| ||||||||||||
Kolkata – seen from a mental telescope and microscope in Mumbai
A Mumbai resident recollects – being always aware of the fine line between love for one’s own past and the rolling present – the idea and reality of Kolkata. There is a deep, dark conflict between utility and romance in the mind of a Bengali and the best and the worst of the land, consistently shared this. In the best of times and best expression – this conflict no longer remains merely personal but a slice of eternal human dilemma.
The Kolkata skyline, in most visual clichés, shows familiar landmarks like the old Howrah Bridge and the older Victoria Memorial. Every Kolkata resident has his or her own mindscape of the city, resonating with myths and memories. In my mindscape, too, Kolkata has always been associated, not just with the concept of Home, but also with many places which, for me, embody the essence of the city – the smoke-and-adda-filled Coffee House, the bargain-bazaars of Gariahat and New Market, Presidency College with its 3 Ps – porashona (academics), prem (love) and politics (in no particular order), and many such others. In a city which reveres the Past with an obstinacy which often makes it blind to change, this fascination for old, venerable institutions is only to be expected.
Which is why, when we shifted to Mumbai four years ago, what I missed most (apart from the food – but that’s another story) was the sense of ease and belonging which I felt in my familiar Kolkata haunts. The push-and-shove peculiar to Gariahat, the musty book-smells of College Street, the daily conversation with the guava-seller en route to St Paul’s College where I taught.
In Kolkata, these are not just brick-and-mortar buildings, not just a market place or a college or a street, they are redolent with the aura of our past. And the past, of course, as all chest-thumping Bengalis will tell you, is Glorious with a capital G. “What Bengal thinks today, the rest of India thinks tomorrow”, never mind if the flipside is, “What the rest of India DOES today, Bengal never seems to be able to do in decades”.
Maybe this is why there were wide-ranging protests when it proposed was that Coffee House be broken down. We romanticized it in song, cherished our coffee and conversations there, and turned a blind eye to the crumbling ceiling and cobwebby walls.
We gave the swanky new Gariahat Mall, with its Westside and C3, a cursory once-over, but never missed loitering for hours at Gariahat, like our parents and grandparents had done before us, where the pleasure of buying is matched by the exhilaration of bargaining.
We loved films like Parineeta, which recreate the glamour of Park Street in its sixties-heydays, and refused to give up on our ancient trundling trams, even though they often gave up in the middle of busy streets and caused terrible traffic jams and frayed tempers.
When we looked at the staircase in Presidency College, we relived the stories of Netaji’s nationalist fracas with Prof Oten on this very spot. We walked down the hallowed Presidency corridors buoyed by the ghosts of hundreds of brilliant achievers and nation-builders who were once upon a time students of this institution.
In my mind, these time-worn buildings and age-old streets were the heart and soul of Kolkata, invaluable because of their past glories, not their present utility.
But if Kolkata lives in the ‘rewind’ mode, Mumbai thrives on ‘fast forward’. If Kolkata clings to history, then Mumbai gets high on hype. So Kolkata’s hoary institutions often cut no ice with the pragmatic, change-crazy Mumbaikar.
I was extremely taken aback when, on mentioning that I was an alumnus of Presidency College, my new colleagues at my Mumbai college, instead of giving me the customary congratulations for having studied in this premier institution, asked if Presidency had a commerce stream. When I said no, they summarily dismissed the most prestigious educational institution of Kolkata by saying that all modern market-oriented colleges should offer commerce subjects. Needless to say, in India’s commercial capital, saying that I’m from Presidency did not make much of an im-Pres-sion.
And then there was my Mumbai-college Principal, who, returning from a trip to Calcutta University, was thoroughly dismissive of College Street. “Dirty, crowded, dingy little shops, with all the books piled up haphazardly. Why cannot they form a co-operative, build a showroom and display their products in a well-organised manner?” – he suggested.
Useful, practical advice, no doubt. But when has Kolkata ever heeded practicality and utility? Kolkatans, especially people on the seller’s side of the counter, love to function on whims and fancies (that is, of course, when they are functioning at all) – they pay attention to customers only when they know them really well or only if they want to.
I was pleasantly surprised by the inevitable courtesy of shopkeepers and salespeople in Mumbai, who willingly and cheerfully show you everything you ask for, and more, and offer you coffee and tea for your time. In fact, the smiling politeness sometimes makes me so uncomfortable (accustomed as I am to the grumpy moodiness of Kolkata’s shop-owners) that I feel obligated to buy things when I had just wanted to have a look around.
But then, that is so typical of Mumbai. Here, people spend more, buy more and hanker more for everything new and novel. New malls, new highrises come up every other day. If Vashi’s Center One Mall was the must-visit destination a year back, this year it is Malad’s Hypercity and Inorbit Mall. In a city which is always in motion, 24 x 7, even the skyline changes with breathless frequency.
Unlike Kolkata, where the skyline, both the real one and the one in my mind’s eye, changes slowly, reluctantly, making space for a Salt Lake City Centre and a South City Mall, but also taking pride in its heritage edifices, made of centuries-old bricks and echoing with centuries-old memories.
This is Sucharita’s first contribution for Pentasect. A Kolkata-irradiated and presently a Mumbai resident. She can be contacted at sarkarsucharita@gmail.com. Her name is immortalized in one of the characters of Tagore’s novel Gora – arguably the best novel of Tagore on the theme of the conflict between the Old and the New.