Although I am an authentic mache-bhate Bengali, more than half my friends are from South India. Incidentally, many of them have lived in what was then Calcutta for at least a few years; three among them were born there and studied up to primary school to university in the city. One among them, Ramachandran, is the worst Calcutta fanatic I’ve come across. He says Flury’s makes the tastiest pastries in the world, Nahum’s, the richest plum cakes (of course, in the world), and you get the juiciest beef rolls ITW at Nizam’s behind New Market. I have at times wondered why every one of them is such a passionate lover of the dying city where you sweat 24X7 for eight months, a city that routinely goes under water at least three times between July and October, a city that is perennially dirty and overcrowded. … How on earth can you fall in love with her?
I reckoned they are in love with the metropolis because most of them lived there in the 1960’s or before, when Calcutta was actually one of the finest cities in the world. In the late 1950s, and even in the ’60s, every morning when I waited for school bus around five-thirty, the roads used to be washed with water jets. There was a separate network of pipelines all over the city for drawing water from the Ganga for this purpose! (On our terrace, there was a topless tank to store the untreated river water that was used for cleaning etc.) There were hardly any taller-than-three-storey buildings; the sky was much bigger. Roads were well maintained. Buses were crowded; trams were spanking clean. It was unthinkable to get cheated by a Calcutta taxi driver, particularly if he was a Sardarji. Hawkers hadn’t taken over the pavements along every major throughfare. The cinemas in upmarket Chowringhee were a treat. Even in the late seventies, you could enjoy a relaxed drink at the uncrowded, beautifully furnished pubs in Globe, Light House, and Metro after watching a John Ford or Clint Eastwood Western. In Metro, we would walk unsteadily (even without a drink) as our ankles sunk in the soft carpet. Usha Uthup used to sing at the Trincas. The television hadn’t arrived.
But all those were merely on the surface. I believe those who knew the city intimately also experienced non-transactional, much warmer one-to-one relationships with the people around, something that might not have existed elsewhere. Also, Calcutta didn’t look down upon the poor. Rather, she had space for everyone. That tradition continues. Presently, in my three weeks stay here, I’ve had a few glimpses of that egalitarian warmth.
In the much better organized city and the tech capital of the country where I spend half my time these days, changing a watch battery costs ₹800+ at the nearest watch shop which happens to be in a swanky shopping mall. Therefore, I was delighted when my Casio watch stopped during our flight to Kolkata.
Next morning, I went to our local watch-man Aseem, who has been running a road-side kiosk for 20 years near my home. Aseem showed me a Maxell battery and put it in the watch for a hefty sum of ₹200. (Before writing this, I checked online. Aseem Banerjee matched the price offered by Jeff Bezos.) Then I sheepishly fished out an Allwyn watch that had been dead for over 10 years. I hadn’t thrown it away only because it was a gift from my beloved (and only) wife. (Those days, the price of a quartz wrist watch was half my monthly salary and more than what she earned as a school teacher in a month.) Aseem opened the case and fished out a black mass. He said he would replace it with a new movement which would cost ₹550 including the battery! … I am sure you will find people like Aseem in less prosperous areas of Bengaluru or Hyderabad, but the difference here is, it’s the norm in Kolkata. But there is a flip-side to the story.
Aseem has been selling his expertise for 20 years. Nothing has changed for him in these two decades except that he has become older.
The next story was narrated by a friend, S. S’s Man Friday Dilip (name changed), who is about 60, suffered a massive heart attack not long ago. After a few hits and misses at different hospitals, S managed to get Dilip admitted to RG Kar Medical College, one of the oldest, largest, and filthiest government hospitals in Kolkata. (As you would know, RG Kar has been in news recently because a trainee doctor was raped and murdered in its premises and the powers that be have been largely successful in burying the case.) My friend said it was past midnight when they reached the hospital which was unbelievably overcrowded and unclean. Stray dogs seemed to have 24-hour passes at the hospital. Lots of patients were in the Emergency ward and outside it. Sitting, lying down, on benches, on the floor. Through the chaos, a group of men and women (more women than men) in white coats ran around, not walked, and treated patients. My friend was amazed to see that the doctors actually treated patients in such an environment. Dilip was admitted and brought back from the brink. (He would have died if medical help was delayed by a few more hours.) Later, a stent was implanted in his heart; he was discharged in a week’s time. The cost of treatment? Zero rupees, as Dilip had been wise enough to acquire a free Sastha-Sathi insurance card from the Government of West Bengal.
The third anecdote too is about sickness, but on a much smaller scale. the main protagonist in this story is a fiftyish woman whose name I do not know. We call her Neera’s ma (name changed). Neera’s family irons our clothes and her mom comes to collect and deliver clothes. She is not a particularly busy person; whenever she comes, she sits down for a chat, which is pretty long when my wife Arundhati (name unchanged) is present. We too love to track the career paths of her three daughters. The first one is a trained nurse, the second, a commerce graduate, packs materials at an Amazon godown for 12 hours every day. The third, Neera, is studying nursing and midwifery. A competent mom has seen to it that her daughters stood on their own feet in a country where millions of graduates are unemployed.
Over time, Neera’s mom has become a family friend. She came in the evening one day and sat down. Arundhati was limping a bit; Neera’s ma quickly diagnosed the problem and before leaving, prescribed what to do.
Minutes later, she came back with a pain spray and said it had reduced her ankle pain. But, ‘You must take paracetamol along with this.’
Besides reducing Arundhati’s pain, Neera’s mom demonstrated why Kolkata even now is the most charming place ITW.
Kolkata / 21 May 2025
