Back in Calcutta

So I am in Calcutta. I arrived in a Taxi quietly as my city slept in the early hours of the morning yesterday. Quite a few things have changed since I left for Madras half a year back. My parents have moved out of the house I have grown up in and they have put up in a rented house on the bypass nearer to Garia. They are making a new house and they want to stay closer to the plot of land so it's easier to look after the work.

This house is rather nice and quite in the lap of nature. There are birds right out of the window that one only reads about in Jibananada's poetry. The mornings smell different from the afternoons, or the evenings. It's colder too. It's quiet. Though it gets tiring after a point. Thankfully, I can take a metro straight to the centre of the city when I want.

There are a lot of walks planned out. Lot of places to eat at. Lot of friends to meet. Calcutta is so much more beautiful than other cities that it hurts. It is cleaner. (yes! Yes! YES! Stop looking like that!) It is better. It is just so full of things that really matter. And you know what? I am glad that the medieval communists fucked up and did not let this city turn into an IT hub.

I mean, seriously. IT is bullshit. Anyone who works in IT knows it. People in Calcutta have far better things to do than set up hideously huge offices in glass and steel that all look like each other  and work on god-knows-what. Most people in IT are half-dead. People who are not remotely interested in technology (and no, just having an Android or an iPhone does not make you technically inclined). I have met so many people in my company who carry an Android but don't know anything about it. My friends who have studied history know more about technology than they can dream of doing. I am very happy that Calcutta is not a tech-hub or a commercial capital.  Even if it means staying away from Calcutta for me. For the time being, at the least.

People in Calcutta are nicer. They get angry. They get moved by things they see. They comment on things even (and especially when) they know that nothing will come out of it. They invest their faculty on so many things that won't ever give them any returns. They do things for the sake of doing things, knowing that it won't matter - that nothing really matters in the end. For example, no one in Calcutta has asked me why I take photographs. Specially if I am not selling them. No one here tells me I should try to sell my photos just so I don't end up pursuing something 'pointlessly'. Apparently, if you are good (or even mediocre) at something, you should try to make money out of it. Well. I am not saying it is bad. But why would the act of interest in itself be enough? Why will it be  imperative to, why, almost unimaginable not to attach every interest with some goal?

Anyway. I want to meet everyone. Please meet me.

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7E

There will, of course, be parties. But this is the end of an era.

Here's to Shattolah. To the best times of our lives. To bawra mann, nishitho rater badol dhara.  To Pola. To the definite refuge, the mother of all havens in times when everything seemed screwed. To an apartment that couldn't have been more aptly named.

Here is to Laddu and 7E.