The magic of Kolkata

Kolkata makes me feel Ami abar shei Amar Ami – I am again my own me.

I was there last week. It is the end of the lukewarm Kolkata winter. Men are still wearing vividly colored, hand-knitted patterned sweaters. The roads are spilling with people. I walk the streets, warm memories roll down my belly. The broken pavements, the smell of kerosene stoves, the dust – lift curtains to my childhood and youth. The invisible people walk with me. I almost break into conversation with them and then stop myself. The unknown faces in the crowd building a world so new and yet old .

I walk to Gariahat with my best friend from kindergarten. We talk the way we have all our lives, except now the heartbreaks of life cannot be remedied by perfumed erasers. We walk the insanely crowded streets, dodging street vendors, beggars, stray dogs, garbage and pigeon poop. We pass by a Kali temple and hear the evening arati, the prayers, going on. We dash in, fold our hands and pray for the safety and happiness of our children, the jewels in our lives.

I go walking to Deshapriya Park, along the hawkers’stalls, a place close to where we lived when I was young. In the evenings my mother often shopped there for hand towels, petticoats and brooms. Nothing has changed. A shopkeeper sprinkles water on the cemented pavement in front of his shop. I stand there – again a five year old, my small fist held inside my mothers warm one. Delirious traffic surrounds me – honking, spewing black diesel smoke, careening, screeching. I stand in the middle of it, high on a drug called time burst. An immense energy engulfs my insides with a burning exhilaration. I feel connected to a past that has an abyss of years between now and then. It’s like two disjointed ends of a tunnel snapping back together. It’s a heady feeling.

At night, in bed, I hear a Bengali wedding taking place somewhere close by. It’s the wedding season. I hear the ulu dhwani, a high-pitched, gurgling sound made by the women. I hear the conch wailing followed by girls shouting excitedly, urging the bride to garland the groom. A beautiful scene unfolds in sound around me. I smile.

In the mornings I open the door to the balcony with a gray and white mosaic floor. A mist hangs over the next house, a grand Bengali house with colonial overtones. White pillars with leafy curlicues at top, join the two floors. A dense crowd of black pigeons flutters over the parapet. The snobbish ones hang over the giant jackfruit tree close by.

My friends bring me fish curry and sandesh, food I was raised on. The food breaks over my tongue and fills me with smell, taste, love and memory. I feel like doing a little dance as the pasty sweet paneer disintegrates and takes me to a place I cannot otherwise go to.

I meet my cousins – women with exceptional abilities and lives stamped with their own brand – we talk about family, future, uncles and aunts and it feels good to have had a real family. I walk the neighborhoods, some gorgeous old houses have been torn down, but I still see the old buildings, grand ivy vines caressing the portico. There is no escape from the eyes inside my head.

The saree shops dazzle with color. The hot energy hums – an enormous pot of humanity – boiling and spilling over, and so much life churning within. I feel the burn inside me. My body is weightless, I feel tireless, I walk endlessly. Dogs lie on gunnysacks. The flies look drunk inside the glass cases of the sweet shops. Bunches of red and pink roses float in black plastic buckets on the streets. Bengali magazines hang in long strips in the Goalpark stalls. Beaten eggs fall onto large black tawas and sizzle. The air smells of chicken roll and fish fry. Virat Kohli’s face looms from the billboards.

I go to see my mother’s beloved house – my happiest place. A beautiful white house that has turned gray and almost decrepit – a result of being locked up for years. All her daughters have left the city while angels hover over her house. I look at the long beautiful balcony for a long long time. I see her standing there, in a white cotton saree, her shiny hair loose and falling to her waist. She smiles. He old maid stands hunched over the rails. Her reedy wrists have the red conch bangles, a sign of being a married woman. She calls out my name, urges me to come in. I stand transfixed, unable to move or take my eyes away from the balcony. The lump in my throats gets rock solid. I feel the love from the balcony floating towards me like little origami birds – swinging through the air, falling over my head. I don’t want to go. The driver looks at me with concern. At last, I tear myself away.

I walk back to the flat in the evenings. I smell flowers from my childhood – cyclists ring by, there is a night bird that calls when I am in bed. On the dresser stands a clay idol of Goddess Kali – her body blue, her red tongue out. I bought it from Kumar tuli, where generations of clay artists have built Goddesses. She is still wrapped in plastic, ripping it would mean she cannot be carried in my backpack. She is rage and she inflicts mayhem. Yet she makes me feel safe at night.

Strength can be ours. Strength is memories, family, recognizing our true self, crossing over to what is left, picking up the threads of what is still there.

Kolkata gives me all that.