The countdown has started...actually it started long back. Nine more days for me to be in Kolkata. After 1 year 8 months, the longest I have been away.
Domdom airport(yeah I know its Dumdum but don't you know Bengalis pronounce "u" as "o"- sounds like "aw"..
The announcements of arrival of my flight in Bengali or Bengali accented English.
The known anticipating faces of family waiting in the crowd right behind the baggage claim section.
Ma will see me and exclaim "O ma ki moila hoye gechish, naa khete peye meyeta ki roga hoyeche dekho (Oh my, you have lost your complexion, you don't get to eat well ..look how thin you have become!) ..and I know she will say it even if I have put on weight...thats just how moms are. They think that if you don't eat at home you don't get to eat :)
The musty humid air on stepping out of the airport.
The yellow and black ambassador taxis.
The roads , the hawkers, the shops with Bengali sign boards.
The mini buses which have never heard of speed limits - "Esplanade - Dum Dum Airport" written across their yellow and brown bodies, people hanging from the footboard.
Women in tanter sari holding the school bag and water bottle on one shoulder and the hand of their child on the other side, on the way to school (yeah I never support that- Bengali moms pamper their kids too much).
Rickshaw pullers trudging along to earn their daily meal.
Traffic jam.
The reeking areas on VIP road... I remember always complaining about having to roll up the glasses of the car in hot and sweaty summers while travelling across that area just to keep that smell out.
The football stadium.
The new flyoevers.
The known roads.
Gariahat mor (crossing) which used to be the most common junction for taking any mode of transport from anywhere to my house near Triangular park.
The tram lines.
The excitement of approaching our house.
Familiar smiles of neighbours, some hanging clothes in the balcony, some walking in front of our gate, the kids who seem to have grown up so much.
The grocery store where the entire neighbourhood shops from - chal, dal, brittania biscuits, rin bars etc.
The panwala(beetle-leaf maker).
The big Gulmohar tree.
The staircases leading upstairs.
The living room and my room.
My sister :)
Our code language.
Our photos.
Love, warmth, affection.
Visits of excited relatives.
Seeing their smiles when I give them the gifts that I bought for them. "Ki dorkar chhilo eto kichu aanar?" ("What was the need of bringing so many things), smiling, blessing me.
A home cooked meal.
Long adda with my parents and sister.
Showing them photographs, describing my experiences, updates on what has been happening around.
Sleeping with the ac on, wrapped inside my tulor lep (cotton quilt).
The colors of my room, the window, the balcony, the bathroom..... home :)
Weeks of freedom.... sleeping late, waking up to familiar voice of my mom and dad "Ki re shona, aar kotokhon ghumobi? Oth, bela hoye geche" (How long will you sleep, dear. Wake up. Its almost noon).
Waking up with breakfast served, milk-shake made, followed by fruits I love eating, chopped exactly the way I like them by Kobita or the new maid.
The familiar door bell.
Cousins, friends, aunts, uncles - repeating the stories to everyone, explaining photographs, locations, people they have never seen or met.
Invitations to their place for dinners and lunches ... all made especially for me :)
Unlimited good food - fish fry, biryani, pulao, luchi, aloor dom, beguni, payesh, mishti.
Park street - chelo kababs at Peter Cat followed by ice cream sundaes at Tulikas and a short stop at Someplace Else to listen to some good ol' music, not the rap and hip-hop!! (yeah I know there are a thousand new places but I only know of my old favorites).
Sunday family lunches at Tolly club.
All night TV at home, Indian MTV, star movies, some bengali channels.
Shopping at New Market and Vardaan...and don't you just love the chats and kulfi outside vardaan!
Talking about chats.... V.V. Park (stands for Vivekananda park- my uncle always teased me that this was the heights of shortening names, we did not even spare poor old Bibekanondo!) right behind my house- phuchka, alur dom and batata puri followed by Masala Thumps Up (yeah its way fizzier than the bland diet coke and pepsi I drink everyday).
