Kolkata Trip : Part 2

The Three Centuries Old City – KOLKATA

Nilu’s mom was delighted to see us, as we reached home. After chatting for a while we had to freshen ourselves up, so Nilanjan took us to his aunt’s place, which is right across the road in front of his house. Having a light breakfast afterwards, as it was almost lunchtime, we thought of going out for a stroll. And we happened to discover a place, which instantly became our “ADDA”. This was a small Football Ground, behind Nilu’s house. The ground was nice with green grass and was surprisingly clean. We’d have loved to play Football that very instant, if only we had one!! This place eventually became our “Batthi spot”.

Our first impression about the City Kolkata was very very positive. I just fell “In Love” with the city!! As we traveled for almost an hour from Airport to Tolly Gunj in the morning, where Nilanjan stays, we had seen many places, all of them unique in their own way and very interesting. All the buildings in the city were very old and had that Historical European Architecture.

After the leisure walk, we went to Nilu’s aunt’s place, where we were supposed to stay during our stay at Kolkata. The first thing that surprised us, just as we entered the house and to the second floor, was that every single room in the house had at least two fans!! This was quite strange, for we Bangaloreans… And it dint take much time for us to realize why each room needed at least TWO fans. The damn place was sooo hot and full of humidity, even a native from Thar Desert would be sweating all the time here…….!! Relaxing for some time was like heaven, under the TWO fans swirling at top speeds above us.. After lunch, we were supposed to meet one of Nilu’s friends, who would be accompanying us during our stay in Kolkata. This interesting person arrived at Nilu’s place at around 1400 hrs. The first thing one would feel after seeing him is – “this person is ‘A Firang’ (blonde) from an Alien land!!”. We were like, how are we gonna get along with this guy??! But as the saying goes – “Looks can be deceptive”, this guy turned out to be Suppeerrr fun to hang out with…!!! His official name is“Romit Poddar” and friends call him “Poddy”. For a couple of days, we couldn’t actually figure out if it was “Romit or Ronit”..??!! (sorry buddy… J). We were formally introduced to each other after getting into Nilanjan’s car and then set out for “sight seeing cum shopping” task.

The first place we visited in Kolkata was Park Street. This was something like a Market place, where one could find all sorts of shops, starting from Sabzi mandi to Textile showrooms, Brand Showrooms and Shopping Malls. Santosh was looking out for a Saree shop, as he wanted to buy Saree for his Sis. And I wanted to buy an Authentic Bengali Kurtha!! After going through various Kurtha shops and numerous designs of Kurthas, we finally landed into the Pantaloons and settled for one Shervani, which had instantly attracted my attention. The saree shopping wasn’t this confusing, though. While we were through all this, we came across many roadside vendors, who were selling these costly and imported deodorants and perfumes in packs of 3 for really low prices!! Finally, having given in for the temptation, we bought 3 bottles of deo and also perfumes and other stuff, only to realize after reaching home that over three-fourths of the deo bottles was full of water!!! What an Afsoos situation for having become the ‘Bakras’… And to add on to that, the bottles that we had bought dint even last as long as the trip did!!

Our trip to the Park Street was through a taxi. Traveling by taxis in Kolkata is as good as traveling by an auto in Bangalore!! One would pay the same amount of money to travel in a 4-wheeler over there, where as here u’ve got the privilege of hiring a 3-wheeler… (he hehee.. being too sarcastic about our own “Bengaluru”..). The next trip, however, was extremely cost-efficient and super fast!! We happened to travel for the first time in the Metro Rail..!! I must agree that the planning and implementation of the Metro Transport System has really been appreciable in Kolkata. It connects to all the important locations in the city and beats the City Traffic too. For instance, you would hardly need 10 mins to cover a certain distance by Metro, which would have otherwise taken a gud 45 mins if you’d taken the road!! Hope the new Metro Rail Systems in Namma Bengaluru will be as effective and bring some relief to Bangaloreans.

From Park Street, we boarded the Metro and reached a place (whose name I’m not able to recollect yaar!!) close to the Victoria Memorial. Were just walking through the footpath along side the Victoria Memorial Campus and we noticed a “Lime Juice Vendor”. Being extremely tired coz of the heat and humidity, we decided to have a drinks break and ordered 4 Lime Juice glasses. After being impressed by seeing how the recipe was made and having gulped the whole of it in no time, one of us handed over a 50 rupees note to the Juice-wala, to which he said “Change nahi hai saab”. We were wondering if he dint have a 10 rupees note to return it to us, and asked him “kitna hua bhaiya?”. He told us 8 Rupees!! We were under the impression that each glass cost 8 bucks, but no dude!! 4 glasses put together cost us only 8 bucks!!!! We were like – “Aur chaar deejiye bhaiya!!” (he heheehe…) and enjoyed yet another glass of the delicious Lime Juice.. Man, the whole of Kolkata is just like this!! Everything is so damn unexpensive!!! Seriously, these people are still three centuries old……..

