City

Of Evening Walks and more …

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 4 Comments

“Walk the talk” or “walk the walk” that is the quintessential  question Chalk and Cheese are dealing with these days.
Cheese loves  “walk the talk” and my business like Chalk prefers “walk the walk” , in absolute silence ! Long evening walks have become a regular routine for Chalk and Cheese in recent times. I love to talk while I walk, so much so that at times I feel I only go for the walk so that I can talk. To clear my own head, I ask the questions and I answer my own questions. I make philosophical points over simple matters and I admire everything  around me, from the tiny flowers on the grass to the hills and river banks . Yes, I chatter, I chatter ceaselessly and the vantage point being that the partner can not run away from me, and I get to pretend that he is listening ! In reality, I am in conversation with myself.

In such a scenario what does Chalk do ? After being the subject of this “walk the talk” evenings, Chalk has come out with a new strategy. I have told you before that Chalk is the smarter partner ; so he has now beaten me to my own game. He has very smartly Chalked the walk ! To put it simply, he has come out with new routes, torturous routes  (aah…the melting feet of delicate Cheese), for our evening walks. And guess what, he has succeeded in pushing Cheese into a silent zone. I walk beside him in a zombied mode, my mind racing but my feet aching, my throat parching, and the rest of the body groaning for attention. Well, he has silenced me during the walks but he cannot stop me from spreading the word here with my fellow readers!

With these well researched, longer routes and difficult terrain plans,  Chalk has started enjoying the evening walks twice as much. Like writing on the classroom black-board Chalk tells me stories of his various adventures. I am his only disciple on these lonely roads. He tells me of his Indian Military Academy days, when as a young cadet he and his course mates had to do the Golden Ring walk in the hills of Dehradun. These young men would be left in the jungles with certain coordinates  and some refreshments to find their way back , walking all through the night for more than ten hours to reach the reporting base at dawn. I hear in amazement and admiration. This most unassuming persona of my Chalk has so many layers to unfold. He is senior to me in age yet more energetic and more enthusiastic, an army man to the core. Cheese has stopped her non-stop chatter during her evening walks, it is more out of exhaustion than anything else. Cheese is learning the art of listening, her silence is rewarding her with sack full of stories.

At times we get lost navigating new routes, well as lost as one can get in residential sidewalks with Google maps on our phone. The son calls up once in a while to track us. Chalk tells him not to worry for his mother is with the ace navigator. What he says in jest is not very far from the truth. When he navigates I drive and when I chose to navigate he takes the steering,  together we have journeyed quite a bit uphill and now from the plateau of life we are enjoying the view around.

In the coming week Chalk and Cheese will be traveling  towards the east coast, we will be going to see our son’s  university city and attend his graduation programme. Next week I will come back to you my readers with the story of another walk.The walk our children will take , the proud recipients of degrees in their chosen field of interest.There will be many parents sitting in the hall with me and there will be so many of them sitting at home and seeing their children through videos and photographs. I may not know you all in person , but at some level we have a common thread , our children. I will write for the children and their parents. I will tell you every tiny detail of what I will see, through your eyes and mine, it will be my own way to “walk the talk”.

Sunshine On Sale

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 2 Comments

Every morning when I wake up the bright sunlight filtering in through the blinds make me smile. It reminds me of where I am, I don’t have slatted blinds on my window at home. I am in America and sunshine is celebrated here in a big way. This is essentially a cold country, so when the sun shines and  warmth spreads it makes people come out of their homes to soak in the sun, it gets them busy collecting sunshine. I too am loving the warm glow of sunshine on my bed.

