Transition

The first week I spent in Kolkata reminded me of the period 8 years back, when I had stepped out of home for the very first time. Although, I have been to a lot of places in these 8 years, this place made me feel like a lost puppy more so in mental terms than in physical terms – it was a new unknown city where people spoke a language I hardly understood. I was miles out of my comfort zone and it was not some dream that would end as soon as I wake up, shivering, but with a feeling of comfort that it was all untrue and I was in my very own bed. This was reality and it would be the truth for a long long time ahead- till the time I had developed an opinion, of either love or hate; for I believe all cities leave an aftertaste, sweet, salty sour, bitter or tasteless depending on their own cultures and an individual’s previous experiences – there is nothing as “mild” city.

I come from Delhi- rather, that was my last destination. I had spent the past 5 years of my life there. To say that I was in love with this full blooded city would be like making a mole hill out of the mountain. The relationship cannot be encompassed in single worded emotions. I had felt everything- right from extreme love to extreme hate and everything in between. I had danced in overcrowded discs surrounded by friends and under the stars all alone. I had cried when the city had shed tears of blood and laughed when she had rejoiced. I had admired its history and hated the high handed ness of its system. I had soothed myself with those long walks from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhavan and hated those lecherous crowds in the DTC buses. I had felt pride during the first rides on the new flyovers and had been ashamed of the callousness of the people. A relationship that had come to a full circle, in every sense.

I had cried and spent sleepless nights before leaving Delhi. No other place seemed more beautiful and inviting or more repelling. I wanted to be there and yet not be there. When the confusion used to become too intense, I tried to pacify my heart with the hope that I could always come back and stay here once my “awarapan and banjarapan” came to an end. But the heart had replied that even though a part of my soul would never leave this place it would never be the same again…no amount of money would return the pleasure of student days or that of spending money from your first salary in Lajpat Nagar and SN Market. No riches could bring back those hours spent in company or solitude in Dilli Haat, Tuglaqabad fort, Lodhi Gardens, Janpath, Shri Ram Centre, British Council, railway station, airport and ISCON temple. Not to forget my own room…those hours when my physical body had just laid on the marble floor staring at the ceiling while mentally I went to every conceivable corner of the universe…places I had dreamed of and places where I am going right now. It felt strange that the realisation of one long cherished dream meant breaking of so many other beautiful realities- of being close to home and being in a city that changed its mood every hour of the day, a city with thousand flavors – the city of dijins. And wasn’t it by my own choice that I was moving out? Ok, maybe a difficult choice – to be away from the past that tortured me day and night. Maybe it was the painful memories that were driving me out of Delhi. Maybe I was running away from reality - it felt simply horrid to be in the same city when the wounds of the heart were still open. Maybe I was just trying to give myself some healing time plus a big time career growth. I had promised myself a new beginning and with sheer determination wiped off all associations, links and memories of the so called temptation making sure not to include some hugely “nice” people in my “to remember” list. It was just picturesque places, unfinished chapters, Kodak moments and nature’s blossoms that I was leaving behind.

My first impression about Kolkata was that this is the land where worker is the king. The pre booked taxi from our regular “niche” (because it’s grossly overpriced) official vendor failed to arrive even one hour after my landing, for no apparent reason. But when it did, my plans to blast the guy were sent into cold storage. For this was no ordinary guy…here was a guy who could speak 4 languages (English, Hindi, Bengali and behold!! French) in a well polished manner, looked scholarly and if provoked could speak fairly well on a gamut of topics-politics, literature, Rabindra sangeet, places to visit. Mind you, this was not one of its kind experience…almost all cab drivers and other service providers (who were bred in Bengal or had been there for ages) followed this trend…they would follow the trend without exception…they arrived late, were humble & apologetic without giving any specific reasons for delay and then they would charm their way with their service and knowledge. To many readers this may sound strange, but then service partners in Delhi are best known for their shrewdness, roughness, staring at female passengers in the rear view mirror) and money minting abilities.

The first thing I did on arriving to the company Guest House was to order for a vegetarian lunch…I was enormously hungry and had heard loads of praises about the fare dished out by the cook in the guest house. What my brilliant mind had missed was the “association” between the people who had praised the food -all these praises had come from Bengali friends...half of whom were not hugely aware of what North Indian food is supposed to taste like and the other half were (by default) thinking of machi-bhaat while praising. I couldn’t eat beyond the 4th spoon…the food tasted and smelled different-that was when the fish and mustard smell entered my nose for the first time. But then when in the evening hunger took over the sense of taste and smell I mixed cold rice and curd and finished it off right to the last grain…Yo!! Kudos to the Survivor!!!

