February, Kolkata, and all that

It’s me, Kolkata. Bhule to nahin?

It has been ages since I wrote to you. A lot has changed since then. A lot. My life has turned upside down (by that I don’t mean LIFE looks like ГIŁE) over this period. The year – since February last – has been way, way longer than what the lying calendar reveals.

At times I feel I have got over you. Did I miss you because you were you? Or simply because you were home – and I would’ve missed Kamchatka had I been from there? I keep telling myself it’s the latter…

Navi Mumbai was different, you know. She was – is – idyllic. She is polite and warm,  often whispering sweet nothings in my ear till late at night.

This insomniac leviathan of a city is different. She doesn’t know how to pause for a couple of seconds on footbridges and look at passing trains. She shoves you away, even asking you ugich kashala?¹

But even she has February. She has a February she does not know of, a February where the fan seems harsh in the wee hours and the sun, harsher as the clock ticks to noon.

Let me tell you a story of a teenage boy I saw at the station today. I never saw his face, but I knew he was trying to woo a friend, probably a classmate – or that was what my limited knowledge of Marathi told me.²

The girl had her face towards me. They probably had an argument, and she turned her back on the two of us. But then, right at that moment, a fast train³ sped past the platform.

Her temper tried to fight a valiant battle against the laws of physics that govern the sudden wind you associate with a speeding train. The reluctant cascade of hair brushed his senses, probably his irrelevant cheek as well. And then she walked away from him, every stride authoritative enough to put Cleopatra to shame.

He stood there. I wished I could see his face. But then, I didn’t need to, for he raised his hand, almost hypnotically, to touch his cheek with his palm. And he stayed put.

I did not read on my way to work that day. I didn’t need to, for home beckoned. I left you on the platform that day, Kolkata, just like I had abandoned you four years ago.

And as non-summer⁴ tries its best to keep summer away from the city, you somehow find ways to come back to me, Kolkata – as you did today.

You are far, far away from me, but in this month – the most magical of them all – you come close enough to hold me, to absorb all the fire pent up this spent, fatigued man, close enough to whisper in my ear to send every bit of me to the land where time stands still.

Perhaps there is February somewhere in the ruthless relentlessness of Mumbai as well, refusing to let me age.

_____________________________

¹Don't ask. Google instead.

²Marathi is easy: it’s basically Hindi where you need to end every sentence in aahe or naahi. That almost always works.

³A train that travels faster than the usual ones but loses relevance by showing up late.

⁴Mumbai doesn’t have a winter.