I woke up with the sun shining brightly in my face, I turned around and squinted through my eyes to look for the time. It was 6 o'clock in the morning! That's when I realised that I'm on the East coast of India - the side where the sun rises earlier and the days end sooner. Coming from the West coast, it's always been hard to imagine the sun rising in the sea, but it sure makes for a beautiful site if you catch it, that is.
So here I was in Calcutta (or Kolkata) - my first trip to West Bengal, and ready to take a train to the less famous or known, Durgapur. I had already had a taste of local rosogolas prepared by the all so friendly Maharaj who looked after the guest house I lodged at. My driver was early and suggested we take off so that he may have the pleasure to give me a mini tour of the city too. I agreed that it was a brilliant idea! We passed by the old Calcutta markets, the newer commercial area, the library and bible society, Dharmatala -the government administrative area and strand road. He showed me the Victoria monument, Science city, I saw the world-famous Calcutta tram too. And then we passed over Howrah bridge over the Hugli river to Howrah railway station. The entire tour which lasted under 2 hours was so colourful - yellow and green rickshaws, public buses in even more colours with fancy designs on their rear, the great Ambassador taxis in bright yellow. The station itself was unique - you could drive 'into' the station and pull up parallel along the platform since there was a road that ran all the way through the station in between platforms and went out the other side. So, inside you saw train engines, train compartments, coolies, passengers, shops, stalls, families, bikes, cars, hand carts and even bicycles. I thought it was an extremely convenient and smart concept; why hadn't Mumbai thought of it?
The journey to Durgapur is just around 2 hours on the Shatabdi. The trains here though aren't very exciting - with the Eastern railways still using the old coaches that perhaps ran in the early 80s. The atmosphere in Durgapur was entirely different - Durgapur could be in any state, any part of the country. It has no distinct Bengally characteristic to it. What I did notice is that this small town was rapidly developing. On one hand I saw houses built of mud and families rearing goats and hens while on the other I saw large manufacturing plants with their housing colonies spread across wide, open expanses of the town. Durgapur was also growing with educational institutes springing up at every bend, ranging from management colleges to hospitality and software.
I stayed at a nice guest house situated in a quiet and residential area on Sir Martin Luther King road. What I loved about the place is the density of trees and the unimaginable variety of birds that lived there. I heard the sweetest sounds of chirping and singing all day long while I explored the area. At times it would thunder and there would be light drizzles which made the air cool. It was always windy so the heat was never unbearable. The soil here made it perfect for gardening and most neighbouring houses had the prettiest flower gardens I had seen in a long time. When the afternoon came, things got quite still with not many people or vehicles moving around, so I'd sit in the veranda and stare into the trees, watching the birds dance from one branch to another. And that's when nostalgia suddenly sank in - this was my life when I grew up, this was my life in the house I was born, this was what my grandmother missed when our house was demolished and she was forced to live in an apartment for the first time of her life because some big realty brand had the power to buy the entire estate off... this was what brought her an early death.
I never did understand at that time what it must have done to her. Of course, we all missed and mourned having to give up our massive house with the most well manicured garden in the heart of Mulund in 1999, we all wondered what life would be like living in an apartment, we all were disappointed. But my grandmother, Irene, didn't let us know how difficult it was going to be for her; how she was a free bird who wasn't used to be caged. In the old days at the old house, every occasion was a feast; every birthday was a celebration; every guest in Mumbai was our guest. The apartment changed it all. Grandma Irene no longer cooked for 8-10 families on a feast day, she no longer baked her awesome rum cakes, and no longer watered her rose garden.
It took me a trip to Durgapur 11 years after our little Durgapur was taken away from us to relive the pain that lead to Irene Fernandes' slow death. How long with it take our generation to realise what we're doing to all the beautiful land and trees around us and for the future generations?