The next day being a Monday, I was at the office at sharp 8:56 AM (office begins at 9AM)…only to realize that the office was as deserted as the Sahara Desert at noon. Not a soul was in sight, not even the security guards were at their place. The unofficial work hours started around 11 AM – a lesson that I was quick to learn, for the very next day and every other day after that I reached office at 12:00 noon. Alas! One of the biggest fallacies of humans is that they grow accustomed to comfort within seconds. Anyways…no harm so long the work is being done.

An interesting aspect of Kolkata is the lunch hour at MNC’s. Each of them has their cafeteria that serves what I would call a reasonably good lunch. Yet 90% of the employees queue on the road outside the office, to eat at the dhabas and at the food stalls of “dibba vallas”, sharing space with their project managers, the freshers in their teams, taxi drivers, laborers beggars, the x, y, z of the city and a wide assortment of animals including cows, dogs and pigs. No prizes for guessing the level of hygiene and the kind of raw material being used to cook. It isn’t a big deal to see the dog licking the plate from which u just ate. It would be “washed” by dipping it once with 25 other plates in already blackened waters and wiped with the “gamcha” around the vendor’s neck…the same gamcha with which he fights off Kolkata’s humidity, the dust of the stall and God knows what. Be it machi-bhaat, chai, fish pakoras, chicken biryani, jhaalmuri, coconut water, rotis, vegetables, juices, puchkas – u name it and its there. If u feel giddy reading the discussion…well come over and see…if you don’t eat there u feel like an idiot or an outcaste. Call it the eating ritual- I’m very much a part of it now.

Bengalis are a helpful lot. Absolute strangers will help you out…unlike Delhi where your very own neighbour may be plotting your murder. Crime rate is low (remember its all relative) and thefts few and far flung. But then they are loud and subtlety is unheard of. These people have developed their own telephone etiquette which can be summed as “The volume of the speaker will be inversely proportional to the distance of the listener.” This principle would be especially applicable to people sitting on the same floor. For someone who sits in the next cubicle people would use the speaker phone…so that everyone else can hear the speaker followed by his voice on the phone - due to the minute time lag in transmission. For someone who would sit say 50 meters away the proud Bengali would just stand up at his seat and yell in his “buland awaaz” (the phone would disappear at such moments) Irritating!! Worse still, sit with 2 Bengalis or 200 of them and u would soon be lost while they squabble away in Bangla. It’s the unsaid rule of the land-conference calls, group chats, meetings, informal talks, be it on tea table, rest rooms or lifts, in which more than one Bengali is there would be conducted as much as possible in Bangla, leaving others high and dry. Even the most senior of the managers follow this law. But then a law is a law, no exceptions. I’m learning- both the laws of the land and the language-where most of the words end with a “chi” or a “bo”.

The festive air that the city wore made me feel lonelier…people who might have otherwise talked to me were busy to finish off their work so that they could leave office early to be with their friends and family. Late evenings while returning home the city looked like the Goddess herself…all decked up with finery. I longed to be a part of the milling circle of friends and family members who did Pandal hopping all night long- while I sweated it out at office, doing additional work for my Bengali colleagues. By the 5th day of Durga Puja, 70% of the people were on vacation. I wondered and wondered if that was the scenario in a company where every third person is in a client facing role, providing what is supposedly 24*7 support what would be the scenario in schools and other organizations? I’m still wondering….

Enter Saturday. I managed to find a friend from Delhi who was home for Puja. He promised to take me around the blessed city. My plans of visiting the pandals, the Victoria memorial, Park Street and Planetarium were ruined thanks to the worker union’s bandh and protests happening all over the city due to the ousted Nano project. On Sunday as soon as I dressed to go out it started raining and rained cats and dogs, non stop for four and a half hours. Needless to say it was useless to step out- Kolkata is known for its water clogging and traffic jams. All that was left for me to do was to go round the nearby pandals later in the evening all alone.

It’s always fun to explore a new place, more so when the language is a barrier. One gets to learn new things- it almost turns the communicators into toddlers who cannot speak but are determined to convey their messages. My expeditions revealed the rich heritage mostly hidden in piles of dirt, rotting flesh on human body(Kolkata is one place where thousands stay in slums-dying a painful death right from the day they are born) and fish smell of the city accentured by innovative, educated people and a society that believes in team work. So what that they are lazy. So what if their pride often crosses into snobbishness. So what if they still load praises on Rabindra Nath Tagore and Satyajit Ray –as if what they did just a few months back. That goes to show that these people have a good memory. With time I have learnt the intricacies and hope to perfect them in future.

