The Players

KB was feeling not so great and I wanted desperately to be out of the house last Sunday evening. We were both restless and was looking for some place which will help us calm our insides. KB said that we could go to Shibpur Botanical Gardens. We got on a cab and requested him to drop us off at Babughat. He instead dropped us off at Princep Ghat. From Princep Ghat we walked with the intention of reaching Babughat on foot. The banks of the river from Princep Ghat till Outram Ghat have recently been paved as part of the Ganga Beautification project. It is a commendable project and I think it needs to be applauded. Anyways so we went about asking people from where we can get a Ferry to Botanical Gardens. One very nice gentleman informed us that the Ferries do not ferry on Sundays.I wanted to watch the sunset at the least but KB does not like beautification. To her it is artificial and not organic enough. She then pleaded and proded me till I agreed to go to Bagbazar. We got on another cab and he took us to Bagbazar through these roads I have never been before. It is lined with palatial houses standing solemnly holding secrets, tall and grand even in their state of ruin. We finally get off at Bagbazar. The roads are narrow here and the river broad. The narrow lanes are lined with temples dedicated to different Gods. We went and sat and gazed at the river for hours. After the sun set we got up and walked to a road-side tea-shop. We ordered quintessential "dim toast" ( omelette wrapped bread). It was delicious. There were four boys playing cards sitting their on the cemented seats beside the river. This place is all lit up and we decided to sit and eat there.

Usually, the general reaction of most women (including mine) would be to avoid a group of boys just sitting and playing cards. I soon found out they were playing Call Bridge. We could hear bits and pieces of slangs floating our way as well. But they were talking among themselves and were totally absorbed in their game. I wanted to talk with them. One way to let go of my reservations and secondly was to humanize the female species to these boys too. I seriously doubt if any other women have approached them like this.

I started by telling them that I would like to take their picture and I will put it up on line. One of the boys, whose name I later learned to be Subroto simply got up and left. He was initially vehemently opposed to have his picture taken. He was telling the rest of the group that he might get into trouble with his parents later. I decided to ask my ultimate question to him, then and there.

I am trying to capture the snippet of conversation here but it is difficult because everyone was talking and cross talking. 

• NAME : Vivek , Mohit , Anirban , Subroto.
• AGE : 21 , 17 ,  19 and 22 respectively.
• LOCATION : Bagbazar Ghat.
• PROFESSION : Commerce Students.

Me : So what's your name ?

V : Vivek.

Me : How old are you?

V : 22.

Me (in an incredulous tone) : Seriously?

V : Not really I am 21 +.

Me : You are hardly 15 or maybe 16.

V : No I am 21.

M : He is telling the truth. He studies is 3rd year of college.

Me to KB : I have found my soul brother.

KB asks V :  How old do you think she is ?

V looks me up and down and stares at my eyes and guesses me to be about 6 years younger than my age. At this point KB looks at me and says in what she believes is a soothing tone, " Atleast he did not call you 15" .

Me : So what do you do V:

V : I study Accounts Honors. 

Me : So why do you come here to play? Why cards and why this place? How often do you play ?

All of them gives a collective reply which summarizes to that this place is convenient since all of them live nearby. And they gather at that point every Sunday.

V: I live just a little further away.

Me : Where ?

V : Rajarhat near CC2.

Me : It is not a little far away. It is  very far away.

V : Yes. It takes me an hour to get here. My parents think I have come to collect notes.

At this point I give him a very meaningful look as to I know all about class bunking and going off with friends( which I actually don't).

V : Are you a journalist?

Me : Absolutely not !

V : Why are you doing this ?

Me : A social experiment. (And I try to describe my intention behind this.)

V  : You are doing this voluntarily and you are not getting paid.

Me : Yes you are right.

V : So how old are you exactly ?

At this point I turn my attention to M.

Me : So what's your name?

M : Mohit.

Me : How old are you?

M : 17

Me : You are still in school !

M ( a little shyly) : Yes

Me : So what do you want to do when you grow up? Have you ever thought of making cards your profession ?

M (laughs at the degree of ridiculousness of my question) : No. My passion is guitar. I want to make that my profession. I also want to travel like a Hippie.

This was a strange answer. Something I did not expect:

Me : Why a Hippie ? What is the difference between travelling normally and like a hippie ?

M : I will have no responsibilities. No family ties, no liabilities and I will be free like a bird.

At this point KB asks M : Do you know any hippies ?

M : No, I have read about them.

V : He knows me. Every Sunday I travel from Rajarhat just to play. I have turned into a Hippie.

We all have a good hearty laugh on his comment.

Me : Is that what you want to do after you finish school ? Travel the world.

M : No I want to get a job in a call centre.

I was again surprised with this answer. At this point one of the guys got very irritated and said rathar harshly that he has to leave. If they are not playing then he does not want to hang around. So I obviously go and start bugging him more !

Me : What is your name and how old are you?

A : Anirban. I am 19 .

Me : Dont you feel cold? He was just wearing shorts and a tee and the temperature was about 12 C.

A ( a little flabbergasted) : Not much.

Me : Why are you so irritated ?

A : They are not concentrating and I am in a hurry.

Me :Or is it because that someone strange girl had descended on you and asking you absurd questions and ruining your game ?

A ( a little embarrassed) : No not at all. Actually we have "KaliPujo Bhasan" today. "Poush-kali."

Me : Oh ! So you will be coming back to this ghat ?

A : No we submerge the idols in Babu Ghat every year. 

Me : So you don't think that playing cards is bad, like your friend. ( I look pointedly at S). You are not running away because you are doing something you think you should not?

