Many of us in the right side of 80s, (i.e.) the side in which I was born, have fond remembrance of Doordarshan. DD was the king of entertainment in the 80s. Visual entertainment reached our drawing rooms and we felt we could be entertained anytime. No longer were we required to plan, book, travel and keep a big chunk of our time assigned to visual entertainment. We just switch on the TV and we are entertained with movies, songs, information and news. What fun! The only issue was that we did not have the choice of time or content. We were entertained only when the masters at DD felt so and that too with content of their choice. So we waited a whole week to see the latest movie songs only to be given a load of patriotic songs from many years prior to our birth, At that time, we did not have the taste to enjoy such classics from the past. Even so, many of us look back at those days with a nostalgically satisfying sniff and tear. I guess one of Bruce Springsteen's songs tell us why those days were better than today, at least as far as TV was concerned - those were not the days of "56 channels and nothing on".
Many decades have passed since those days and we have leaped across a century. That brilliantly futuristic 21st century we envisaged is here and yet visiting Calcutta (or Kolkotta as it will be called from now on) did not take place. Once I had the good luck of visiting the airport en route to Guahati, I peered out of the airport and the flight as it took off and landed in an attempt to see the Howrah bridge with disappointing results. A few years back an opportunity came by for me to spend a week there but another plan interjected to ruin it all. Thus the wish remained a wish for a good part of my life.
A good 14 years into the 21st century the day finally arrived. The tyres of the plane rudely smashed onto the earth and our belted bodies felt force in many directions. The plane took a left off the main runway and the belts started clicking open. A few souls in hurry to get out of the steel tube, got up and started opening the overhead lockers. The hostess came online to remind everyone that "we are taxiing still" and requested everyone to continue to be seated. Then the pilot came on and assured everyone that he planned to reach the gate safe. He promised that everyone would reach their home in a short while and that no one would be left back on the plane. "So sit back and enjoy the final moments of this flight" he ended. The mobiles started ringing and many voices said similar words in many language "Yes we have landed and would be out in a few minutes".
Kolkotta airport seemed much better than the Calcutta airport I visited a few years earlier. It seemed spacious and more international. It did not look as though parts of the roof would fall on our heads. I looked down at the baggage carousal hall from the arrival gate and saw that parts of the hall were not complete yet. My colleague pointed at a few flower pots placed at a corner. They were in the shapes of frogs, spiders, mushrooms, elves and other such fancy creatures. For some reason, these fancy creature-ish pots caught his fancy and he whipped out his mobile to click pictures in five different angles. His embarrassed companion tried his best to keep away and act as though he had no idea who this naive picture taker was. But there was no escape; the company logo proudly beaming out of t-shirts clarified to all the relation between the two people.
The queue at the taxi counter was long. I remembered the omnipresent yellow taxis from all those Bengali movies and saw a few of them outside. But not enough of them were around for the passengers inside. A Volvo bus came by and picked up a few passengers. By the time, we decided to move out of the queue and get into the bus it had moved on. My colleague called some expert on Kolkotta who said that we had to only get out of the airport to catch one of the many buses that went very close to our destination. We got out of the queue and airport. The only way to the road outside was through the car park. We maneuvered through cars of many sizes and shapes eager to get out the of the lot. In the process, I experienced a few "near death experiences" - my whole life started playing in front of my eyes - I got as far as my first day at school.
As we walked up the ramp of the parking lot, we saw a yellow cab slow down at some distance. The cab stopped and the driver waved at us. We increased our pace of walking. Our luggages struggled to keep up with us. As we reached the cab, the driver waved us into the cab with a few words of Bangla. We got in and uttered the name of our destination. The driver uttered many words in Bangla and started the cab (he probably said "Ok, I will take you there. Now sit back and relax while I take a few twists and turns to take you two to your wonderful destination"). As we got out of the airport, we saw the bus stop. As the guy had said there were many buses. Each of them had more than a hundred people in excess to its capacity. The bus stop itself had many more hundreds of people trying to clamber into the buses. We gave thankful looks at the cab driver and God (though lately God's performance in the area of looking after us was way below our expectations).
Kolkotta is a city of building (not buildings for I use that word to mean "in the process of being built"). Every where I looked something getting built. Skyscrapers, apartments, flyovers, metros, bridges, houses, offices, malls and many such incomplete whatevers watched us pass by. Many of these incompletes did not have anyone around. It seemed like they would continue to be in this state for many more years. The few lucky incompletes had two or three people walking around carrying rubble on their heads.