Moving on to the entrance gate of the Victoria Memorial, we got to know the “Light and Sound Show” was on! It’s a show of around 45 mins, which gives a brief history of the age-old Kolkata, with Light and Sound special effects!! We were lucky as the last show for the day was supposed to start in just a while. So got tickets for the show, and since we had some time to spend before the show started, we decided to hog more!! Got ice creams and Santosh got a soft drink. And entered the gardens outside the campus. Spent some time taking snaps and chitchatting and were inside the Victoria Memorial premises in time (that was 1945 hrs) to attend the show. The “Light and Sound Show” was far more interesting than what we had anticipated. With the seats arranged in a portico and a Silver Screen fixed at the left-hand side of the audience, we all were facing the Spectacular Monument, by the banks of the lake. The atmosphere was so calm and serene that one would not want to leave the place for anything!! The show went on for around 45 mins, taking us through the pages of History and the chapter of Kolkata which was then “Calcutta”, how the English discovered it and converted it into their colony and the age old culture and tradition of the city and all that and more… The whole show included slides and few motion pictures that were projected on the screen and few audio clips too.. The part of the monument that faced us was illuminated with fog lamps and fluorescent lights of various colors that kept changing according to the scenes described and provided the added special effects during the course of the show. All in all, the whole show was a really enlightening one and refreshed the history chapters to our rust filled brains!!

We were strictly instructed by Nilanjan to return home for the dinner and it was already half past 8 pm. So we guys had to hurry back home. Hired a taxi and all 4 reached home (we 3 and Romit, remember?). Had a nice time explaining the first day’s experiece to all at the dinner table. And when we reached the bedrooms, we had to first take bath and only then touch the beds, as we were sweating like hell..!! (wat a bloody humid place yaar!!!). Finally when we settled in the beds, there was no time gap between the lying down on the bed, the closing of the eyelids and the sleep enveloping us!!! We slept like dead logs…

The Pre-Sundarbans_Trip Happenings

Next day was gonna be a big one, and only bigger ones after that!! We had planned to leave for the Sundarbans the very day we reached Kolkata. But there were slight changes in the plans as there were two more people who wanted to join us to the “Trip to Sundarbans”, and they were to reach Kolkata only by Saturday morning. Kshitheesh and Vidya, both from Bangalore, reached Kolkata by the same flight that we guys had taken the previous day. Once they reached home, we insisted them to hurry up and get ready ASAP, so we could leave early. There was a slight problem. Everyone at Nilu’s place was quite skeptical about our trip to Sundarbans, somehow!! They were all worried since we guys would have to travel all by ourselves coz there was none to accompany us to the trip (including Romit, who also had backed-out!!). We guys dint know the place, dint know the people and more importantly dint know the Language too!!! This was gonna be a serious problem if we were to get into some kinda fix in the trip… After these warnings and slight fear, Kshitheesh and Vidya too backed-out!! We were waitin for them all along and …. Afsoos…… Nevertheless, we were still determined to carry on with the plans (only the 3 of us) until even I started getting a li’ll tensed by the situation…!!!! (wat the hell was wrong with me??!!). This made Ajith and Santosh go nuts on me!! Finally we decided and set out for the most awaited trip, in fact which turned out to be one of the most memorable trips of our life!!!

Kolkata Trip!!

The Departure

The mild vibration and the very much familiar tone of the alarm on my mobile disturbed my sound sleep, as I realized I had to pull myself out of the bed; else, we would miss the flight! Having packed all the necessary and not so necessary stuff, and managing to sleep for around two and half hours, I woke up at around 0230 hrs on 22^nd June 2007. Trying hard to keep my eyes open, I somehow freshened myself and woke Santosh up. As reluctant as a kid going to school, he finally got himself all set and we left home at around 0325 hrs.

