Just completed a two day stay at Kolkata, the so called “uber-conservative”,
“stuck in time” capital of West Bengal (a state in eastern India). The city
seemed lot cleaner that what I remember from a decade ago but retains the
essential spirit of a market place that somehow got too big and had to be
called a city!
I was coming into Kolkatta from a place that had below par
road and rail connectivity and was quite tired from all the traveling through
the labyrinthine intestines of India, but the belles of Kolkata changed it all. This
is my tribute to some of the most beautiful women to populate this universe,
the women of Kolkata!
Early into the day, I was waiting somewhere near a Metro
(tube) station near Central Avenue for a business associate to pick me up when
my eyes first popped out. There was this beautiful Goddess Durga-looking female
crossing the crowded street full of rickshaws, yellow taxis and pot bellied
traffic policemen. It was a typical freeze frame moment, every other
vision crowded out and it was only her crossing the street with absolute nonchalance…
in slow motion… eastman color. I kept gawking at her (I am sure I would have
had my eyes popping out like you see in cartoons) as time crawled down to a
micro seconds! Everything about her had a bounce (yeah! go on … imagine!), the
straight cut hair bounced, and so did the pallu (the free end of a saree) and I guess
the eyelashes bounced too. The universe was in perfect harmony with the bounce
in the gaits of this Bengali belle! But it is when she crossed me that the best
part came! She crossed the street and moved into an alley full old Raj era mansions
which had probably lost its plot in the ever changing script of time. My gaze
involuntarily (I now know what being a zombie means!) followed her and then I knew
that the best comes last. My lady was wearing a blouse that left nothing, I repeat,
nothing to imagination from behind. A helicopter could have landed where the
blouse should have been, and was not! Expensive lingerie in black ran riot with
gay abandon on an awfully fair skin, and then she turned the corner…and was
lost! I looked around to see if anybody else had caught me gawking at her all
this while and the realization struck me cold! In any other part of the
country, traffic would have come to a halt, and mobile phone conversations
would have stopped until this lady crossed the street, but not in Kolkata. In
Kolkata I formed the grand minority of one; I seemed to be the only guy
interested in women, no one else even noticed. If Bengali men did not have time
to enjoy this, pray tell me what they spend their time on… discussing politics!
Cheers to Bengali belles. Men… grow up! In this era of denim
clad tomboys passing off as women, you have no clue what you are missing,
living among the saree clad Bengali women!
Sometime I win, mostly lose. Some days I am happy, other
days are sad, and like you, I do not remember most of the in-between days in my life. I believe in God, and I love to fall in love.
I respect those who love me for they are so wonderfully patient, I do not hate
those who ignore me, I can't see things about me the way they do, hence, probably what they do to me is in someway right too. I am not sure if I could die for a cause, I am for sure too fickle
to live by one. Some days I cry for my fellow human beings, most days I cry for
myself. 
