My East India Diary-

My East India Diary- 

 I fell in love with the Calcutta as soon as I disembarked from the first-class compartment of Howrah Express at 4 am. Bright and chirpy Navalkishor, our driver, greeted me. The genial environs of Calcutta instantly appealed to me as he drove me through the bridge into the heart of the city. I marveled at the clean, restful, and majestic Calcutta as dawn descended on the city. 

For many years, I kept coming back to Calcutta drawn by the magic pull of Victoria Memorial, a vast expanse of Maidan, eclectic and rusty trams, incredible color, smell, and sight of New Market, graceful and classy Oberoi Grand, tons of Misti Doi consumed in between. 

A quirk of destiny moved me to Calcutta. One rainy afternoon in July, we boarded an Indian Airlines flight to Calcutta; a loving wife, two young girls, and an old but spirited mother wanting and willing to rough it out with us. Good old Navalkishor was at the airport, dressed as he always did in dhoti, an oversized shirt, and a trademark Bihar 'gamcha' on his shoulder. During all our years in Calcutta, the familiar sight of Navalkishor at Howrah station or Dum Dum airport made us feel enormously warm and safe as it did that rainy evening. 

In a new city, months went by in a flash. Our household luggage arrived, and we got busy settling in a new home. Restless and alive, we passed through a tunnel of emotions; the nostalgia and longing of Baroda where we came from, excitement, hope, despair of a new life in a new city. We were like a family in the middle of a stormy ocean in a boat, waiting for the storm to subside. 

And then life settled down. Children began school. The Party circuit widened. Club invitations at Calcutta Swimming club and Saturday club poured in. New sights, sounds, and smells of the city quelled the feeling of being away 2000 miles from the home state. Calcutta grew on us as we made friends with warm, jovial, upright, Bengali people. We explored the famous street foods in our new home city. We started having Sunday family picnics at Maidan, early morning visits to Calcutta Zoo, shopping at New Market, visit Flurries. 

We spent our summer vacation here getting wet in the Norwester rains, enjoyed the annual Durga puja. We made more friends and felt acutely at home. It seemed we liked Calcutta, and the city liked us. 

I started traveling slowly as life took roots. Initially within Calcutta, but later in the widening arc of Bihar, Orissa, and Northeastern states. I crisscrossed a hip hop route of Ranchi, Patna, Kharagpur, Bhubaneswar, Paradip, Kalahandi, Koraput, Gauhati, Shillong, Agartala Kohima, Imphal, Jorhat, Bongaigaon, Birbhum, Burdwan, and scores of villages, and mofussil towns. 

I met humble Oriyas, simple Biharis, colorful Assamese, those tribal in the hills of Meghalaya. I ate food at huts on highways of Orissa, on slopes of Meghalaya, on rice fields of Kohima, a hole-in-a-wall sack on hills of Cherapunji. I traveled by long-distance trains, Vayudut flights with the half door open, buses that had goats and dogs inside and on your lap, the open jeep that broke down on a no-man's-land near Bangladesh border, and rain-filled paddy farms on foot for miles to see the next greenhouse. 

Coming home to Calcutta to a hot bath, clean sheets, home food, familiar whiskey, and those disturbing but comforting honking of cars in Middleton Street below made me feel civilized again. 

My tryst with Eastern India halted abruptly, with an offer to work at Delhi, in the heart of India. We packed hurriedly, sadness trailing us. We left home with hurried farewells; teary-eyed Navalkishor drove us to the airport for our flight to Delhi. 

Looking back, two years' stay in Calcutta felt like five. But then Delhi took us over, made us feel warm and homely as Calcutta did. Often we reopen our vast vault of priceless memories of time spent at Ahmedabad, Baroda, Calcutta, Delhi, and Bombay. 

Isn’t life all about that?