Flux of Time

My piece in the Deccan Herald Romancing Kolkata It was a humid December afternoon when I landed in Kolkata. As the yellow taxi made its way through labyrinthine roads, I tried to take a deep breath and search for the Kolkata I had imagined from Tagore poetry, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland or Amitav Ghosh’s Flood of Fire.  I strained my ears for Rabindra Sangeet, bits and pieces of which I had listened to, on the Doordarshan of my childhood. Why, I even looked for the Kolkata of Saurav Ganguly, with the distinct voice of Geoffrey Boycott — “He’s the Prince of Calcoottar” ringing in my ears!  It became an obsession over the next few days to look for the familiar sights of the famed city I had only seen on television and read about so far. And I found them as well. First, as we walked along the wide footpaths near the Victoria Memorial and the extremely well-curated museum inside. Then, as I walked along Sudder Street and took a turn to enter Mirza Ghalib Street, I chanced on a gramop