From the eyes of a beholder..

It was a warm Tuesday morning, like any other in that part of the city. The railway station being one of the busiest in the country, it was no surprise that at any given moment, thousands of travelers thronged in and out of the various platforms. A normal morning and an even more normal sight. Yet, for one particular passenger coming out of platform no.16, that morning was special, for how often do the people on streets welcome you before the first rays from the sun hit the streets? That passenger was me, coming out of Howrah station and I was in Calcutta, at long, last!


To be honest, I had gone to Calcutta with a set of prejudices, those being the exploding population and the smuttiness on the roads. However, one hour in the city and I was ready to look at it with an unbiased point of view, not because I fell head over heels in love with the city but courtesy a simple rationale. A city whose inhabitants have had the senses to maintain their heritage right from the Victorian era have to be given the credit due to them and this is precisely why it wasn’t a surprise to find out the little but important things about the city I eventually did.

Probably one of the best things about Calcutta is that the minute you step out of the railway station, the Howrah Bridge welcomes you. It feels like a homecoming of sorts, what with arguably the city’s most important construction greeting you. One may stand beneath it and admire it at bay. For someone like me with an intensive love for architectural marvels, this and the Victoria Memorial present a very pleasing sight for I can spend a lifetime there and you have to experience looking at the Ganges from atop the bridge to know what I am talking about.

Calcutta is any tourists’ delight. You have a variety of places to visit and you can pick and choose them depending on your tastes. You have Howrah Bridge, Vidyasagar Setu, Victoria Memorial, High Court, the Indian Museum, Queen’s Mansion etc. for the heritage buffs, Science city for the geeks, Belur Math, Dakshineshwar temple and Kalighat etc. for the spirituals and the Eden Gardens for the cricket lovers. I was lucky enough to be able to go in and it was more than a pilgrimage of sorts. Having said that, the real Calcutta doesn’t lie in places I have mentioned for you cannot know what the city has in store for you by merely visiting these places. The real Calcutta lies in places like Babughat or Gariahat for these have the spirit of joy we know Calcutta for. People may have little or more than what they need, yet you will find the sense of contentment in both the cases.

At best, I can define Calcutta as a city of paradoxes. There is a strange sense of calm even in the loudest of clutter. There is beauty on every nook and corner despite the filth on the streets. The life is slow but the buses are fast enough to scare the living delights out of you. There is variety even in the most mundane of activities. There is spice in the sweetest of things. You are alone in the most crowded of places and even when you are alone, you are in sync with what is around you. You sit with a thousand others inside Belur Math and yet you are alone with your God. You go with a select few to watch a movie at Menoka and yet the entire theatre watches it together, echoing the same comments, same sentiments. People maybe divided between Mamta Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee but are united as one when inside the Eden Gardens.

Calcutta is an eclectic mix of present and past, good and bad, slow and fast. It becomes very difficult for me to talk about this city, to rate it or worse still, to echo what I feel for this city; for how do you explain something that is best understood when experienced, best felt when you are a part of it and best seen yourself and not through someone else’s eyes? Calcutta is an experience, a beauty to behold and a memory to treasure. It is ‘madlee bangaliii’ as they say and therefore it isn’t a wonder that it is the ‘city of joy’.