Central Calcutta

Later that day, I wrote in a cathartic letter to a friend who has never seen Calcutta, a rambling description of the path that took me everyday from my home to the university.

“While I was in college I took the subway everyday from south Calcutta, where I live, to central Calcutta. Central Calcutta. The bridge between the new, upstart south and the timeless north. The gradual transition is noticeable as you travel down Central Avenue, the main artery between the old world and the new. The facade of buildings change from modern to early nineteenth century or older, and lanes and by-lanes explode on either side, disgorging rickshaws and people so that traffic is slow. Then the road narrows, the din ceases and suddenly you are in the moribund peace of the north. It is like travelling onwards on a great river that empties into the calm of a greater delta. As in a delta, the river gets fragmented, and a multitude of channels emerge; old, thin and finger-like, they stretch into the space between the aging buildings with easy sociability while the laughter of street-children and triangular political festoons flutter in the wind. The subway, bearing me across half the city, disgorges me into this chaos. I walk up the stairs to emerge into bright sunlight. I see a long line of squatting plumbers and locksmiths, waiting to be hired. Then on to Gandhi Road, with its rows of wedding-band musicians, in red coats and hats with fluffy pom-poms, getting ready to play the latest Hindi film song hits on trombones and trumpets, the men sedating their tired lungs with a smoke while polishing their brass instruments till the passers-by could comb their hair reflected on their glorious convexity.” How I missed, that day, the delicious sights and sounds of a great, big, living, disorderly city; disorderly, like life itself.