Here we go round the mulberry bush

For all that one discovers about life, people, oneself, the questions that make us vulnerable never quite disappear..they just seem to appropriate new forms, dimensions, lyrics. Fools or heroes, what we are seems not-so-significant in comparison to what we seem. At the moment what i seem to myself is hovering woefully close to the embarrasing side of the spectrum. And it does just when i'd convinced myself i was venturing, in all-weather gear, towards horizons previously visited by Ulysses or the likes. Sigh.

the city within

I’ve been visiting Kolkata nearly every year since I was born, yet all I knew of the city was my grandmother’s house, where we lived a charmed existence, oblivious of the life outside. To shoot the city then, presented not only a rather daunting challenge, but an opportunity, to see what I’d been missing. And the discovery was nothing short of magnificent.

The grand structures of BBD Bagh are supremely photogenic and yes, Park Street seduces you with its heady energy. But to savour what they call the magic of the city, one must go to the ghats, the local markets and the by-lanes. In this part of Kolkata, the inhabitants don’t ask to be photographed, all they ask is that you drop your touristic guise, sit back, perhaps have a little chat over a cup of tea and accept the contradictions that constitute life. In north Kolkata, this is more pronounced, with huge crumbling mansions that stand testimony to a non-existent glory, or in Kumartuli, where sculptors work assiduously in cramped quarters to produce divine images in clay that they know must ultimately rest in the bed of the Hooghly.

I knew I had a book to think of, closely followed by thoughts of what-boss-expects but the feeling that rushed over me every time i took a picture was 'this is a place i know yet dont..whatever power i have over its representation, it still doesnt make me an insider, only the wish to come back to it'.

Even through my thus-far blinkered vision, I note that change has come to Kolkata. Not just the name. There are swanky malls and hip youngsters and screaming adverts like all other metros. Yet there continue to be pockets that seem to be in a time warp. What then is the real Kolkata? Is there such a thing I wondered and can it be captured? Ultimately I am inclined to believe there is, just as there are over a hundred poets, dead and alive, who it inspired and continues, if not to inspire, then to vex.