Last Saturday was no different, I gave a lazy-hazy smile to the blinking blinds as I woke up. My dreams from the night were fading slowly as the present day, hour and moment dawned on my sleepy senses. Some fragments of last nights broken dreams were still lingering on. I was crossing the Howrah bridge in a yellow taxi to take a train to leave my city and that train was running on the Brooklyn Bridge taking me from Manhattan to Brooklyn where my daughter was waiting for me at the subway station. Oh what an utter confusion of bridges and places and people. But that is how dreams are most of the time ; memories float in easy in our dreams. All dreams make sense when we add up the cue cards. Bridges connect, they take us from one shore to another and the same bridge brings us back from where the journey began.This apparently disjointed dream made perfect sense to me. I was seeing my own journey, I was missing my daughter, compounded by all the planning from the  previous night to visit the Golden Gate Bridge came in together to bridge-up my dream.

We were all set to drive upto San Francisco city.  ‘A beautiful summer day’ I often hear people say this around me. For our Indian acclimatized body and mind cells… summer days are not essentially beautiful, they are hot and scorching days. Summer is… the heat wave people are experiencing back home in India, summer is…water scarcity, summer is…parched paddy fields, summer is… the time to stay indoors or visit cooler places. In this American summer Chalk and Cheese both shiver. Chalk has brought with him all summer shirts for sunny California,  but his Indian body needs to stay warm. He is now styling up in son’s jackets and hoodies. My  beautiful summer dresses too are still in the suitcase. There is just one way to dress up here, jeans and jacket with walking shoes. Going out for an evening walk or going out to see one of the seventh wonders of the modern world our dress code remains the same. Mark Twain had rightly said “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. ” Mark Twain I can shake your hand on that !

The Golden Gate Bridge is the most internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco city and the state of California. A sight which we have seen in so many movies and television shows was right there in front of our eyes. As we approached the bridge I rolled down the window and took off my glares to catch the bright orange-red colour of the painted steel with my non tinted eyes. Cycling on the bridge is a thing people do, and there were so many cyclists zipping away, it amazed me . My son informed us that he too had cycled on this bridge with his friend and that it was a tiring adventure for them.Chalk gets particularly excited about the cycling idea, he likes new challenges and I can go hiding in a closet in the name of any challenge. There are many viewing points of the bridge, depending from which side of the ocean you stand on. We crossed  the length of the bridge and drove up some winding  hilly roads to reach a breathtakingly beautiful view point.The view was spectacular and the mobile cameras came out capturing the spectacle. Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge which was built in four years time and was completed in the year 1937. There stood the bridge blushing in radiant orange against a crystal blue sky, celebrating the sunshine on sale !

The Piers of San Francisco are another place of tourist interest. The piers are lined up on a long stretch of road, from Pier 1 to Pier 39. These are like huge gateways leading onto  the platforms which are supported on pillars connecting the shore into the water. Once again there were happy people all around… walking, cycling, children playing , or families just sitting on green patches .On this sunny Saturday afternoon Pier 39 was bursting with tourists. Sunshine was definitely on sale today, and people had come out of their homes from far and wide to buy and soak in all the sunshine they could possibly gather. Pier 39 of course has more to offer than sunshine alone, there are shops, restaurants, and a view of the Alcatraz and the San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz , located on an island was a U.S military prison since 1859. The prison closed down in 1963 and now the island and the prison house has opened up for visitors. We did not have any prior bookings or tickets to make the trip to Alcatraz .Chalk was more keen about this tour than Cheese. Maybe we will come back for it another day.

We had lunch at the fisherman’s wharf ( Pier 39 is one part of the fisherman’s wharf complex) and walked around the place looking into the ocean beyond. The sea food restaurants offered pocket friendly delicious sea food platters. The Cheese in me was engrossed observing people, the sun soaked gaiety, the sea lions lying lazily on huge wooden platforms, the prison island far into the sea, the sailboats in waiting ; and I completely forgot to capture these scenic beauties on my camera.The Cheese in me was melting in this happy sunshine afternoon.

