A Calcutta Boy...

The City Of Joy.

I’m nineteen years old now and that might come as a surprise to you! Where have nineteen years gone by so quickly? It seems like yesterday that I entered school for the first time and today I sit on my bed, in far away Canada and look back at the times that were. I can safely say that it was a fabulous ride.

It’s kind of funny when people ask me my background. I’ll tell you why. It’s because its so vast and varied that’s its actually quite hard to pin point exactly. Like this one time I had to do a project (for Computers believe it or not) on my family tree. All the time that I spent researching, I learnt some pretty unique facts about my ancestors and those before them. To call a spade a spade, I can tell you that I was born in the best place in the world and grew up in another equally great place: Goa, India and Calcutta, India.

Deep down, I will always consider myself to be a Goan. What about my best friends? They’re both Goan nuts too.  Together I’m sure the trio of us could run riot in a lot of different ways but that’s beside the point. Today, I look back and see how much of “Calcutta Boy” I am. Like I mentioned, I have no roots there whatsoever, I just happened to grow up there. Today as I pursue a college degree twelve thousand kilometres away, I can look back at everything that transpired back home In India.

I loved Goa, I will always love Goa. Don’t get me wrong there, but when it comes to the sight and sounds of childhood, it’s always Calcutta that comes into my mind. The puja’s, the traffic, the street vendors and the noise: everything that makes me look back at my time there with a lot of nostalgia. My first friends were made there; I went to the most amazing school there. I fondly remember playing football there. I learnt to laugh, I learnt to cry, I learnt teamwork in small simple ways.

My love for food grew day by day! You could say that I have a huge appetite for the good stuff (by which I mean food). The rolls; the puchkas; the traditional sweets that melted in your mouth: all in a day’s work I should say! The sights and sounds of a vibrant city that made me stop and stare.  The city in which I grew up. A city in while I made mistakes, that reminded me that I was but a human! A city in which I made new friends every year.

You could imagine what it felt like to browse Google maps and locate my house on it and shout everyone in the room, “That’s my house!” Wouldn’t that be wonderful? I can say it was because I’ve experienced it. What annoys me though is the fact that I won’t be able to return to Calcutta over the Christmas break. Holidays are insufficient but my heart will always be there. It’ll be there every single minute of the Christmas season. I can imagine Nahoum’s packed to maximum capacity and the obnoxiously scary Santa Claus figures that are on sale in New Market. It’s a pity mom and dad, I won’t be home for Christmas.

Time has passed no doubt. Bengal sadly isn’t the state it used to be. They may have changed the name of the city to Kolkata. That won’t affect me. They may want to rename the state to a word I shall now name. That too won’t affect me. The government might have changed after a fairly large number of years. That won’t affect me either. I know one thing and I know it quite well:

“I’ll be a Calcutta boy for life...”

Photo Credit: Ofelia Kaisar: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s720x720/311371_293969880634793_100000653510184_963136_2034834387_n.jpg

Video Credit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9LBHwlAeOU