple syrup as it were. These days the State government in a brainwave has figured out how to put nolen gur in a tube and sell it, a bit of Kolkata winter, squeeze-and-serve nostalgia. Purists might shudder. But the non-resident Bengali heart rejoices as they carry nolen gur back to other parts.
Perhaps it’s wrong to try and bottle winter like that, to artificially expand its life by putting it in a tube.
A Kolkata winter is meant to be fleeting and ephemeral. But then if my hacking cough is going to last beyond the expiry date of a Kolkata winter, why not a bit of nolen gur to sweeten the pain?
Sandip Roy is the author of Don’t Let Him Know , and like many Bengalis likes to let everyone know about his opinions whether asked or not.