Driving back home we saw the beautiful Victorian styled stand alone houses lining up the expensive streets of San Francisco. The houses here do not have name plates, so you don’t get to know if it is a Mannat or Jalsa, whether it houses a Mukesh or a Ratan. The houses here only have numbers,  they belong to the rich no doubt and the identity is held in the number games. I have filled the glass half with my melted cheese stories the other half  of the glass gets filled with the Chalky captures from Chalks camera. With a promise to come back again with more tales from Chalk and Cheese…adieu.

A tale of Two Cities

/ sangeeta_chakladar / 7 Comments

 

                                                                           Capture

The mileage points keep adding as I shuttle ( Oh so frequently ) between my temporary address and permanent address , the city of dreams ‘Amchi Mumbai ‘ and  the city of joy ‘Amar Kolkata’. In recent times I made a choice to live in two cities, Mumbai and Kolkata, alternately. I divided my time, house, books, furniture, wardrobe, kitchen, between the two homes I set up in the two metros. Since then I have been swinging like a pendulum between the two cities and feeling quite dizzy;  I have no one to blame for this situation but myself. Thus in this dizzy state of affairs I try to keep pace with the time machine I created for myself and here is my oscillating attempt to share the woes or wows of my experiences.

Like thousands of Indians who reach Mumbai with a dream, I too had one, a small one or so I thought at that point. My dream was to live by the sea and count the waves on a full moon night. Admittedly a very childish and ignorant dream of my incorrigible romantic mind. But dreams are dreams and they defy logic. Soon I learnt that in this city of dreams only two sections of people live by the sea,the rich and famous ( not so sure about the fame though ) and the fishing community. The latter sure keep count of the waves for their livelihood depends on the tides of sea , but the rich perhaps have no time to count waves. For the rest of us we live in busy narrow lanes and cross roads of suburban Mumbai mainland. We  live in  high towers, counting either a hefty rental or EMI each month, and the dream of counting waves soon get washed away. But on sudden days the smell of sea hits me and the sea breeze carelessly flirting with my  hair reminds me of the waves, the roars, the sand and my dream. I rush to the beaches of overcrowded, litter floating sand and sea, I see the setting sun in its glory and drive back home counting road bumps.

Home is reached even though the journey is bumpy and the google maps are busy locating my destination as Kolkata.  Kolkata is the city where I grew up, my building blocks of memories are from this city. I keep them tightly packed in a box called nostalgia. Years back I had moved out of Kolkata, I traveled and stayed in various smaller cities and towns of India. But like an umbilical cord the city kept pulling me back no matter how far I went. The bend of roads, meandering Hooghly, the iconic Howrah bridge, landmark Victoria memorial, familiar shops, road side eateries, schools, colleges, all hold the familiarity of home to me. The city landmarks change with time, new ones come up but the charm of the city still remains. In the years that went by Calcutta changed to Kolkata, and Bombay changed to Mumbai, but character and essence of these two old cities stood strong and unshakable in the hands of time.

Mumbai gives me the zeal to seize the day, this city challenges my hours and minutes. The  work culture of Mumbai inspires everyone who comes here, from the daily wage earner to the movers and shakers. The simple philosophy which operates in this crazy chaos of Mumbai is live and let live.  Kolkata on the other hand gives me the much sought passion for life. Kolkata people are passionate about almost everything, be it music, food, literature, football, cinema, politics, travel, education, the list goes on. But in context to business, finance, work culture, the laid back and casual attitude often disturbs me. Every second person on the streets of Kolkata has a political and social view point but in deliverance lies the problem. This I say with no disregard or prejudice to any individual, it is the sum up of a general feeling I often get myself and also hear from people around me.

NH 6, connecting Kolkata and Mumbai perhaps sees less traffic on an average day than the emotional traffic of my brain that keeps traveling everyday between Kolkata and Mumbai. In one city I have a home of my own ( keeping aside the transient thought for a while ) and in the other city I have an empty nest. In my city of joy I get lured by fish curry and strong Darjeeling tea. Together with friends and family we raise a storm of opinions warming both our heart and hearth. As quintessential Bengalis we are very opinionated and vociferous , whether politically correct or incorrect, adda holds the center stage. In Mumbai,life is more centered around work, making people a little impersonal and self centered. With everyone chasing some pursuit it is easy to feel lonely and left out in Mumbai. I long for both the cities simultaneously, I miss not being in one when I am in the other. A sense of being displaced chases me as I keep shuttling between Mumbai and Kolkata.

