“Calcutta if you must exile me destroy my sanity before I go”~ Pritish Nandy

“Calcutta beckons me
In familiar names,
Calls me close in the midst of anonymous crowd
On an intense, familiar bent,
I fall back on its stones.”
~ Arun Mitra

This sleepy city wakes up in mist on a foggy winter’s morning, stretching out with a yawn …yearning for her hot “chaa”( tea) preferably in a “bhaad”( earthenware cup), the taste of dried smoked earth blending with the milky sweetness of tea… an addiction…
She unfurls herself to the sounds of broom, coarse sticks tied together, the flap  flap, flap against the pavement, the dust swirling,  the pigeons cawing, flapping their wings to fly away into the morning, and the sounds of the soon to be busy bread and egg shops, the doodhwalas ( milk men) or the mother diary milk pouch vendors, and newspaper stalls ( how much longer will they exist?)
The elderly uncles walk and still huddle for their morning tete a tete-a-tete
The joggers jog along maintaining records on their mobile apps…
The street side markets get ready with fresh stocks for the day…
And the streets, gullies, lanes and bylanes gear up for the daily grime, the daily grit and grind, the polluting , the existing and decaying meandering called life…
Winters in smoggy asthmatic breaths , in gasps and gulps breathing life…
Breathing the smog and haze of pollution thrown up by vehicles far too old for common good…and yet they ply, side by side with the jazzy Mercedes and BMWs
The buildings just as incongruous,  the dilapidated crumbling mansions of yesteryears with their majestic past, waiting to be brought to their knees, pounded and cleared,  for the tall new post modern conveniences..
And Yet, She,  this city , this crumbling choked up city
Flits like a teenager, flirts with the mellow sun of “basanta”( spring) blushes red with “palash” and “simul”, her colours vivid…soft , effervescence like the “abir” She dons on Diljaatra( Holi)
She is an ideologue…as only the young at heart can be…bright in her beliefs…
She is fierce in it, as only the young at heart can be…ferociously free…
She wraps around herself Marx, Kant, Hegel, Nietzche , chews on concepts like Social revolution, liberation, She reads,  discusses, emotes, cries, laughs, goes on strikes, throws tantrums,  hiccups, comes back to transactions… cool headed crafty transactions , with dollops of “cut money” and ” jugaad” till all hell boils over and freezes and comes down as the cooling rains and She revels in it
The sultry, sulky mango smelling summer giving way to the red “krishnachura” ( gulmohur) and the pelting rains that washes away the dirt and makes this city so green  so luscious… fulsome and wistful alternatively…
She yearns now, looking back in a mist of tears, even as she smiles…
To the drumroll of “Dhaak” and grey cumulonimbus clouds making way to “kaashphul” and white fleecy clouds of “Sharat ” ( Autumn)… the advent of the Divine Goddess, Her Durga, in Holiness and revelry…A time for rejoicing the goodness within, and the sweetness of “Bijoya” the victory over what needs to be subordinated,  a celebration!
This city throngs in its People  wherever they come from, whatever be their caste, creed, religion… be it the Armenian Jews, the Chinese, the Gora ( white) sahibs, the indigenous Budhists, the Islamic or the colonial settlers, the Jain traders  or the Hindu Bengalis, they are all Hers, they belong to Her.
So does the twinkling lights of Christmas,  just as much as the beautiful diyas of Diwali…
She settles down to a warm cup of coffee in the mellow winter  afternoon glow making peace with the paradoxes She breathes in, the knots she keeps tying around herself, to untie again and again and again…
In her insanely sensuous reality
In her irony and her grime..
In her sanity and her oddity
She makes poetry out of life!