Cal ho na ho – I : Soul of a city
Confused
kya?
Well, that is not a typo. Let me explain.
It is strange when men get possessed by the urge of doing something out-of-the-box. Now before any ideas get into your head, let me say that it is a perfectly noble intention and is born out of a continued drudgery in one’s current occupation. And when you are doing MBA, chances multiply manifold that you would do this someday.
But what form this out-of-box experience takes is something to be viewed carefully. For me and for some of my friends at XL, it translated into an urge to roam aimlessly in the soccer city; an urge laced with an inexplicable attraction to the pre-historic hunting roots that human males have. And so we three (Akshay, Lalith and yours truly) set out one very wintry night with my camera fed and fattened for the experience. I was determined to enjoy this out-of-box trip and I began by enjoying the freezing air rushing at me as I sat in the superbly ventilated auto. Brr…
The plan was to buy tickets at the station and then cajole the TTE of the 11 PM train to give us a birth…err…berth in the sleeper. This we managed just as the train was about to leave. Three berths just like that…Wow!
The night was peaceful. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. I spent it in the so very nostalgic embryo posture, shins to chins, as the upper side-berth offered no more room and winter politely disrespected my flimsy coverlet. Brr…
After a good 225 minutes sleep we hit Howrah. The morning was still hours away.
Howrah terminus is so much reminiscent of Bombay VT. I couldn’t help finding the comparison. The crowd at that early hour was quite respectful. Lalith ran off for his beloved ‘Food Plaza’ and Akshay and I debated over coffee whether to dump him and do our own Cal trip. I guess it was the coffee that was hitting our brains. As it got over, we decided not to dump him as he didn’t even have a cell-phone. Food Plaza presented an unexpected throng of XLers, some returning from a day long out-of-box experience at Cal, some returning from home etc.
The idli at Food Plaza gave us the physiological enthusiasm to head for Victoria Memorial. I had to capture the Victoria sunrise…dammit! Now if you ever want to meet the soul of a city, go to the open space or the landmark in early morn. You will find it there. We met the soul of Cal right there at the Maidan on the morning of 26th Dec at 6 AM. It roamed there, jogged, played and laughed there; it hung in the morning mist and shone in the tram headlights; it whispered in the trees leaning out onto the water and it rippled in the water of the Victoria pools; it flew with the snowy white egrets and jumped with the sparrows on the moat bridge; it beamed down from the so very clear morning sky and shone from the apple red morning sun; it posed majestically with the marble edifice of the monument and it gazed at us from the eyes of the statues; it rushed with the chilling morning winds and then it shivered with me, the male hunter shooting all of it wildly with his modern-day shooting apparatus from Nikon. Brr…
We reluctantly moved away from it all, drawn only by the promise of another out-of-box experience: a tram ride to-and-fro though Cal! We got another after failing to get into one. Akshay jumped into the trailing car while Lalith and I caught the leading car. And I saw Eden from the moving tram. So did my Nikon. And it purred contentedly as the lens retracted. The supreme feeling of leisure and freedom was amazing. The Fords and the Swifts were whizzing past us with the occasional sarkari bus labouring by amidst hoarse roars; the whole city seemed to be stirring into one combined frenzy of life and here we were, seated like old-time maharajas and admiring the kingdom from the cute tram trundling down the metal rails. Wow! Who says time-machines are impossible! Just be a little mad and a little passionate!
We caught the returning tram from Dharamtalla and told the conductor to take us to wherever the tram goes. Poor chap! He must have seen this only in movies when the anguished love-struck hero boards a taxi. He must surely have taken us to be love-lost buddies doing a group mourning. Were we?
Tollygunj was the last stop. And the tram dumped us in a … oh God…this was close…in a ‘protected government area’. Jeezz! When we had irrigated some forlorn parts of the compound, the watchman came rushing and told us to leave. He saw my shooting equipment and got into a tizzy. We were in a secret area and we were in deep shit! The ‘protected area’ was a marvelous grave-yard of rusty antediluvian buses, some still retaining the machinery while most were only skin and skeleton. We laughed to our heart’s content. But we did realize it was no laughing matter. Don’t we know Saddam hid entrances of his chemical weapons bunkers in tank and auto graveyards? Gosh! We managed to escape the enemy territory only by extreme caution as we strolled by the waiting throng of tram conductors (I am sure they were under-cover agents monitoring our every move…Brr) and out of the gate. Phew!