After a while, things started looking better as I made more friends and grew accustomed to the fish and mustard smell that followed me everywhere right from Guest house to my cubicle in office to the Puja Pandals. Like the boxer in the Vodafone ad. Or like the warm heartedness of the people. It’s after all just a perspective. A perspective that’s bound to change as I explore more, mix with the locals and yes learn to speak Bangla!! Maybe some day in near future as I set the harness for further shores I feel the same companionship for Kolkata as I had felt for all my previous stations. Happenings that would soon become cherished memories have started pouring in- it’s just a matter of time that they jostle around for space in my diary. Just a matter of time…

Hours of Darkness

It was a typical Indian evening – an evening that in every sense belonged to the rainy season. It was hot and humid and there was no electricity thanks to the consistent power cut of 2 hours from 7:00 – 9:00 PM, everyday. She had forgotten to buy the candles, on her way home from office and was cursing herself for the same. Even though, the general store was only a 5 minute walk from her place- there was no way she could convince herself to change from shorts and the sleeveless t- shirt that she was currently in to more “skin covering clothes”(thanks to the modern people who were so very “traditional”), then lock and bar the house(thanks to the inborn thieves that everyone around her was), walk on the uneven road full of potholes and no street lights, saving herself from the cyclists and their oil consuming cousins coming from the opposite direction and even from behind (thanks to the traffic sense of the people). All this for a candle? The effort was not worth it, she decided. Also, there was no sense in borrowing from bhabiji for that would again mean changing her clothes and listening to the sad story of all the pains bhabiji had to encounter in the form of the September heat, the devilish children at the school and irky autowallas on her way from school- where she taught. I have better things to do, then to listen to the inconspicuous problems made out of a “too idle mind”, problems for which there is no solution. She put a reminder for buying the candle in her cell for 6:30 PM the next evening and proceeded to read “The Alchemy of Desire” in the mobile light-something she had been dying to do since the morning (when, she had last read it while cutting the vegetables for the tiffin). Necessity is the mother of invention, no doubt. Her optimism made her see the whole thing differently - with a gripping tale like The Alchemy…which is partly based on the spirit of a woman overpowering the actions and thoughts of the author when he reads the personal diary of the dead- there could be no better setting than a dark room with the mobile playing the role of the candle.

She sat down against the cement wall- it supposedly kept her cool. The book was balanced in her lap and her right arm rested on her right knee supporting her head, while the left held the mobile. After every few seconds she clicked the mobile to keep the light on…she kept her fingers consistently on a single digit, so as not to delete something by mistake. The mobile screen faced away from her eyes – on to the book. After about an hour she got tired of holding the heavy book, with her neck craned at an angle, reading in the dim light. Indeed her eyes had started paining. She kept the book aside and went on to lie on the marbled floor. Her eyes closed and the muscles creaked with relaxation. For the first time in the evening, she realized how unusually quiet it was…the silence being broken by an occasional vehicle passing by. It seemed that the neighbours and her landlord’s family were on the roof to beat the heat. Otherwise Naman, her landlord’s five year old would have been hollering out so loud, (followed by the banging of things he felt like throwing at walls) that it was impossible to do anything that required even a bit of concentration. Also, the heat and the gathering dark clouds had quietened the children who played street cricket outside her house.

The wind was still and the heat oppressive, the gathering dark clouds were indicative was the storm and shower that was to come up shortly. It was still 15 minutes before the electricity would come up again. Someone somewhere was listening to the radio- she could faintly make out the jingles and thought about Nitin - her favourite (everyone’s favourite, she thought ruefully) RJ. There was a time during the college days when a mere mention of Nitin made her blush and she made sure not to miss a second of the time when he was on air-even if it meant waking up early in the morning, missing classes or carrying the radio to the bathroom. Her close friends had once surprised her by asking Nitin to wish her on her birthday- live on air. She had been too surprised, too happy; too shocked to be wished by him so that for the most part of the less than a minute conversation she was tongue-tied. This was quite contrary to what she had imagined her conversation would be with Nitin. She had imagined she would call him up some day and declare her undying love for the fat, pudgy, Santa Claus-type looking RJ, right on air - and he would accept her gladly and they would live happily ever after. Like fairy tales. Like Sharukh’s movies. But it was not to be. She had only said thank-you to his wishes and on being asked how would she celebrate- she said it would be on to her friends to decide that. Later she often wondered if things would have been different had she said something like- “I have already celebrated- my biggest celebration is you calling me up” or “Why don’t you join for my b’day party tonight? We can go out for an early dinner tonight, because I have to be inside the hostel by 7:30 PM- just the 2 of us”. However when he asked her the song she would like to listen she had replied “Aye Ajnabee tub hi kabhie…” from the movie Dil Se. She imagined Nitin playing the song and thinking of her, just as Sharukh(who had played an RJ) had done in the movie…while in reality; Nitin must be busy checking out his script or who the next caller would be or something else. But who knows…he might as well be thinking of her….

