THE CITY OF JOY
Searching the soul within…….
MYSELF IN AWE
Kolkata “the city of joy”…… I’d always been in awe of the city right from my childhood. Though I didn’t visit the city as a child, but it would always be in my mind through the various stories I had listened to from my parents, both fiction and real. Baba would narrate his experiences during his short visits to the city, Ma would narrate stories from the story books of acclaimed authors with Kolkata as back drop. I would listen to the stories wide eyed and be awestruck. I’d become well acquainted with the Chowringhee lane, the fast and dark lanes of park street, the suspense surrounding the mysterious china town and the haunted Hastings, thanks to the stories Ma would tell and later the suspense novels that I had become a fan of during my growing up days. As I grew up I was drawn more and more towards Bengali literature just to find out more about Kolkata and continued to get lost in its halo. I loved and adored the Kolkata of my story land that I was introduced to as a child and used to long to visit it one day and I continued to live with this dream happily …………………….……
old Kolkata at it's charming best
THE AWAKENING
………………………………..It was in
2010. Dharmshala. Myself a grown up lady now, a wife
and a mother. My husband is a major in the Indian army. One afternoon he came
home and announced we got our posting
order. “AGAIN…? SO SOON..? But our tenure is not over yet. That’s not fair. How
can they do this”, was my reaction. Then after a while I calmed down and tried
to reason it out. There is no use getting hyper. To us postings are like
pimples, you hate it but have to deal with it, you can’t escape it. I then
asked him where are we heading to this time. All this while he was sitting back
watching me with a twinkle in his eyes. He said, “guess”. And that’s what I did. I guessed, and within
a month we were headed to Kolkata …….”the city of joy” n the city of my
dreams.
We landed on Kolkata,
My heart was pounding, fast and hard with excitement.
We came outside and found a vehicle from amit’s branch office awaiting us. We got into the car and set off. I
embraced with open arms the view and everything around and filled my lungs with
the Kolkata air. I was already longing
to see the Kolkata of my stories.
Than as the car progressed
further, reality struck me hard, real hard.What I see...? Broken road filled with pot holes,
filthy side walks with no space to walk on……. Garbage lying astray here and
there. Buildings stained and stripped of any colour. Beautiful buildings and forts,
lining the street , standing lovelessly
and uncared for surrounded by melancholy. Seems like nobody cared to put a little love on them since the British left.
Traffic- total chaos.Skinny old men pulling hand rickshaw amidst the chaotic traffic.Stray dogs running across.It was saddening and heart breaking to see the sorry picture of the city.
(I had many other pictures depicting a poor state of the city but couldn't bring myself to put it here)
I mean where is the Kolkata that I know. Or rather I had thought it would be like. I was sad thinking about it. Was it all lie whatever I had heard of this city? I told Baba that Kolkata is nothing like what he had told me to be like. Was it all a lie?
He than told me this beautiful city used to be exactly like the way he had described.
Beautiful, clean, fresh,young.........
beaming with energy and jostling with the busy passerby.
The busiest and the biggest city of the country. This was that one city that the British had chosen as their capital.It had its own charm, a charisma about it and it was us who have destroyed it all. We have practically killed the city or rather its beauty by our negligence, carelessness, ignorance and non-bothering attitude.....
THE SILVER LINING
All hope is not lost yet. I can still see a silver lining among the dark clouds hovering over us.This city gave us a lot in the form of art, music, literary works, scholars, the freedom fighters we take pride in- all were sculpted out of the same soil. It's about time we give it back.It's time we love the ethereal city back.
It really isn't too late yet. We still have time in hand. Instead of sitting back and blaming the authority we must start doing our bit. If we make our own little contribution and continue to show our love for the city, the time is not far when our Kolkata will be standing tall and smiling all over again.
I've always been doing my bit, by not littering the road. I always carry a mini dustbin in our car, and an empty carry bag in my hand bag for just in case.I try not to spit on the road. I don't throw any garbage into the river or on it's bank.We always follow the traffic rule.It all starts with us, if we'll respect the traffic it will respect us back.Cursing others traffic sense just won't help. Just a little love is all it need.Let us all hold ours hands and pledge cleanliness and promise to be a responsible citizen so that we can together wipe away the line between the facts and the fiction............ let us make our world as beautiful as in our imagination.......
In the mean time I'll make do with the pretty little world that I'd found as a child............
Keeping my fingers crossed for a new, green and exciting world to live in......
see you again..... <3 <3
photographs courtesy:
2 comments:
great Pamo... super like...I really liked and its a real fact
First of all ,I am proud and impressed as well as I am surprised as how our little pumpkin pie Pam writes so well.
Whenever I visited India I always used to compare our country with ones I lived and painfully felt that what we are lacking in many ways.
It is a fact that our people in general lack civic sense and responsibility and because of the population explosion and chaos that we live in,it is not ease to change the mindset in first track.
But I think strict laws should be enforced.For example in USA there are posted sign all over including freeways stating $1000 fine for loitering and strictly applied.
Love
Post a Comment