Something I wrote on my first blog ever:
There’s
a corner on Vivekananda
Park, right on Southern
Avenue. It sort of pushes its butt on the park itself, on the railings. You
cross the road, at least to the other side towards Golpark and there is
a really inane Police Box whose entire purpose is quite unknown to people who
walk by. I happen to think that the box is there so that most of the people
there can find occasional entertainment when, say, a motorbike falls of or a
car bumps into the bumper of another, or say some street kids start a scuffle.
Its entertainment. After all most Bengalis love nothing more than a bawal
to watch.
The
pavement on the other side of Southern Avenue leads to one of the many
entrances to the placid park that the corporation of our city had build to
beautify the lake, Rabindra Sarobar. Which remains dark and creepy when
the evening darkness sets it.
The
corner of the Vivekananda
Park , which I’m talking
about is the seat of a Chayer Dokan. The man of the shop sells
cigarettes to us solely because we’ve drunk way too many liters of his tea.
That
VP, as the area is so called, is one of the worst lit and dangerous areas in
the civilized pool of south Calcutta
is a minor detail that hardly crosses my mind before the clock strikes nine.
There
are regular police raids on narcotic contraband and I’ve seen way too many
rushing bunches of prostitutes running from the police to count. Most of my
male friends, have at some point or the other, been accosted by these ladies of
the night and as well as people who aren’t quite ladies, if you know what I
mean. I’ve been touched at really weird places that I’ve stopped being an idiot
and a kid and always insist on any one of my male friends to escort me down to
Golpark at least, these days, now that I’m older.
On
any given day, the “morer Cha Dokan” has at least two people whom I know
sitting there.
“yawn.”
“You
know? I actually have nothing to say anymore”
“So?
I don’t either. Kaku/Dada, Ar ekta cigarette daona… ei, anyone for
another tea? Ok, Kaku, another tea to go, too”.
That’s
the range of conversation that mostly takes place, when we haven’t run into
someone who’s somewhat controversial, or ranting about how bad some band is, or
more so, how to make that aforesaid upstart band famous.
The
setting wasn’t always the same. There was originally another tea shop about a
minute’s walk from this one that originally started this… thing. Once, a couple
of friends from Ashutosh College had no place to go and smoke or to adda
for that matter and they chose to go to this little shack of a tea shop right
on the green fields of Vivekanada
Park. It had a lot to
commend it. For one, it connected them to the lady who was nature; you found
people playing cricket there in the morning, football as the sun started going
down and “ludo” when the sun went down. It was a miracle of the God’s. A place
where you could sleep off horrendously desperate bouts of drinking and
order your tea that was delivered and also keep a tab book that was used all by
yourself? It was unthinkable. Also it was a highly political move against
globalization and franchise trends that Calcutta
seemed to succumb to. It mostly had nothing to do with the fact that people at
the Lake Road CCD had thrown us out because we had become way too popular for
sitting in a large group, guitar en tow, and not ordering anything at all. So
the little tea shop on the greens was named CCD2- Champa Di’r Chayer Dokan.
It was even labeled on Google Earth.
Come
rain or shine, that place had us coming back. It’s seen a number of birthday
parties when some of us never celebrated at home, it also acted as
advertisement board and planning ground for a number of our very own home-grown
ventures, Ex Nihilo, by the way, being one of such.
The
number of evenings of lying on the grass and staring at the stars and feeling
the strange feelings of contentment as live cows passed us by are things that
has possibly melted into the velvet darkness with the two years or so that went
by. The romances that started on that math , some still remain and some
have withered away along with the seasons that do, to make space for another.
The thoughts that were debated, thought of, were so “enclosed” that now, when I
think about it, feels like thoughts thought by some one whose got the whole of
tomorrow to worry, not like now, when I am in the front lines facing the line
of fire and submerged in it. Exams didn’t seem that important enough. There
always seemed like there was going to be a Part2 or a Part3.
Then
things started unraveling a bit.
I
lost a friend. Actually that was quite consciously lost, but lost all the same.
That shook up the man-place equation quite a bit, and things didn’t remain the
same. Some people started turning up and that in turn didn’t suite some people.
So they broke up the gathering into two halves. A bunch hung out at the same
place and some went off to the Morer Cha Dokan.