Well, that is not a typo. Let me explain.
It is strange when men get possessed by the urge of doing something out-of-the-box. Now before any ideas get into your head, let me say that it is a perfectly noble intention and is born out of a continued drudgery in one’s current occupation. And when you are doing MBA, chances multiply manifold that you would do this someday.
But what form this out-of-box experience takes is something to be viewed carefully. For me and for some of my friends at XL, it translated into an urge to roam aimlessly in the soccer city; an urge laced with an inexplicable attraction to the pre-historic hunting roots that human males have. And so we three (Akshay, Lalith and yours truly) set out one very wintry night with my camera fed and fattened for the experience. I was determined to enjoy this out-of-box trip and I began by enjoying the freezing air rushing at me as I sat in the superbly ventilated auto. Brr…
The plan was to buy tickets at the station and then cajole the TTE of the 11 PM train to give us a birth…err…berth in the sleeper. This we managed just as the train was about to leave. Three berths just like that…Wow!
The night was peaceful. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. I spent it in the so very nostalgic embryo posture, shins to chins, as the upper side-berth offered no more room and winter politely disrespected my flimsy coverlet. Brr…
After a good 225 minutes sleep we hit Howrah. The morning was still hours away.
Howrah terminus is so much reminiscent of Bombay VT. I couldn’t help finding the comparison. The crowd at that early hour was quite respectful. Lalith ran off for his beloved ‘Food Plaza’ and Akshay and I debated over coffee whether to dump him and do our own Cal trip. I guess it was the coffee that was hitting our brains. As it got over, we decided not to dump him as he didn’t even have a cell-phone. Food Plaza presented an unexpected throng of XLers, some returning from a day long out-of-box experience at Cal, some returning from home etc.
The idli at Food Plaza gave us the physiological enthusiasm to head for Victoria Memorial. I had to capture the Victoria sunrise…dammit! Now if you ever want to meet the soul of a city, go to the open space or the landmark in early morn. You will find it there. We met the soul of Cal right there at the Maidan on the morning of 26th Dec at 6 AM. It roamed there, jogged, played and laughed there; it hung in the morning mist and shone in the tram headlights; it whispered in the trees leaning out onto the water and it rippled in the water of the Victoria pools; it flew with the snowy white egrets and jumped with the sparrows on the moat bridge; it beamed down from the so very clear morning sky and shone from the apple red morning sun; it posed majestically with the marble edifice of the monument and it gazed at us from the eyes of the statues; it rushed with the chilling morning winds and then it shivered with me, the male hunter shooting all of it wildly with his modern-day shooting apparatus from Nikon. Brr…
We reluctantly moved away from it all, drawn only by the promise of another out-of-box experience: a tram ride to-and-fro though Cal! We got another after failing to get into one. Akshay jumped into the trailing car while Lalith and I caught the leading car. And I saw Eden from the moving tram. So did my Nikon. And it purred contentedly as the lens retracted. The supreme feeling of leisure and freedom was amazing. The Fords and the Swifts were whizzing past us with the occasional sarkari bus labouring by amidst hoarse roars; the whole city seemed to be stirring into one combined frenzy of life and here we were, seated like old-time maharajas and admiring the kingdom from the cute tram trundling down the metal rails. Wow! Who says time-machines are impossible! Just be a little mad and a little passionate!
We caught the returning tram from Dharamtalla and told the conductor to take us to wherever the tram goes. Poor chap! He must have seen this only in movies when the anguished love-struck hero boards a taxi. He must surely have taken us to be love-lost buddies doing a group mourning. Were we?
Tollygunj was the last stop. And the tram dumped us in a … oh God…this was close…in a ‘protected government area’. Jeezz! When we had irrigated some forlorn parts of the compound, the watchman came rushing and told us to leave. He saw my shooting equipment and got into a tizzy. We were in a secret area and we were in deep shit! The ‘protected area’ was a marvelous grave-yard of rusty antediluvian buses, some still retaining the machinery while most were only skin and skeleton. We laughed to our heart’s content. But we did realize it was no laughing matter. Don’t we know Saddam hid entrances of his chemical weapons bunkers in tank and auto graveyards? Gosh! We managed to escape the enemy territory only by extreme caution as we strolled by the waiting throng of tram conductors (I am sure they were under-cover agents monitoring our every move…Brr) and out of the gate. Phew!
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