If any place can claim to be lazier than Goa, it must be
Kolkata. The city is lazy in an almost aristocratic manner. The stronghold of
the East India Company, Calcutta still retains the regal air. You must drive
across the city to see how much of their mark the English left in India. While
other imperial strongholds, like Kanpur for example, have given up their regal
legacies to time, Kolkata is almost pompous about them. Massive imperial architecture
spawns the breadths of the city, it’s almost like you were walking across the streets
of India of the 1900’s. The English came and whitewashed the city, and the city
decided never to change itself again. There are boards above shops that
probably haven’t been touched since they were first placed there. The fonts of
those early days are visible everywhere, from shops, street signs to buses.
While the rest of India follows a black with yellow stripes
norm for taxis, Kolkata is different. The taxis are chubby ambassadors painted bright
yellow, and give the impression of having jumped off a 4 year olds drawing
sheet. It’s hard to not to be captivated by them especially for someone fond of
colors. Then there’s the Howrah Bridge, which is almost like a river
over a river. It is difficult to choose between the massive steel structures
above your head and the peaceful Hooghly River below you, and you end up struggling
for bits of each as you are rushed through the bridge.
Kolkata is a huge metropolis, without doubt. But unlike its
contemporaries Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata has a pace of its own. There is
the traffic, the endless of sea of people, yet its not frenzied and mechanical.
While the new wave of skyscrapers is struggling to make its mark on the cityscape,
what you remember of Kolkata are the tiny streets lined by two storeyed houses
with wooden galleries, windows with thick grills and wooden doors and a network
of electricity and phone lines dangerously crisscrossing above your head.
An ode to Kolkata’s old ways is the tram that still runs
across parts of the city flooded with people. While the rest of the world is in
a rush to reach places, many Bongs in Kolkata choose the tram that winds
leisurely through the veins of the city.
Kolkata is urbane but with an almost rustic romanticism in
it.
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