Why I miss Kolkata (India)

A very unusually rainy January in Sunnyvale (California) brought back infinite childhood memories and a part of me yearned to go back to my hometown half a planet away. Born and raised for the most part in a small town in Bengal, I miss the grandeur of monsoon in USA. Rather, I miss the melodrama of the Bengal monsoon.

I miss the unanticipated flashes of lightning and thunder and the earthy smell of petrichor on a post rainy afternoon. I miss the the bustling crowd... children in their colorful raincoats bundling back home with their mothers or partially drenched men holding futile hands skyward, scurrying to board overcrowded buses. As the dark rolling clouds burst into torrential rain, every Bengali craves for a cup of hot milk tea or ‘cha’ as we call it and a plate full of crispy onion fritters or ‘Peyaji’. Dinner invariably is Khichdi (dish made of rice and lentils) and fried vegetables with a dollop of ghee.

Often public buses don’t ply and taxis take advantage of your desperation by overcharging. As the streets look like a raging river, sometime cars breakdown or gets stuck in a puddle and others offer a push voluntarily. But nothing dampens the spirits of the people of Kolkata, who carry on with their daily lives, squelching through ankle deep water.

I remember as a little girl, monsoon meant sudden holiday at school due to inaccessible water logged roads. So my younger brother and I would stay at home and set paper boats afloat on water that welled up our courtyard. And sometimes when the rain eased a bit, I would take huge leaps from the front door of our house to the waterlogged streets that would splotch my skirt with muddy water.

Living in a first world country now might have its own privileges but I sure miss the soul of India. So here I am sharing a few pictures of rain drenched Kolkata clicked by my good friend Kaustav Sarkar (with his permission).

~A rain washed street of Chandannagar