Those heady old college days…the love bug for Nitin had not died as yet but then the busy office schedule occupied her mind space while Nitin occupied the air space. But right now it was not the love bug- it was the mosquitoes that were bothering her. 5 minutes still left for the electricity to come back. By now the clouds had completely taken over and a small wind had started blowing. A wind that brought the smell of rain, along with the radio sound more clearly. The song was an old time romantic melody from Asha Bhosle, “Raat akeli hai, bujh gaye diye, aa ke mere paas, kaanon mein mere – jo bhi chahyen kahiye, job hi chahyen kariye” (The night is lonely, the lamps have died out, come near me, say and do whatever u feel like). She often wondered if animals could understand the meaning of the songs. She had read somewhere that music made the plants grow faster and kept animals happier. But did they understand what was actually being said? At the moment the answer seemed yes- because of the number of mosquitoes buzzing near her ear and invading her open legs and arms with bites. “Damn it, I’m not singing that song” she said out aloud to them.

The electricity came back. She got up from the floor and proceeded to finish the small everyday tasks. She heated the milk and poured out some of it to drink. Dinner in her reign was unheard of- it seemed a waste of time to cook for herself when it took 5 minutes to eat up the dinner and atleast 45 minutes to cook and clean the utensils. Milk was so much better- healthy and saved her so much of time (forget the money). Time she could spend in reading or listening to music or doing whatever (and the money that was intended for vegetables and went to books). “I eat books”, she had once written. Actually true. At 9:30 she spoke to her mother. This was also included in the every day tasks- speaking to her mother and sharing the small normalities of everyday life- what they did over the day, what caught their attention so on and so forth. After speaking she went in to have a bath- to wash off the day’s grime and proceed to bed; clean. It had already started raining, by that time. She held back the desire to get wet in the rain on the roof- “You will be late to bed” she chided herself. She laughed at how staying alone had made her…she talked to herself and even scolded herself and at times pleaded with herself. Crazy…but then who cares?

The lightening lighted up the bathroom ventilator for a moment and then there was a huge rumble followed by the darkness everywhere. “Oh no, not again”, she thought. It was one thing to be caught in the dark and absolutely another to be caught in the dark with the soap on your face. Anyways there was nothing that could be done-so she decided as well to continue with the bath, in the dark. She remembered the last time when she had been caught like that, while in hostel, when the generator had got burnt. But then her roommate had handed her a candle and she had what was later described in the hostel lingo as a “candle light bath”. They still talked about how romantic it sounded and how unromantic it actually was –to bathe in semidarkness, trying to save the candle from water splashes (especially when someone is afraid of creepy crawlies which are so much a part of the hostel- the hostel campus being a small jungle in itself. But today there was no roommate and no candle. “My bad luck that the electricity had to go again- only today when I’m candleless”

Anyhow the ablutions done she proceeded to bed. It was cooler now with the rain still falling in sheets and the wind blowing strongly. The sound of the rain shut out all sound. She thought of going back to the book but the day’s tiredness was taking over. The beauty sleep was just round the corner but the mind lulled over a lot of things…the lunch time conversations with her team, the beggar she met every day outside the temple, the look of the guy who sat in the other bus, at the traffic intersection at Khanpur. The 2 buses had stopped side by side, very close so much so that they could have touched each other. The guy smiled at her and she had turned away, unsmiling…for no obvious reason. He had looked nice and ok. What does ok mean, she thought? “Ok meant he was marriage material - he was good looking, an open face and looked as if like her, he too worked in an MNC (which meant he could afford “things”)”, replied the back of her mind. What would have happened had I smiled, the foreground mind wondered. “Well nothing…the bus would have moved on and it would be history”, replied the background mind. “We would have exchanged names and company names, to start with and then maybe called each other on office landlines”, replied her heart. One question with two answers. I shall keep a lookout for that bus (and for him) tomorrow- and smile, she told herself.

