She was the deposed capital of the British Raj, the jewel discarded from the crown. At home in the broad avenues of the erstwhile Fort William, she was the quintessential lady, the dowager slowly greying but still regal in her fading beauty, her hair coiffured, her back straight, her pearls on, her smile reserved, her chiffon saree pinned to perfection, her words cultured, her manner genteel, her tea-time sacrosanct and served with dainty cucumber sandwiches in high ceiling-ed clubs with arched columns and liveried attendants.
In the lanes of North Calcutta, she lived in a red-floored, cool interior room of a yellow-red mansion that opened to a running verandah overlooking an inner courtyard. Long slatted windows let in the Hoogly-fresh breeze that ruffled the long perfumed curls of her lightly oiled, jet-black hair. She wore a white cotton saree with a red border, a big red "tip" on her forhead, and vermillion in the parting of her hair. She went to Loreto House wearing a white, knee-length skirt and there she played the piano and read the romantic poets.
In the alleys of Bhowanipore, she was loud, spicy, chaotic, colourful, and she celebrated life and religions and festivals with aplomb. She was extremely political and spoke of freedom and socialism with fiery passion, giving voice to the new Indians who were rediscovering their brownness and renewing their attachments to their roots. She fell deeply in love with love, sports, cinema, books, and art. She was intelligent, well-read, argumentative, and opinionated. She was diverse, confident, and connected to the entire universe.
She spoke in many tongues. She was Calcutta, Kolkata, Kal-katta, and all permutations and intonations of the word in English, Bengali, other Indian languages, and French, Armenian, Cantonese, Persian, Hebrew, Greek. She was raucous, entertaining sea-faring nationalities that had come to love her from across the world on the ships that sailed into her river port. She was capitalist and communist and naxalite.
She was jazz and classical and pop. She was Muslim with a Hindu daughter called Durga. She was Hindu with a Sikh brother who drove a yellow and black Ambassador taxi. She was the Kabuliwallah's Mini. She was corporate head-quarters and dingy bustees. She was deodar and gulmohar lined bungalows and giant light-boards of pouring teapots and Regency buildings crowned with oversized rotating globes. She went to the New Year Derby with an obese Queen Victoria enthroned nearby, watching the angel weather-wane playing on top of her memorial. She played polo, rowdily watched football on the maidan, threw oranges at white-clad cricketers in Eden Garden, listened en masse to the
Mahisasur Mardini broadcast from All India Radio at day break on Mahalaya, marched in protests...
Now I live in a metropolis codified as Kolkata, her dimensions simplified into one, uniformly blue and white, one voice privileged over the other tongues, her past flattened, her wrinkles bo-toxed.
I miss my Calcutta.
Comments