The Kolkata I thought I knew...

As I boarded the quaint looking noka (Bengali for boat) from the jetty at Princep Ghat for a leisurely joy ride in the waters of River Hoogly, I felt as though the city had finally managed to redeem itself. Kolkata had somehow managed to save herself amongst the crowded malls, noisy bollywood music blaring paras and the detestable traffic. The true flavour of the city seemed to come back to me. With the backdrop of the setting sun the sheer beauty of the paralell Vidyasagar Setu and Howrah Bridge beckoned.
I began to think of all the times I visited this city as a kid from a small hill station in the north-east. Wide eyed I would look all around and the wonders of the big city never failed to impress me. When our aircraft would land with a thud in the then Calcutta, my heart would skip a beat. The amusement parks, shopping centers and various eateries enticed me to no extent. Although a big city , I always felt at home there. I was a Calcuttan by birth, having spent the first few months of my life there at my grandparents house and probably that’s why I always felt a connection with the place. Over the years I had finally gotten over my rather worldly appreciation of the city and had begun to appreciate all things small and big about it. I felt an overwhelming feeling of bonhomie towards the city and sometimes it distressed me to see that things were changing. Whether it was a random walk through Park Street or the Christmas eve celebrations at St. Pauls Cathedral, there were some things which I had to do Everytime I visited the city. Of all the little places which I had learnt to love, there was an ice-cream parlour called ‘Scoop’ situated next to the same jetty . Being an ardent fan of the banana split there I always liked everything about the place. It was not like the new uber cool ‘hangouts’ which had sprung up in South Calcutta. The view of the river along with the nostalgia I felt for the place I had developed some sort of a loyalty towards it.
That day all the joy which I had always felt in Kolkata had returned. I pondered the and the ‘city’ truly intoxicated me with ‘joy’. Little did I know that the so-called everlasting joy which I felt was only momentary. It was as if somebody was calling me back from fools paradise , I looked to my left towards ‘Scoop’ and saw that the waste from the toilet there was being disposed directly into the river through a pipe which jutted out of the building.

so...hows the crowd?

Its somewhat perplexing, how to put forth what I want to say here. You may call it a little vague. It may sound slightly arbitrary. Its about a question that we often ask…
This particular question has annoyed me a great deal. The ‘question’ in question raised has many a question, and I began to wonder what we( the so called generation-x) really want from our lives. So now, the question is…what exactly am I talking about?
“So, you have taken admission in ‘so and so…’ college? How is the crowd?”
Rings a bell? I am sure each one of us has either been on the receiving end of this or has asked this question to someone , somewhere, sometime…
“But seriously yaar, the crowd does matter… call me shallow or whatever but I can’t handle the padhai-type of environment. I want chilled-out people around me yaar.”
After much ado, we clear the entrances, make it to the cut-off list, get grilled in the interview and finally secure a place in an institution of our choice. Whew! That was quite a task, and then a friend comes along and says…

“All that is ok yaar…but look at the crowd yaar..”

Introspect…
Introspect…
Introspect….

“Yah… that’s also true , wonder how will I pass three years with this kind of a crowd”

So what is it that drives us to this sort of irrationality? Are we so under-confident that we calculate our “fun-quotient” by “the crowd” which is almost unknown to us, except probably the way they dress or the cars they drive. It amazes me to think how educated individuals often overlook our own individuality
“The crowd there is too wannabe!!”
Well…aren’t we ‘wannabe’ when we ‘want-to-be’ a part of the ‘crowd’ which is ‘not wannabe’?

India, me and hue...

Let me take you on a journey through the most beautiful kaliedoscope of colours. Feel the splendour of the various hues of our magnificent nation. Let me bathe you in stunning shades , paint your world with vivacity and reveal to you a glorious amalgamation of colours :INDIA.

From the basest to the brightest , we have it all . the dull grey monsoon clouds lined with streaks of silver, fill the vast blue sky and hang over the lush green fields. Walking through a field is a figure clad in bright orange, an ascetic, rapt in devotion. He moves to a chaste white temple, perfect and peerless. Inside the temple stands a bride, dressed in a radiant red saree, her forehead smeared with vermillion paste. Her tearful eyes lined with black kohl and her mothers reassuring arms around her... the fire that shall be an unsoiled witness of her union with him, changes through shades of orange and red to a bright gold yellow.

They step out of the temple, freinds and family bathe them in bright shades of fuschia pink, indigo and sunlit yellow. 'Holi Hai!', they scream! Clouds of colour fill the air with festivity and verve!

Everything glimmers in the rosy golden light of dusk. Far away from the temple, the city lights twinkle like flickering stars. Some may call my country obscure, but as the chime of the distant temple bells , the ethereal chants of 'Hare Krishnna' and the blaring city music consume me, it all begins to fit in like pieces of a giant jigsaw. I stand before a nation in transition, a nation evolving...

Thats modern India for you, sky-scrapers decked with gleaming neons, revelry at its peak, yet its people closely in touch with culture and spirituality.

Hours later, the music subsides , as the city falls to sleep. Everything looms in the murky night, but far away in the temple the lamp glows...

I am humbled by this majestic vision. My glorious nation-indeed, a true amalgamation of beautiful colours!-I salute you!

university elections??...our take...

So this one of those we-are-really-concerned-about-an-issue type of article. Probably something which has been criticized for years and years , but no ones ever bothered to do anything about it. So what exactly is our point??

As we write this article together , we realize how both of us are seemingly troubled about the same things that we have observed in college and among our friends. ‘Callousness’… ‘the-devil-may-care’ attitude that almost everyone around us is unconsciously but more often consciously is in possession of. People come flood our college with paper (this is a reference to election campaigning , by the way)… all we get is a casual remark here and there , ‘Dude, they have dirtied the whole place’ , ‘ What is this… like a paper avalanche?’ , but no one goes and actually picks up one of those “Abhimanyu Singh, Ballot no. 2” and throws it into the bin. Not even some of our closest friends. “Chalta hai yaar…”

We are educated Indians in the premiere institute and university of the country , for Gods’ sake! The least we can do is shoulder a minor social responsibility of trying to keep ‘our country’ , or if that’s too big and intimidating a word, ‘our college’ clean. We go on endlessly how the system is all wrong in this country but maybe by some conscious effort on our part we can change the way things work. “Singapore is spotless, one can roll down the street in a white shirt” . Guess what? India is NOT because people like you and me could not care less.

We know… we know… this is so turning into a lecture and a typical we-will-bore-you-to-death-with-our-uncool-perspective kind of an article but we really do intend to make a point here. However, stereo-typical it may sound, but just the two of us screaming our lungs out CAN make a difference. So, next time you see two tall girls picking rubbish around college, DON’T LAUGH , just think about what we are saying and perhaps next time you carelessly throw the empty packet of chips you just finished eating you can make the effort of bending down, picking it up and throwing it in a bin near you .(and for gods sake, don’t say ‘there is no bin right there’ cause its only a short walk to the nearest one)