Kolkata is a city of ghosts. I have said that before and I'll say it again. I mean it in the best possible way. It is an old, old city where the day begins in a slow, sleepy way with breakfast at 10am and lunch at 2pm. Afternoon siestas are a must and the lazy sun sets by five in the evening. The day is bracketed by the muezzin's call to prayer at the mosques and if you pass by Hazra just after dark, the bells from the evening 'aarti' can be heard as well. As noisy birds fly from tree to tree to find their spot to rest for the night, it can, at best be likened to a crowded market street, with vendors, all screaming to be heard at the same time. For a day that begins slow, it does seem at it's lively best at night.
Amidst the chaos of the ever-changing, seemingly mercurial one way streets and parrot green rickshaws with tooting horns, there is the rumble of ancient trams chugging along the jam-packed streets. A landscape marred by lines; electrical wires like veins in the sky and dull metal tram tracks embedded into the tar roads. It is an old city, where the new hasn't superseded the old, but rather indulged the old in a face lift of sorts with a new coat of paint or a poster, some naked light bulbs and perhaps a new iron gate. While the structures remain the same, layer upon layer of paper, paint, dust and propaganda have settled and peeled off successively, leaving one with a glimpse of the city's past.
I have visited Kolkata several times, but I only really saw the city when I looked at it through the lens of my camera. Early morning, scented with wood fires and slow, singular cyclists on smokey, mist filled roads, giving way to the 'horn OK please' buses, stuffed with people and bus conductors leaning out of the bus doors with their paper rolls of tickets and coin bags, 2pm and it's diffused lighting, gentle and golden with soft shadows across the race course greens, and evenings aglow with florescent lights, sharp shadows and vibrant colours. People in Kolkata don't mind being watched, mostly because they are watching you back- sitting, waiting and watching you... and life go by. As far as cities go, this one isn't contemporary or urban- nor is it ancient and quaint. It is gritty, dirty and yet manages to be adequately charming with its narrow lanes and tiny doors, ornate colonial architecture juxtaposed with crumbling red brick 'havelis', that somehow still manage to look interesting even if they look a tad bit haunted with their exposed but finely laid brick work. One may call Kolkata slightly shabby chic with it's bright blue and green painted walls and doors that off set the daily laundry in ocher and vermillion hues that dry on balconies. It is an odd mix of older technology and raw man power with it's tube wells and hand pulled rickshaws, it's hand-crafted mud Durga idols side by side with the local butcher's block and a crate of live chickens- it is a city that lives side by side with its past, it's morning mists like thin translucent veils of time that overlap, sometimes allowing one to see clearly through them and sometimes creating a disjointed reality- like the clay kulhar lying side by side with the plastic cup in the black granite stone drain by the 'gurudwara', where an ancient man stirs a massive, seemingly bottomless, cauldron-like vessel of tea, and young health conscious gents ask for lassi, 'malai maar ke!'
** All images and text is the copywrite of Maya Bhalla
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