Tollygunj Local

A colleague of mine has nicknamed the Kolkata Metro Railway as Tollygunj Local. The reasons are a plenty….all of which make the “pride of Kolkata once upon a time” a mere local train now.

Firstly, with the rush during the office hours, a gap of 7/8 minutes isn’t ideal to run the trains. Unless you board the train from the terminal stations (Tollygunj or Dumdum), you will be squeezed in the bogies. You may even have to leave one or two trains just to gain a foothold and an entry inside the bogies. The situation seems especially problematic for the Tollygunj bound trains from Dumdum in the morning and the vice-versa in the evening. Though I’m lucky to be traveling on the opposite route both the times, I have witnessed the pathetic condition in which people travel. Also, the rush with which the passengers jostle to get in and out….it is just a matter of time before some accidents happen. Now-a-days, even the metro-culture that was once the pride of the city has vanished (people often used to say that Kolkatans have poor manners on the road but once in the paatal, they are an epitome of courtesy). Many stations have their murals removed from the walls and the skeletons of these empty walls stare at your face. The clocks and the gates often refuse to function, causing unnecessary delay. As I use the Central Station, I can vouch for the fact that almost everyday after 7 / 7.15 p.m, the clocks of this station work according to their own whims and fancies…the digits not showing now, dancing then, a blink-&-you-miss show of the digits, and then…..all goes blank. As a regular traveler, I know the timings of the train and so can increase or decrease my pace accordingly to board the trains but I really feel sorry for the first-timers who often miss the train by whiskers due to these good-for-nothing clocks.

So, unless the authorities do something to improve the overall situation and run the trains at quicker frequency (at least during the office hours), it would not be long before our pride becomes a pale shade of its earlier days of glory. As a Kolkatan, I won’t love that for sure!!!

Chatterboxes

Women are always blamed to be the one who speak and have no time to listen. I wonder how far is this true? I don’t want to cite my example in this regard coz I am a self-professed chatterbox myself. However, I have seen men too speak a lot (with a lower decibel limit, though) at a stretch, laughing, bitching and doing all that for which a women is often pulled-up.

Isn’t the time ripe to do away with this gender-bias? At least when it comes to the matter of chatterboxes, I feel that you just need the right kind of catalyst (in the form of a listener) to get going coz unless you have an attentive audience, talking isn’t fun. What’s your take, friend???

Role Reversal

Finally, Kolkata has got its lady mischief-monger, a crank caller (who tells that she’s a student of Panskura college), who calls men (all unmarried between 25-32 years) from public booths, blurts out the details about their private lives, talks sleaze and then when the men begin to go weak between the knees and plead a meeting, she disconnects the line. Though most of the victims have shied away from launching a police diary, the police are on the lookout for this lady, who if caught, would have to pay dearly for her mischief.
(News courtesy: The Telegraph)

A visit to the Citizen's Park

The Citizen's Park has been recently renamed as "Mohor Kunjo" after the legendary Rabindrasangeet singer Kanika Bandhopadhyay, whose nick-name was Mohor.

Last Sunday, I visited the park with some of my friends at evening. Though I had passed the road in front of this place several times, I never knew what was inside the gates. That was the first day when I came to know that there is a musical fountain inside this well-maintained garden. This garden doesn't charge the visitors an entry fee and is maintained beautifully.

When we entered the garden at around 7.10 p.m, a musical show was going on. The stands were "house-full" with people sitting all over them. Some like us were even standing at the back, taking the support of the railings. The fountain rose and fell, changed colors with the sound beats. Rabindrasangeet (both vocal and instrumental) and famous Bollywood-movie songs (instrumental) were played. My friends later told me that anytime after 6 p.m is good to catch a show or the other of this musical-fountain.

The show was simply superb and I was spell-bound. The only regret: I didn't have a camera to click the scene and post it for my readers. Nevertheless, for those who still haven't seen this, do go to the park, take a stroll amidst the greenery and enjoy the musical-fountain.

The Overcoat: author- Nicholai Gogol

I still haven't been able to visit the Book Fair @ Salt Lake Stadium and today my schedule being choc-a-block, it's likely that this year too, I'll be giving it a miss. However, it doesn't mean that I'm not reading books. Yesterday, I purchased a few books again from Starmark, making good use of the 10% discount being given there.

One book, a compilation of Russian short stories, had The Overcoat by Nicholai Gogol as the first story. (In fact, seeing this story's name prompted me to buy the book coz ever since I read Namesake and saw the film based on this book, I was eager to read The Overcoat, based on which the central character got his name, Gogol.)

The story is about the life of a person (Akaky Akakiyevich) who works as a copier (who copies documents day-after-day) in a department. How the poor soul endures hardships of life to finally get a new overcoat (his old one was worn beyond repair), how his life takes a new turn with the new found happiness, how he loses it and how he dies...all this and more is nicely depicted in this story. This story made me realize, once again, how the small things in life bring happiness and how they should be cherished. Only, you need to have an eye for detail, noting these small incidents and savoring them, or else, they'll be lost amongst the crests and troughs of life.

The Kite Runner: a marvellous book

I first heard praises of this book from a colleague about 7 months back. Last Sunday when I finally purchased the book, I couldn't hold myself back from reading it that very night. Once I started reading, I was always wandering with Amir and Hassan in Kabul, wondering what would happen next. The next two days were spent with the book, in the metro, in office during lunch hours and at home in night....whenever I could steal sometime for myself. How an incident on that fateful day of the tournament changed everything, how relationships were broken, how some bitter truths were revealed, how someone would suffer (at times, it seems to be till eternity) and how he would go to any lenght for the atonement of his sins....all these and more are so beautifully captured by Khaled Hosseini in this book in fluid language that you can't but help feel a pain and start praying that the sufferings come to an end and that a new dawn full of hope and positive things finally happen.
In short, you just can't have words express how you would feel after reading this novel. I'm no exception. I still feel the pain and a peculiar kinship with the characters, especially with Amir (not to mention Hassan and his son, Sohrab). It would be another few days, I believe, that I wish to be rewinding again and again the special incidents (and believe me, there are a lot of them) of this book before I finally move forward to another story by yet another master storyteller.

The Japanese Wife

After a long gap, I finally invested in some good books. The Japanese Wife by Kunal Basu is a collection of 12 short stories where the unexpected is the expected thing. The first story (The Japanese Wife) was the tale of Snehamoy and Miyage, his Japanese wife, the two being married via letters. The relationship that started as pen-friends proceeded to Miyage proposing to Sneha (as he was fondly called by his aunt) and his acceptance to an alliance which seemed improbable. Yet, the couple continued their marital life without getting physically close to each other. After some twists and turns, it was Snehamoy's death that finally brings his Japanese wife to his village on the banks of Matla. This story is soon to be made into a film by Aparna Sen, starring Rahul Bose as Snehamoy and Raima Sen as the widow whom once the school master (Snehamoy) declined to marry.
The second story titled Grateful Ganga tells the story of a widow, Evelyn, who had come to India to fulfil the last wish of her dead husband, Andy....to flow his ashes in the Ganga. However, I didn't like this story, especially after the beautiful and poignant introductory tale The Japanese Wife.
The rest of the stories are put on hold as I am running through the pages of The Kite Runner finally, after about 7/8months when the book was first recommended by a friend. Needless to say, I am loving every moment of it. Would shortly let my views on it be known to all of you. Till then, it's me and the world of printed words!!!