I
spent quite a bit of time shuttling in between the two trying to be the
diplomatic type and trying to not lose out of any of the people involved.
But
then other things happened. Like the proprietress of CCD2 betrayed us by
raising the price of tea and fags by quite a bit and the decision was made for
me. It was the granite slab-makeshift benches for me.
It
was all that mattered for me then. For any of us really. That was the Second
year of college, I believe.
I
had people who were either fortunate that they studied engineering and were
guaranteed to shift seamlessly into the “real life”. They wouldn’t really have
to fight too hard. And I also had people who were pretty sure what they wanted
to do, or brilliant enough( I mean hardworking enough ) ultimately do something
with their lives. But what of me and say someone who’s most likely to think
that they should work hard and do really well in exams, dream of studying
murderously when opening an article on history in the national geographic
magazine, but when it came down to actually studying or writing the paper for
that matter, barely scrapping a pass. What would happen to the daydreamers? Who
dreamed of traveling to Europe to back pack or to study classical art and then
having a really cosmopolitan life who works from home, freelance, or some one
who dreams of riding off into the orange sunset of the Indian horizon with a
bag of camera equipment and only returning to a city in like six months in a
year?
The
exams came and went. I didn’t really fare too well. But there was always the
Part Three. But the fear had started to set in. People had already started to
make their decision to do what they wanted to. Internships and what not. People
who I least expected to, were earning pocket money.
But
there it still was, that place under the sun/moon/clouds/stars that provided
tea, and space to stare into. Lives never really go on when one sat at that
place. What happens to the things that you read at home or the little bits of
art that inspire you when you’re unaware? Where do they go? I don’t know. But I
know that I stopped reading too many books at book shops, I started afraid of
being alone. I never ever thought of the future. And I recently discovered that
I really don’t have much of a personality any more. Please don’t think I mean
to say that most people that were around don’t have personalities, but when
you’re there, you stop thinking out side that little corner of southern avenue
and that’s about a good four or five hours of twenty four. So imagine what’s
left for you then. The recovery time’s killing. So the entire day revolves
around that tea shop, from the morning when you mindlessly did what one was
supposed to do waiting for the evening, and the evening gave way to night when
one recovered.
“aj
band practice ache, can’t go to the morer dokan, come to maharani.”
And
the scene shifts. Now the tea drinkers have branched out. One more place to go.
This was the time of weekly Princeton visits.
The aforesaid band have found a small measure of fame in Calcutta
by playing at Princeton clubs. The egos have
increased, and they think they are something hot. Some what. And life still
moves around tea shops but to a lesser degree. This is the final year of
college, and people are actually doing what they need to be doing studying.
Even me. I pretended to, when I wasn’t running around like a headless chicken
trying to find study material. I thought I was being diligent. But in reality I
could see the edges of the frontline and I was nearly shitting in my pants.
People were still thinking that they were so great because they knew who Godot
was. I thought that I was being individualistic by not knowing much and being
extremely proud of the little that I did.
Then
the finals came and went, some became graduates before some of us. And then we
weren’t the same anymore. No one was. There were random hookups, some holidays,
and some breaking ups. There were people I could talk to for hours, and I
couldn’t anymore. And there were people who just went on doing what I think
they were planning to be doing all their lives.
But
I don’t drink tea any more. I don’t smoke as much either. I am a graduate now.
But I fared (predictably) so poorly that I know with my secret foresight, that
I’m in the trenches and I’m being bombarded with heat seeking missiles
everywhere, and I know that my chances are slim. I don’t have peaceful moments
any longer. Not much anyway. The permanence that I thought were my friends, I’m
not too sure of. Not because I don’t want them, but because they’re preparing
to fly away. And I’m trying to buy cheap tickets too, so poor am I. Some one
pointed out to me that I wasn’t planning to keep in touch with most people I
used to hang out with in the first and second year of college. I say they don’t
plan to. Because from now on, people will probably less and less to talk about
at the tea shop. And people will realize smoking isn’t that good, so they won’t
have that many excuses to come to the shop anymore.
But
they might all, the same. Some like me are so grounded that they might be the
phantoms of the tea shops. But the talk will dry up, as the joy will. And then
what would happen to the people who’re stuck in the unending cycle that’s the
tea shops? Maybe its time to find a spot under a tree of a math which
spins a mean time machine, and has a fountain of youth for cola fountain.
