Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Beautiful World

I discovered Lovelock street today. Yes there were ugly flats everywhere but there was also a kubo pakhi which was going kub-kub in the stillness of the afternoon. And several very pretty bungalows. Yes, i love rich people's houses. Large, with sprawling lawns. It's a guilty obsession.

Came back home and tried to get my head around the concept of this city on Wikimapia. While i am pretty sure I'd be able to find the Scottish and Lower Circular Road cemeteries now, i must say i couldn't quite figure out the jumble of roads and houses and empty spaces. ore baba prithibita eto boro naki?! But it was like discovering a new world. I felt like Columbus when i discovered that Race Course and Alipore are quite near. And Alipore is beside Bhawanipur. And Bhawanipur beside Ballygunge. O joy! The interconnectedness of things! Er, yeah, i do know it's a city with roads that connect one place to another. But these places were distinct and separate in my head.

That's why this city's so unique. Bhawanipur (think Townshend road) is very different from Alipore. But these opposites exist, maybe not a harmonious and completely peaceful existence, as propaganda will make you believe, but still. Lovelock street, the posh quiet rich people's residential area, leads to Poddopukur Road--as the name suggests, it's a typical modhyobitto para, with a bosti round one fringe. The regular modhyobitto noises and smells: ghotanghot of 'tubekol' and shorsher tele phoroner gondho. Besides, what is life without the spice of a little disharmony--khunti nere jhogra as well as the constant tension between the genteel modhyobitto 'bhoddorlok' and the bostibashi 'reprobates'?

I am just planning to leave the city. And look at the ghonoghota of nostalgia-megh.

3 comments:

Dhruva said...

They say, if you stay at one place for a long time, you become that place.

Understandably so.

yippeehippie said...

unfortunately, there are just about 5 bungalows left on Lovelock street. :(

Madhura said...

Do you stay there? So in place of those ugly blocks of flats, there were more bungalows?
aaargh!!!! what was doing all my life not going to Lovelock Street!!!