I feel amused with my confused love affair with my two cities. My taste buds, my musical ear, my choice of clothing , the languages I speak, the emotions I feel, are constantly torn between two choice. Sometimes I feel richer by this unique blend of two cultures within myself. With chameleonic ease I  change my personality as I shift between the two cultures.

Draped in a cotton sari, wearing large ear rings I attend a musical evening of rabindrasangeet in Kolkata. Where as in Mumbai I don’t dress particularly for any occasion, such is the pulse of the city. A very casual dress code defines my Mumbai style and a more elegantly dressed me defines my Kolkata style. But the woes of my divided wardrobe is very obvious.My wardrobe has suddenly thinned in size after this division of clothes between two homes. I remind myself that I must have had had more clothes than I could wear to begin with.  My pink churidar set is in Mumbai but the perfectly matching dupatta is resting in my Kolkata wardrobe. If my tussar sari is in Kolkata my blouse for the same will be in Mumbai . The smell of moth balls fills the air as I pack up each item in airlock zip bags, unsure of when they will next see the light of day.The brown heeled shoe smile back at me when I start looking for the black sandal. As I lace up my running shoes and start running in an illusionary attempt to bridge the gap between the two mile stones, I feel that distance is only a state of mind.

In my constant state of transit my taste buds stay happily busy and always wanting for more. From pani puri to phuchka, Mumbai bhel to Kolkata jhal muri, mishti doi to shreekhand, I am spoilt for choice. One can never have a favorite amongst the favorites. How can it be easy to chose between Aminia Biriyani and Berry Pulao from Britania !  Will I vote for Amar juice center against Badsha rolls, no. Both the cities delight me with mouth watering dishes. The confusion starts when I enter my own kitchen and start looking around for the pots and pans, spices and grains on the wrong shelf of the right pantry. I make meticulous grocery lists, or so I pride, soon to be ridiculously challenged by the mix up I make between my two kitchens. I buy what I think I need only to realize it is for my other home. Between my two kitchens I perhaps have enough stuff to open my own store, but ironically the needed stuff is never in the needed place. Thus these days when taste goes wrong I promptly blame the kitchen, not the chef. The chef scurries from the kitchen to a more favorable place, my library.

Our library too has not been spared from this divide and rule policy of mine. My children like me are absolute book lovers. They find it difficult to forgive me for having send more than half of their books to another home in another city. Kindle is still not an answer we are ready to accept. When I get the sudden urge to read Keats or Shelly ( yes some die hard romantics still read them )  or a novel of a particular author, my book shelf seems too far, too out of reach. The Internet is always an option but the pleasure of leafing through tea- brown pages of a book with memories attached to it cannot be imitated. Therefore we keep buying new books all over again, and wait for the pages to turn tea-brown. Like memories I keep adding books to my lives, for no matter where I choose to live  books shall always be my best friend.

There are other cities and other worlds where the sun and moon travels to, where the waves break on lonely shores and rivers flow under wooden bridges, someday I will go there. Till then I sit in my balcony looking up at the sky to catch a glimpse of the full moon between the high rise apartments. I remember my favorite moon chase game from my childhood. During long drives at night I would look up at the moon and wonder whether the moon was chasing us or were we chasing the moon ! Perhaps it is a little crazy counting waves and chasing moon between the city of joy and city of dreams , but it is a blissful lunacy which keeps me swaying like a pendulum. Both Kolkata and Mumbai enrich me, my nomadic life and my two beautiful homes. This is my ‘ Tale of two cities’ .