Reliving Kolkata street life

"Years ago, I left you

Kolkata and came away:

no, not to another city

nor another home.  "----- Pritish Nandy

#1: Parked hand pulled rickshaw 

Kolkata is a city which always evokes memories of my childhood visits. I did not grow up in the city but returned to it to complete my studies and start my working life.

Like Pritish Nandy's the relationship with the city was always intense. The initial visits on school holidays started with the cavernous Howrah railway station and negotiating one's way through hawkers, passengers, beggars and destitute pavement dwellers to the bus terminus. Repulsion was the overwhelming emotion mixed with wide eyed wonder for the boy from a small industrial town. 

    #2: View of Howrah Station from the river

Howrah station subway in the 1970s/80s was a distressing sight for a child. A powerful stench of urine, thin scavenging dogs,  destitutes lying in their own waste with flies buzzing hit my senses like a powerful bull dozer. However as I stepped out into the sunlight and boarded the then extant red double decker buses repulsion gradually gave way to wonder.  The bus crossed the magnificent Howrah bridge and plunged into the melee of Posta and Burrabazar with its hand pulled carts and porters balancing huge loads.   After crossing the business district with the lake and the food stalls the bus would pick up speed and go past the green Maidan eventually arriving at our destination -a leafy green suburb on the south western outskirts. I would end up repeating this trip over the years during school holidays. Over time the city started to work its strange charm. The crumbling buildings with its green damp infested walls, corner tea shops, white clad traffic police, the yellow taxis all blend into the experience of Kolkata. Later I would take in the different facets of city life - the college street bookshops, the packed buses and trams, political processions, the latest Hollywood blockbusters in Globe, New Empire and Lighthouse, Tibetan food, classical concerts in Rabindra Sadan and glorious cuisine that ranged from Indochinese street food to Anglo-Indian gourmet food served only in the colonial era clubs. 

Then somewhere in the early 2000s I left the city for work but returned every year to visit my parents my in laws and my friends

Over the last two decades of my absence in the city the pervasive human misery that so repulsed me as  a child has receded. So has the hidden ponds and lakes, coconut and betelnut groves. The city has emerged beyond its faded colonial ruins and crumbling buildings but encased itself in more concrete. There are more high-rises, swanky shopping malls, a well planned new town and comfortable commuting with the ubiquitous Ola and Uber taxi services. The continuing brain drain of young people seeking aspirational careers  have left the city to their pensioner parents.

This time (Oct 2021) I had gone back after nearly two years due to Covid lockdowns and travel bans. May be due to the gap more than ever my heart pined for the Calcutta of my childhood- the old colonial era buildings and their neglected, unpainted exposed brick surfaces. Also the hidden colonial houses and gardens you didn't know even existed, the smell of rotting leather in china town, the street life and the street food all beckoning me to a different more laid back and simple world. 

 This writeup is essentially a photo journey where I have stepped through my own nostalgia for the city.  These are a set of random photos which I have tried to structure to outline some of the key themes of Kolkata city life ranging from street food, local barbers, rickshaws to old dilapidated buildings and rain. 

Its no wonder then that I started my trip by indulging in memories of the city's street food.

#3: chicken chowmein shop 

The ubiquitous chowmein shops is a throwback to a rich cultural intermingling and in a culinary way one of the truest reflections of the city- its love for street food and its openness to experiment.  I clicked them when they were getting ready for the  busy evening time. 

The next two photos cover more on the association of food and the city.

#4: The muslim snack shop during Durga Puja

The Muslim food stall guys represent the mosaic of life in central Kolkata where Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities live close to each other

#5: The Bengali fishmonger

Fresh water fish in an integral part of Bengali cuisine and culture. A visit to the fish mongers is essential to really understand the bengali psyche. Open municipal bazars selling fish is still a common sight though increasingly fish is being sold from the air conditioned confines of supermarkets

#6: The neighbourhood barber shop. 

We landed just before the big Durga Puja festivities  when the local barber shops and saloons experience high demand as young men want to look their best during the festival days. This barber shop appealed to me as it was a throwback to the old Calcutta I knew before the advent of beauty parlours and boutique hair dressers. The faded framed photographs of freedom fighters, the white tube light, the blackened wooden chairs all reminded me of the way the city once was when life was so much simpler

#7: The solitary reaper

This ground floor grocery shop in an old building in a narrow central kolkata alleyway to me is such a metaphor for this city. The bright fluorescent blue paint  on the walls of a dilapidated but once grand private house, the disinterested and lonely grocer all adds up to 

#8: The fashion conscious rickshaw driver

This young rickshaw driver with his decked up Rickshaw  was waiting for customers next to the Durga Puja marquees in a central kolkata alleyway.  Very fittingly the background is a Christian church, the rickshaw driver is a muslim and the occasion a hindu festival

#9:Ghoshal Bari near college street

Though there numbers are dwindling through real estate development and sheer neglect, Kolkata is a treasure trove of old colonial era family mansions. Most of the buildings are dilapidated with plants growing from the cracks but they hark back to an earlier better time for the city. The once grand but now crumbling buildings  now besieged by multiple tenants, the working class areas with their small mosques and temples, sudden crowds of children

#10: College Street bookshop

A city with a dedicated marketplace/neighbourhood for books is a city with its heart at the right place. Kolkata's book street or Boi para-college street is a favourite haunt  for students, artists, teachers, budding poets, tourists and  all book lovers. If you are wandering around college street you would usually end up in the iconic coffee house for some unwinding and intellectual adda while sipping endless cups of sweet milky coffee

#11: The iconic coffee house near college street

#12: Buying Lakshmi Puja idols in Beliaghata

This photo was taken on the evening before Lakshmi Pujo!! This event on the full moon evening immediately after Durga Pujo in the Bengali calendar that is associated with so many childhood memories!! The intricate Alpana’s of the Goddess’s feet at the doorsteps, the gradually improving weather after the rains, the ritual offerings especially the khichuri, তিলের নাড়ু (sesame seed balls), grapefruits. Coming closely after the separation pangs of Bijoya dashami it offers some respite to the Bengali soul!

#13: Kolkata after rain

2021 saw unseasonal rain even after the rainy season was technically over.  Streets of kolkata like this one in Golf Green emerges in vivid watercolour images

   #14: Birds after rain

#15: Two lost souls in a rainy central Kolkata evening

As a friend reminded me on seeing the caption to this photo that all those wander are not lost and another suggested two souls encased in a concrete jungle. This photo of a rainy evening in a central Kolkata street evokes a sense of alienation and deep longing 

The rain always reminds me of  a poem from one of my favourite Bengali poet-Shakti Chattopadhyay. His poems resonate with me especially as Kolkata holds a special place of affection with him

"Rain on Kolkata's chest
(কলকাতার বুক পেতে বৃষ্টি)- Shakti Chattopadhyay

(translated from the original Bengali by Nandini Gupta)

Unasked, the rain arrives, the drops beating on tin sheds,
Like furious horse hooves, strewing roads with flowers.
Liquid streams down garbage mounds; a different Kalijhora this,
Flowing not amid bungalows but Kolkata’s hideous homes.
The rain arrives, flooding lanes, washing away
Tales, bedclothes, fish-scales, peels, the torpor
Of middle class homes, careless politics, ballot papers, dry bits of wood,
All that. Rain and rain-drenched picnics are necessary;
To Kolkata, and also to the dead grass.
Birthing rooms this way, Nimtala ashes that,
Life, death, and other trifles scatter in the rain.
Kapas cotton unfailingly lies down between satin covers.
The rain goes to bed a little late, on Kolkata’s chest."