My first visit to Kolkata

I visited Kolkata for the first time in 1961. I came with my Didima.

Kolkata, for me then, was cinema and natok. It was Rabindranath’s birth centenary year. I watched Teen Kanya and Tripti Mitra’s Setu.

We stayed with one of our maternal uncles. Our house stood next to Dilip Mukherjee’s. He looked like an ordinary neighbour, not a film star at all. His ordinariness stayed with me longer than his films.

That was also the only time I saw a Bengal village with pukur, aam and jamrul trees, unhurried days. I was well kept, well fed, and quietly observed.

In those days my Bengali carried a lot of Hindi. I felt a slight inferiority before the local Bengalis, whom I believed spoke “good” Bengali. To overcome that unease, I tried speaking in chaste Hindi, an odd compensation, but a sincere one.

For us Probasi Bengalis, visiting Kolkata was a real-life event. Kolkata meant Greater Kolkata. Perhaps Durgapur and Asansol were included in it too. Distance enlarged the city; imagination completed its map.

Kolkata still holds a charm for Probasi Bengalis, but the charm has thinned. Kolkata has come nearer, yet has gone far away.