The road leading from the airport were wide and the traffic free flowing. Some amount of landscaping was done on the stretch from the airport to the city. Many of the crossing were marked with large statues. The two owls looking down at me with their large questioning eyes reside in my head still. Among the partially and fully completed structures that lined the road were a few lakes, fields and marsh land. These came out as a surprise in the least expected of the places. While the right side of the road was filled with humanity, the left was left open to fields, lakes and marsh land. The landscape on either side of these stretches seemed to belong to different centuries.
One hour into the ride, the taxi driver said something, in Bangla of course. I responded with a brave "Kya app hindi mein baath kar sakthe hain?" He seemed to hesitate for a moment before asking, in hindi, the exact address of the place where we would alight. I looked up the address in my phone and said it out. He said he did not know how to get there and that we have to ask someone. I called up "someone"and passed the phone to him. Many Bangla words were exchanged through the phone before it reached my hands again. The drive continued but now we moved out of the highway into some bye-lanes. I looked at the houses and buildings that lined these lanes. They were nondescript and were just like the buildings and houses that lined the lanes of any city or town in India. In a few minutes, the driver stopped the vehicle with a sudden jerk. He then pointed ahead and mentioned that our destination was the fifth building on the right. I asked him to go on to the building. He said he cannot proceed anymore; a cat had crossed the cab's path. On further inquiry he said that a cat crossing your path brought bad luck. I said "nothing of that sort, go ahead". He then got onto a long story on how a cat crossing his path had brought terrible ill luck. As a matter of fact, he had nearly been killed in that incident. Apparently, his car fell into a pond soon after the cat crossed his path. He lost the car but was able to save his life "thanks for Shibji's kripa". So there was no way he was going to move an inch ahead. We got out, paid him and saw the taxi zoom back at an inhuman pace. In the process, he nearly ran over a couple of people; maybe the cat crossed their paths too.
We spent the rest of the day in the office indulging in a lot of this and that activities. At the end of the day, one of our hosts was kind enough to offer a spin around the city. We were shameless enough to accept the offer without any display of hesitation. The next two hours were spent surrounded by a million people walking, driving, shouting, spitting, honking, running, teasing, etc. Even in Mumbai, I had not seen so many people. In many ways, Kolkotta seems like an older but poorer brother of Mumbai. The Esplanade area with many of the buildings from the British age still standing, though barely, reminded one of the Colaba area of Mumbai. Though in this case there are many more people and the British age buildings in Mumbai are much better maintained than the ones here.
Kolkotta is very famous for its
Maidans. These are large spaces in the centre of the city left open for people to play, run and relax. Right across one of these, is the famous Victoria memorial. It was nearly 9pm when we reached there and we looked at the lighted memorial at a distance from the gate. The gate was guarded by two majestic lions in white stone. I am not sure how the place looks in the morning but at night with the lights focused on the lions and the memorial, in the distance, the sight was simply magnificent. Through the day, we had heard of the wonderful
puchkas (some kind of
pani poori apparently
) you get in the Victoria area. By the time, we got there all the
puchka sellers had called it a day.
Now it was time to get to the river. We started off with an average but expensive dinner in a ship docked at the bank of the river. The ship has been converted into a hotel and restaurant. From the top deck of the ship you get a good view of the river and through the foggy night we were able to discern the vague shape of the Howrah bridge. The sight on that foggy night made it seem like a painting by some famous painter whose name I should remember. Unfortunately, the food was less than an average affair and the cost was much more than an expensive affair. Fortunately, for us our host vehemently insisted on paying the bill and we obliged very willingly.
On the way back to our hotel, which was quite a distance away from where we were, our host decided to take a lengthy detour to show us the new (relatively speaking that is) rope bridge across the Howrah river. He claimed to have an uncle who was involved in the building and the maintenance of the bridge. This uncle had taken him to the top of the column that held the ropes and that the view from the top of the column was better than spectacular. The drive across the bridge felt like a drive across any bridge. The massive ropes that held the bridge were a sight though. At the other end of the bridge were the toll booths, which we were not able to avoid. We had to travel further for another couple of kilometres before heading back to our hotel.
The next day, was spent in the office with nothing spectacular happening except for those fantastic Rosgullas and sandeshs that entered our digestive system every hour of the day. The drive back to the airport was a nail biting thriller though. We did not realize that the evening traffic would be such that getting out of the office two and a half hour prior to the flight was barely enough to get us to the check-in counters 45 minutes prior to the flight. Fortunately for us, we were not travelling Air India and we were able check-in.
