Kolkata!

Having been an itinerant IT professional for the past ten years now, I’ve often been asked the question: What constitutes the spirit of Kolkata? What strange blood courses through the veins of this city giving it a distinct character of its own? Is it the strong emotions of passion, fear and exhilaration or a sense of refinement and sophistication in the fine arts that makes it stand out?  I’ve thought about it deeply but the answers slips through my mind like sand through a closed fist, the harder you try to grasp them the faster they disappear, elusive and mystical, buried deep somewhere in the cavernous pits of time and history.

Yet paradoxically as you attempt to discern the spirit of Kolkata you start by listing list the ills that befall Kolkata; the chaotic traffic, the pot-holed roads, the crumbling infrastructure, the debilitating weather, the irascible crowds, the notion that nothing gets done in Kolkata, I could go on and on. But despite all these backbreaking odds the people of Kolkata still know how to enjoy, love and celebrate, finding their elixir in the spirit of Kolkata that lights up the lives of all its residents cutting across barriers of race, religion and class alike. But what is it really?

Is it the spirit of Kolkata that drives people to watch an East Bengal-Mohan Bengal football match under a pulsing mid-summer sun? Is it in the haggling over the price of ilish in a slippery, dank and crowded fish market? Is it in eating that greasy kati-roll in the ubiquitous roadside eatery? Is it in enjoying a languid early summer evening laced with a refreshingly cool breeze; the harbinger of a kal-baisakhi? Is it in having endless cups of tea in a bhad over raucous adda with friends? Is it in indulging yourself in a delicious puchka ignoring the dubious origins of the jol while on a shopping spree in New Market? Is it in enjoying a cricket match on TV at home on a languorous hot summer’s bandh afternoon after a lunch of mangshor jhol topped of with mishit doi? Is it in strolling down College Street hunting that rare boi? Is it in loosing yourself in the milling crowds at Maddox Square trying to catch a glimpse of Ma Durga on a balmy Navami evening? Is it in taking a morning walk in the Maidan on a misty winter morning? Is it in playing cricket and badminton in a bagan-bari picnic in the pale winter sun? Is it in having a Christmas plum cake with family and friends at Flury’s on Park Street? Is it in sharing a drink with friends in a snooty British era club where once only the pukka shabibs were admitted? Is it in ordering that extra hot jhalmuri as the train approaches Howrah station? Or is it in beating the crowds to buy that much sought after book drenched in the dust and madness of the boi-mela? Or is it simply in the fact that no matter how tightly you put on your monkey cap to beat the chill it simply cannot match the warmth and affection of our pishima’s and mashima’s who won’t rest until you have tasted the last morsel they have so lovingly cooked all day long just for you?

Like a freeze frames in a movie these images flash past me in quick succession, each shot unique yet connected, bound together by some invisible thread. But before I get carried away we all have to face the sobering truth as well--- no matter how you put it, Kolkata is a city in decline—even though geographically speaking it might be expanding but in the minds and thoughts of many people it’s shrinking. It’s already a shadow of its former self being burned and singed in the vitriolic brand of politics being played out today; businesses are fleeing and investors are hesitant; the best and brightest brains have already left for greener pastures elsewhere. The glitzy façade of malls and residential complexes do little to hide the grinding poverty of the slums; its educational institutions are in a state of disrepair; the acrid smog in the winter evenings cloaks the city choking all and the ever expanding city boundaries devour verdant fields with roads, water and sewer facilities unable to keep pace with the frenetic pace of growth.

Yet the spirit of Kolkata lives on inside me as I’m sure it does in a number of others who have been touched by it in one way or the other; part nostalgia, part wistfulness, part longing for times gone and above all a sense of wonder at the resilience of the human spirit to overcome all odds, no matter how daunting or insurmountable they appear to be.