the journey begins

 I remember clearly that day when Daddy came home from work a little later than usual and announced that he had an exciting job offer from a factory owner in Delhi. I had come home a little earlier having spent the last few hours with Surjit. I was more than a little sweaty in the sultry Calcutta evening.

I was in this process of taking off my drenched clothes when Daddy gave us the news and the lights went out. Calcutta in the 70s and 80s was the load shedding capital of India. But I loved the place. We lived in an upscale area right across Alipore. It was called New Alipore. I had spent many hours there on the roads of Blocks F , A and even G ; completed my schooling from khidirpur -St Thomas Boys and had very dear friends who I would be forced to part with soon.

When I said that New Alipore was an upscale colony, I meant that it was relatively very clean and was chiefly inhabited by mid level businessmen and white collared executives working in companies like Metal Box, Shalimar Paints, ITC and their children going to schools like Xaviers, Hartley, South point, Julien Day and others. The locale was predominantly bengali with a smattering of expatriates.

Why I loved this place? Well other than the fact that i grew up there smelling fish at 8 in the morning and listening to Rabindra Sangeet from the neighbour's window, I revelled in the almost class-less existence that Calcutta offered. Daddy was a product of the British era and had old world values and aristocratic tastes but not the wherewithal to support. We didn't have a car and in those days, there were few if any 2-wheelers in Calcutta. So our weekly forays to Park Street and the Oxford lending library involved walking to the Majerhat bridge and then a tram to Chowringhee.

Most of our neighbours and almost all my friends had cars in their families. [I dwell on the subject of cars because though not so important then, it became a source of constant misery when we moved from Calcutta.] As I was saying, even though almost everyone I knew had cars and were very evidently much more prosperous than us, the subject of money or anything remotely connected never figured. Were we too young to be talking about this - well no I don't think so; we and i guess most around us just didn't bother about these material trappings. 

The talks that I had with Prosenjit were mostly around chicks and the female anatomy. The guy dove into encyclopaedias and came up with gems to share. But the exercise was purely intellectual, it added to our knowledge and presented a new vision of the other sex. His Dad was a famous architect and his elder brother was a regular winner of the weekly Bournvita Quiz. They had 3 cars. 

While on the subject of material possessions, I had another very close friend- Joydeep whose family had a palatial house in Block O, his dad was in shipping. What we spoke about most was on the subject of books. he introduced me to Colleen Mccullough, Irwin Shaw and many other authors. We seemed to have a lot to talk about on things like Jyoti Babu [C.M], Japanese gadgets and the shady activities on the lawns of Victoria Memorial. His father used to bring a lot of foreign stuff home and loved to change his cars frequently. The ambassador parked at his house used to be of a different mark every couple of years but strangely this never figured in our talks other than in passing.

And I was to leave all this! This sense of belonging- this total disregard to how little cash I had and how wealthy other people were. This was the best time of my life and I think anyone who had lived there and had the misfortune of leaving the city would most likely share my sentiment.