There have been several times when I have been faced with the question , “if you love your city so much, why have you never written about it?” truth be told, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because the city with its vast plethora of experiences is too much for one person to pen down. I m a Bengali and this is my city, Calcutta. (Yes. I am still a snob. I will still stick to the anglicized name).
For me, the city came in different shapes and colours. My earliest memories of the city were invariably the ones every Bengali grew up with. The warm and grueling summer with the promise of a summer vacation when, invariably, I would be swept off, along with half the population of the city to the cooler hills and grateful as I was to escape the heat and carry a bagful of memories, I always looked forward to returning home. Summers also meant going out with my grandfather and haggling over the mango vendors who used to suddenly appear at every conceivable nook and cranny of the city. For a Bengali, the worthiness of the man of the house was judged on the “aam” he picked, just by looking, feeling and smelling. On these days, you also found some man of the house throwing nuclear weapons at a vendor who had managed to dupe him and sell him sour mangoes.
Summers meant eagerly waiting for the evening. When the ice cream vendor would come by and you can just about hassle your grandparents, or in some cases emotionally blackmail into buying an ice cream. It never mattered what brand it was. All that mattered was it was “ice cream” and the call of the vendor crying “quaaalityyy or roooolick ice cream, (with extra focus on the oooollllllll) was enough to send you into a mad frenzy.
The summers also brought the promise of kalbaishakhis- the nor’westers. For me nor’westers were the best part of summer. A thunderstorm which took pity on the residents who were fighting with each other- the last seat on the bus, the space on the foot stand which offered a precarious standing between life and death, all because the traveler wanted to return home a little early, the pedestrians who were jostling for space to walk between the street vendors who occupied more than half of the footpath. It took pity on the dusty, grimy streets lined with equally dusty and dried trees. It took pity on the boys playing football, who had to rest in between to cool themselves before resuming their game. It took pity on the school children looking out of the window in the last period of class, hoping, just hoping that the rains would start just when the class is dismissed. It took pity on the harried housewife who had just a few moments alone for herself to enjoy a cup of tea before her husband and kids returned and she resumed her duties. And in an answer to all their prayers, the thunder clapped, and the downpour washed away all the grime and dust and failure and tempers and soothed the city. The storm knew why it kept returning all through summer. The smiles of the residents brought him back.
Diary of the Twenties 