[This is a republished version of an old blog I wrote in 2005 as a five-part series]
The Kolkata skyline. Picture credit: Wikipedia
Before the gulf between Calcutta experienced and Calcutta remembered widens, I’d like to ink down whatever my heart longs to say with regards to my recent visit to the city. This particular piece of writing is less an account of my week-long stay at the place from Dec 24 to Dec 30, 2005, and more about my childhood association with this city.
I was brought up in this city of large-heartedness, this city that puts on a façade of joy to hide the sorrow beneath…Five years ago separation came when my family moved to Chennai as dad had got a job transfer. But this December, when I’d the opportunity to visit Calcutta all by myself, the experience was thoroughly refreshing and provided ample scope for personal reflection on the years that had been spent here. The city in itself was redolent of my childhood and early adolescent years, a rather impressionable phase of one’s life.
I could somehow relate this experience of going back to Calcutta to meeting an old intimate lover. A string of memories was my sole possession and almost no physical evidence remained to testify the relevance of the relationship that had once been. I had lost the love with the lover when I left it. Time’s axe had rendered such a strong blow that only bits and pieces of the past remained, and I had to bend low to gather them all…
Vidya Venkat