A sudden sound of thunder jolted her back to her senses. She didn’t know if she had fallen asleep or if she was partly awake when the thunder sounded. The electricity was still out but that didn’t bother her. She turned on to her side and relished the coolness of the wind, the comfort of the hard bed and the sound of rain. The whole night is still ahead- what a luxury, she mused (unlike the mornings when the alarm woke her up and she realized that the 6 hours of night had just slipped away unnoticed). The rain had lessened in intensity but there was no sign of it abating.

After five minutes when the sleep refused to come, she got up. She stepped out in the balcony to feel the rain on her face. Came back drank some water and tried to sleep again. This time her thoughts went to the characters in the book. “I’m so much like the woman whose spirit haunts the author”, she thought. Alone, surrounded by books, living in a civilized society, yet so cut off. “Oh, you cynical young lady, can’t you ever be happy? You have everything you want and then you talk all nonsense” scuffed her other “half”. “Maybe Manu is right when he says that I have no sense of practical world”, it continued. Maybe….

The sound of anklets and a mild playful laughter made her open her eyes again. It was followed by a male squeal and some more female laughter. Then there was silence and again the sound of anklets- as if someone is running, or trying to get away. From experience she knew that this was her next door neighbours…It was a young couple, who had got married just a month back and whose bedroom window by a twist in fate faced her window and consequently her bed . She was not pally with then, but then they exchanged smiles (and nothing beyond) whenever they met at the grocery or at the presswalla. If the two windows were left open without curtains the people on either side could easily see what was happening on the other side. On such occasions, when the curtain was not drawn and the people on either side came face to face, while carrying on a chore, they ignored each other as if they did not exist- for it was the politest thing to do. However as she was to find out; even when the curtain was drawn there were things that made sense- especially during night when it was so silent. A few nights ago as she had laid reading; over the weekend, well past midnight she had heard those sounds- of the music of anklets and bangles in rythm, of ragged breaths and suppressed moans. It had sounded good and in a way flared her desire as well for a brief moment. Her imaginative mind, that knew the face of the couple and the layout of their bedroom was able to conjure up almost the exact images, from the sounds.

Now with the anklets sounding again and the sleep refusing to come she got up and peeped from behind the curtain. The neighbours had left the window open minus the curtain presumably to have a cross ventilation. They weren’t too bothered (or had forgotten) about the girl whom they knew was already sleeping in the next house and whose window faced theirs. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw the young couple standing in their balcony and kissing. Kissing? “Did I see it right or am I imagining stuff?”, she wondered No they were indeed kissing. She turned away thinking it was too personal a moment and she shouldn’t be prying on the couple who were out discovering the wonders of married life on a drunk night like this. She came back to the bed and turned again…back to the window… “Just a last glance and I would sleep” But the glance lasted longer than she had intended to. After about half an hour when she grew tired of standing she came back to the bed. “I must not do this…”she told herself again. “But why should I miss? If these people are not worried about their PDA’s why should I worry?” She went back to the window and slid the curtain such that it still came over the window but let her have a good view to the “blue film”, without letting them know.

Coming back to the bed, she raised her pillow and laid down in such a manner facing the window so as to have a live telecast. By now the couple was in the theos of passion. She could not see their faces but the bluish night light from the balcony door outlined their heated bodies. “How animal like…” she thought, disgusted and fascinated at the same moment. Sex didn’t look interesting, she decided. We only think it to be interesting…it’s all sweaty and dirty.

She looked at the watch. It was 11: 30. “Too late…I must sleep now or I would be late tomorrow morning”, she told herself. The couple was already over with round one and they lay talking and readying themselves for the next. In another 10 minutes the electricity also came back and the world drowned in the familiar sounds of ACs, coolers and fans. At 12:00 when the night watchman sounded his whistle followed by the faraway barking of the dogs- she was still awake, a prisoner to an n number of thoughts and scenes that played in her mind, blocking off the sleep. Finally at 12:30 AM when nothing helped, she got up, drank a glass of water followed by 3 teaspoons of cough syrup which was always available for such odd nights that came once in a while. She lay down comfortably stretched out straight and kept the pillow on the head to block any sounds- whatever they maybe. In 5 minutes she was snoring…gently. The rains had stopped and a pale moon peeped out from behind the clouds giving a silvery edge to the feline forms stretched naked, closely against each other in the opposite room. The clock ticked away the minutes awaiting the return of activity to the locality.