Reflections

This article is sourced from The Gulf Times. Some more Calcutta nostalgia!! Once upon a time in Calcutta going to the pictures was a delightfully leisurely, pleasurable outing. Families packed food, left home well in time for a film, often got into an ambling tramcar and reached the theatre. Cinemas had beautiful lounges with finely crafted woodwork, richly upholstered sofas and sometimes cafeterias that served the choicest of eats. I remember Bijoli in the Bhowanipur area that dished out absolutely delicious cutlets. There were also some theatres that had a bar and one could down a few pegs before watching Gregory Peck in the Guns of Navarone or Cary Grant run for his life in North By North-West or Grace Kelly meet her lover in Rear Window. One among Calcutta’s legendary cinemas was the Metro in Chowringhee that was as great a landmark as the city’s impressive Victoria Memorial (housing British artefacts) or undulating greenery called the Maidan or imposing Howrah Bridge whi...

It is always a wrench to leave Kolkata Airport to take the KL flight. However, often this departure has been preceded by rude taxi drivers, fatheaded security staff and expensive but lousy coffee in the airport lounge, so one can take it in one’s stride. However this time was different. For a change we spent a full week in Kolkata, that too during the Pujas. Kolkata is different during the Pujas. The traffic is smooth, the pedestrians are forced to keep to the pavements, the hawkers either go on leave or are removed from the pavements in many areas and of course the city is dressed up in the finery of the autumn festival. I have not been in Kolkata during the Pujas for something like a couple of decades. So, some of my memories had faded. However this time I was stuck anew with wonder at the creativity and hard work that goes into the organization of what must be one of the greatest shows on earth The pratimas were even better than my memories, the lighting and the pandals were min...

( Photo Courtesy: Zee News) I was returning to KL from Penang. The flight was a trifle late and I was settling down in the cab listening idly to the news in Bahasa Malaysia when I heard the name of Kolkata and then hospital and finally bomba (fire). While I am not too good in Bahasa Malaysia, I realised that there had been some fire in a hospital In Calcutta. As I reached home, my wife told me that there had been a massive fire in AMRI and the internet told us the rest. The Malaysian news channels showed us gory images as did the BBC and many others. It appears unbelievable. 91 dead; mostly patients. The sorry fact that our public buildings and disaster management services have no modern equipment or protocols was again exposed to the public eye. It is only one of a long litany of such fires: Stephen Court and the Nandaram Building are still green in our memory. Perhaps even more nauseating than the disaster is the media circus that has immediately ensued. The Media as usual have it a...