One major task was to reach the Airport atleast 1 hr before the departure, which was at 0545 hrs. So, not taking any chances we hired an Auto and reached the HAL Airport, Bangalore at 0405 hrs. On the way, just to make sure that Ajith is also gonna make it in time to the Airport, I rang him up and he said he’s leavin in ten minutes, but actually sounded as if he’d just got up (bugger!!). He reached around 15 minutes after us and we pushed our luggage bags into the X-Ray Scanning Machine. Walked into the Airport Terminal for the First Time (guess all 3 of us for the first time), and headed towards the counter of the most economic Airlines Service providers – Air Deccan. After collecting the Boarding Pass and handing over the luggage, we had to go through the Security Check-in and then had almost 1 hr to spend before the flight would take off…! (We weren’t really too early, but since it was the wee hours of the dawn, the airport wasn’t crowded at all). At around 0530 hrs, the passangers of the flight DN636 were requested to board the bus at Gate #3. And like it would happen in any bus/railway station, people of all ages just darted towards the Gate!! We too managed to sneak in and got into the bus, which took us to the A320 parked beside the runway. Again, as expected, everyone started dashing towards the flight as soon as the bus reached to it and jumped into the seats of their choice, without even noticing the beautiful Airhostesses greeting them!! All this was because Air Deccan doesn’t mention any seat number on the boarding passes, and passangers are free to sit anywhere, among the seats meant for them. Having chosen the most appropriate seats, to the best of our senses, we settled down and were eagerly waiting for the Captain to announce that the flight was ready for take-off!!

Taxying through the various, quite bumpy paths, the Aircraft was at the fag end, facing the long stretched and thankfully smooth runway. All along this way, the Airhostess (definitely very pretty, I must agree :)) demonstrated how to fasten the seat belts and made sure all the passangers had done it. They also trained us on how a Life Jacket needs to be worn, in case of emergency landing (read falling!) on the water (sea/ocean!!). No sooner did the Captain announce that the plane was ready for take off, did the jets start roaring at the top of their lungs and the plane started moving at a speed, which I could compare to the Lightning speed..!! (li’ll exaggeration involved). And within seconds we were lifted off the ground. I was just so thrilled with this experience and looking out of the extremely small window when suddenly everything went blurr and thick white fog surrounded us. The skies in Bangalore and also around were not so friendly and we were into the clouds for quite a long time, throughout the journey.

Once the plane took off the runway and started it’s ascend, the lights were switched back on inside the aircraft and we were told that we could release the seat belts, but were requested to keep them on (which obviously no one did). And I experienced something quite strange; my ears would get blocked every couple of minutes and I would realize they are blocked only when I gulped something or cleared my throat and the ears again opened. This was, probably, because of the pressure difference in the atmosphere as we were ascending to higher altitude. Besides this, we experienced turbulence all the way till the plane ascended to a much higher altitude and the skies got a lot clearer. We got to know about the altitude that we reached only when the Flight Captain Mr. …. (I’m sorry, I forgot his name) announced the flight details, midway, that we were flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet above Metric Sea Level, to our left was the city Bhubaneshwar and to the right was Bay of Bengal. One interesting thing, which I was observing just as the captain made this announcement, was a very thin white crucked line way below us on the ground. Only then did I realize that it was the Eastern Coastal line of the Sub-continent!! And I will want to mention another interesting thing, which I observed – “All along the way I saw clear waters of the small rivers joining the Bay of Bengal. Both the river and the sea were very much blue and the water was clear. But as we crossed Bhubaneshwar, the rivers turned brown in color, muddy and dirty looking!! (No offence to anything or anyone, plz). And as we reached closer to Kolkata, even the sea turned the same…!! (To much of my surprise!!!).” At this point I would like to mention, one of our friends is from a place which lies somewhere in this stretch. Guys, you know who I’m referring to… :)

The remaining part of the journey was quite boring and uneventful (very sorry to say that!!), except for the “Landing at the Kolkata International Airport” part. This thing scared the shit out of us (atleast me)!! As we approached the Airport, the pilot had to taxi around for a while as the runway was not free/ready for landing. And finally when he got the green signal, he at once raced toward the runway, and started descending rapidly. We could see the land closing in below us and still the runway was not in picture! After a while the runway appeared right below us, but the plane still experienced turbulance and was trying to align properly for the “Safe Landing”. We were hardly a couple of hundred feet above the ground (or may be a li’ll more) and this dude was still struggling to align the damn plane along the runway!! Man, I had a feeling I won’t be able to have another flight experience after this… Ultimately, by Jove, the plane touched ground and he had managed to land us all ‘safely’!

As we collected the handbags and other stuff and stepped out of the flight, a “HEAT WAVE” hit us and I felt as if I were entering a Furnace or something!!! We thought this might be because of the sudden change in the temperature between the inside of the flight and the outside atmosphere, but we were wrong! This insane “HEAT WAVE” continued and remained till we boarded the flight again (for the return journey, a week later)!!! Trying hard to adapt to the insanely hot and humid weather of Kolkata, we sneaked through the crowd, got the luggage bags and headed towards the Exit. Nilanjan had called us immediately after we landed and informed that he would be waiting outside the Airport. And much to our surprise, he was there at the right time!! :) Stuffed in all our luggages into his car and hopped in and he drove us to his place, through the pretty clean streets to begin with, which later turned into narrow and dirty and crowded and then over-crowded and finally dangerously over-crowded streets!!! And there it was, the destination had arrived…..