I’ve never quite figured out what is it that creates a bond between a city and its inhabitants. The bond has a distinctly paradoxical dimension because it’s at once intangible and palpable.
The bond develops into a lifelong sense of belonging and
gives an identity to the inhabitant – I’m a Torontonian. I was a
Bombayite (or, the better sounding Mumbaikar).
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| Howrah Bridge |
Even the most liberal-minded amongst us tend to become a bit jingoistic about our cities and compare
them to other cities that we visit – and always feel infinitely superior about
it.
When I lived in Bombay, and visited other cities in India,
or even outside India, I always felt that my Bombay was incomparable.
It's an emotional thing. So, while I definitely love Toronto more than I love Bombay,
I still feel that Toronto doesn’t measure up to that magnificent island city on
the eastern end of the Arabian Sea.
Bombay is in so many ways similar to that other amazing city
on the western coast of the Atlantic – New York City – the undisputed capital
of the world.
Every time I’ve been to the US, I made it a point visit New
York – to live and breathe for some time the sheer vibrancy, sassiness,
audacity, impudence of a city that defines freedom, expression, energy.
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| Chowringhee |
I think Delhi is like Washington DC, Bombay is like New
York, Chicago is like well, not quite any other city I’ve visited, although
some parts of downtown Chicago do remind me of downtown Toronto, perhaps
because both cities are beside a giant water body erroneously called a lake.
And then there’s Calcutta – quite unlike any other city in
the world.
For reasons that are known to many who know me (and
therefore entirely unnecessary to reiterate), I’ve had a long and enduring relationship with
Calcutta – a city I first visited in 1977 and then several times from the late
1980s to mid-1990s.
It’s a city that makes you fall in love – with itself and
with its people and with the Hoogly and the hand pulled raft boats, with the
majestic cantilever Howrah Bridge (Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem, Mani Ratnam’s Yuva),
with the imposing Victoria Memorial and the sprawling Maidans, the Eden Gardens,
the rusty trams and the gleaming metro, the decaying buildings and the
smoke-belching Ambassador taxis, New Market, K.C. Das, Flury’s, Chowringhee,
the Puja.
But my relationship with Calcutta is not merely because of
my personal connection, it’s a city that is important to anyone who is
interested in postcolonial phenomenon because Calcutta defined colonial Bengal,
which in turn defined modern Indian sensibilities (G.K. Gokhale’s famous quip: “What
Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow.”).
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| Writers' Building |
For me Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar
and Shankar’s Chowringhee are the two
artistic interpretations that capture the true character of Calcutta’s identity.
And somehow, for me it’ll never be Kolkata.
Recently, after a gap of many years I had an opportunity to
return to the Bengali milieu with Tagore aficionados in Toronto at a Tagore
film festival organised by Kathleen and Joseph O'Connell of the U of T and saw Rituparno Ghosh's interpretation of
Rabindranath Tagore's Noukadubi,
Satyajit Rai's documentary on Tagore, Shey
by Buddhadeb Dasgupta.
It was an
absolutely splendid experience.
Then, during the last week, I read Kwai-Yun Li’s The Palm Leaf Fan and Other Stories
(Tsar). Kwai is from Calcutta’s Chinatown and her stories are set in the city.
It revived my memories of Calcutta, and with that revival of
memories also a disturbing realisation – that the local Chinese population
never quite figured in all my encounters and memories of Calcutta, which seems
to strange because they’re quite unmistakably a part of the city.
What’s more, I’ve had one of the biggest dinners of my life
at a Chinese eatery on Calcutta’s Park Street.
Kawi’s essay A Brief
History of Chinese in Calcutta talks of the steady decline of the Chinese
population. This is a collection of heart-warming stories of human beings no different than anyone else in Calcutta,
and yet treated differently, neglected and forgotten.
It made me realise that we see only what we want to see, and
in the way we want to see. Also, I doubt if I’d ever have become as aware of
the different minorities that make our world and societies had I not become a
part of a minority myself as a Torontonian.
Images:
Book Cover: http://www.kwaiyunli.com/publications.htm
Tagore profile: http://samarjitroy.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_archive.html
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