Morning walks in the lakes.
Maharani's cha (tea) and jilipi(jalebi)
Drives on Vidyasagar setu.
Visists to the ancient houses of relatives in North Calcutta - flying kites with cousins on their terraces. Since the houses are so close to each other you can almost skip, hop and jump across from one terrace to another.
Pujor sale (huge sale before Durga Pujas).
A movie at Priya cinema in the balcony (the other day when I mentioned Priya to my sister, she was like "Deeds, you live in prehistoric age! We ll go to Forum , Inox. Noone goes to Priya and Menoka".
Picking up Ma from High Court.. the Maidan and Victoria Memorial on the way and of course the confusing one ways in that area which change every morning and evening.
The familiar houses of my childhood friends.. friends who know me better than I know myself, whose family is family to me.
A night-spend at one of their places, cribbing, talking, reminiscing, laughing, discussing!
Threading eyebrows at the known beauty parlours, chatting with the aunty who knows me since my adoloscence when I first ever tried doing my eyebrows!
Shared overloaded autorickshaws on Rashbehari.
The small temple near home where I have prayed before every one of my exams ever since I learnt that you should pray before exams if you want to do well.
A meal at Azad hind dhaba after a late night party.
The worlds best Kaati rolls.
Kwality ice cream.
Coffee and a book at Oxford bookstore on Park Street.
Petrol bunks where you don't have to get out of the car to fill gas :)
Indian currency in the purse.
Cheap shoes, cotton tops and salwar kameez
A trip to Belur Math.
The circular crossing at Golpark.
The lush greenery of Southern Avenue.
The regular check up with our family doctor - his chamber in Lake Gardens always crowded, smelling of medicine, his small room with a table fan and the hand scribbled prescriptions.
Eden garden and the Sourabh fanaticism.
My school, the logo, the blue gates, the buses, the bell ringing to mark the end of a period... every time I pass by 78,Syed Amir Ali Avenue, nostalgia engulfs me. Heard it has changed a lot in recent times :(
Old sirs still offering tuition to science students preparing for Joint Entrance, maybe teaching the same stuff from the same notes that I had learnt.
Naacher class - my Dance school where I spent two hours of all my Sunday evenings for 12 long years, learning Odissi, growing up to teach the juniors, guruji's voice, the sounds of ghungroos, mothers waiting outside the class gossiping, the sound of the tabla playing the taals, the songs, the items from Mangalacharan to Moksha.
Aankar class - my painting school, where I learnt how to draw figures and still lives and landscapes, where I learnt to use water colors on handmade paper, the artistic bearded intellectual teachers, we even had final exams and ranks in class to be promoted to the next year.
Shopping for fruits with Ma at Lake Market.
The stationery store from where I bought all the brown papers and labels to cover my books at the beginning of every academic year, where I bought camlin pencils and rubbers (yeah I still call them rubber - the white ones with alphabets written on them with green borders on the top), and then fountain pens and blue ink and finally dot pens and microtipped ones, and yeah the maps for Geography classes - the physical and political ones.
Metropolitan - the book store where we queued up every year to buy our text books as mentioned in the typed book list distributed by school.
Dress House on Hazra road - they tailored our school uniforms every year.
Alipore and New Alipore.
Park circus.
The hustle, the bustle.
The heat and the warmth.
The hospitality.
The people.
The souls.
Rabindrasangeet and geetobeetan, Ma reciting lines from Tagore's poems in context of something she wanted to explain to me.
The sound of conch shell in the evenings.
The superstitions.
The discussions on politics and cricket and books.
The recollections of the past, of my deeds as a child, of incidents before I was born.
The dreams of the future,of grandkids that my parents want to play with, and how mom will teach them to say "Its my life!" like I used to say to her as a teenager.
The spirit.
The city.
The life.
Everything
I am coming home.