At this point S jumps in, because he knows that I said what I said because of his comment.

S : It is not that playing cards is bad. But our parents will not approve. They will get upset and fight as to why we came here to play cards.

A then adds : I play cards with my brother inside our house. So playing cards is not the problem.

Me : So is the place a problem ? Also what is your name and how old are you?

S : Subroto and I am 22.

Me : You study commerce as well ?

S: Yes

Me : So tell me what is wrong with this place? It is beautiful with the Ganga flowing by. It has all these cemented chairs. It is a comfortable place to come and hang. So much better than any malls in the city.

S : But the automatic assumption of people is that since boys meet here and play then something wrong must be happening. They must be into gambling and drugs. And this is something that you cant really exlain to parents.

At this point V played a bad hand and everyone had a heated argument and it was over in like 5 minutes.They gave up on their game and KB and me ended up having a adda session with them, panning their ideas and experiences and our ideas and experiences, from philosophy to human behaviour to social evils to what is happening in our city. In the middle of our discussion, a group of men around the age of 30 came and occupied another spot and started playing cards. They were getting rather irritated and expressing it. I have a suspicion, it maybe was because we were not paying any attention to them whatsoever and not because they were actually getting disturbed.

I will like to end this really long post with two quotes that stayed with me.

The first one from V. The only boy who unlike the other three did  not grow up beside the river. "Ganga is our guest. She keeps on moving but thankfully never leaves."

The second one from M. The 17 year old school boy who wants to travel the world like a hippie, and has no idea that a call centre job will crush his free bird spirit. " What we see all around us right now, is someone's imagination. A hallucination. And when this hallucination fades away, we as humans will not know how to cope. We will all be broken."

ABCD and Vishnu

I had grand Christmas Eve plans. As I have mentioned before I plan things way before hand. True to my nature I planned for this night for weeks. True to the way things have been with me over the past couple of years my plans had plans of not behaving according to my plans. For those of you who are not Sheldon, my plan bombed, badly and my Christmas Eve plan did end being grand. A grand failure.

Furious and disappointed at the same I decided not to make any Christmas plans. My friend KB called me me up and asked if I would want to go play badminton. One of my other friends SB decided to join us as well. We went to this park near Lake Gardens and started playing. Soon two kids came and at first stood patiently beside us. Then the older kid showed his interest and asked us very politely if he could please play with us. And this is how I was introduced to Vishnu and Nishant aka ABCD.

• Name :  Vishnu and Nishant aka ABCD.
• Age : 8 and 10 respectively.
• Profession : Student of Class II and IV respectively.    
• Location : Lake Gardens Park.       
• Ethnicity : Originally from Bihar. Atleast their parents are.   

They are brothers and little Vishnu idolizes his brother. For some reason I started calling Nishant, ABCD. And the name stuck. 

After we gave ABCD the racket, he very graciously said that he is willing to play in the format of a game. Now this game has several convoluted rules which we came to know as and when the game progressed. The rules were also quite difficult to keep track of because they kept on changing so often. First when my partner dropped the shuttle he shouted "OUT" and came and took hold of the racket. The first time his shuttle dropped he said that there was a "TOUCH" which basically means that the racket touched the shuttle before it dropped. So then he obviously cannot be "OUT" and he said it with a pretty indignant tone.

The next time his shuttle dropped he said that this was "NO PLAY" and hence is is not "OUT" obviously. "NO PLAY" means that he did not make an attempt to hit the shuttle. After much coaxing and shouting and screaming and finger pointing he finally admitted that he infact was "OUT" and handed the racket to my friend. I started playing with my friend and we were having a long rally. At this point he got rather irritated with us and informed us that we will both get "OUT" now, because the way we were playing was so obviously a case of "NO TRY" .In layman terms we were not trying to even get the other one "OUT."  

While I was trying to win my racket back in a tug-of-war match with ABCD suddenly an aeroplane was visible. ABCD and Vishnu left the racket and then just as the plane was above their head threw handful of dust at it. They were sure that when the dust reaches the place their wishes will come true. They were sure that the dust will definitely reach the plane. 

As the two boys waved us goodbye from their swings after we were done for the day, I felt this inner sense of satisfaction. It was an unexpectedly well spent Christmas. Thank you ABCD and Vishnu.

Avijit and Biswajit

It is 21st December. Park Street is all decked up in carnival finery. Me and my friends were walking down towards Allen Park when I spot these two guys They were standing in front of Veda. They caught my eye because they seemed to be silently observing everyone. As if there is some secret known to only the two of them.

Two homo sapiens of the XY chromosomal variety had already said no to me. So needless to say I was quite nervous. I have also been getting suspicious glances because I have been telling my friends that " I need a man for my project." or " I need to use a man for my project." What I meant was that after two lovely women, I wanted to feature a man's perspective of things.

• Name : Avijit
• AGE : 30
• PROFESSION : Kolkata Police Person
• Ethnicity : Bengali

Me : Tell me something funny that you might have encountered in your work ?

A : There is nothing funny in my line of work. It is always dangerous.

Me : There is nothing funny ??

A : No.Nothing. It is always serious.

Me : What extra measure is Kolkata Police taking for the safety of women during the carnival ?

A : There are police posts at regular intervals

Me : Is there a reason that you are not in police gear ?

A : What can I say? I am not allowed to say it. [ At this point I am thinking that if he is in plain clothes to be undercover why did he divulge his actual profession? ]

Me : What is the one thing being in the police force has taught you?

A : I really cant tell you.

Me : Random Life Experience ?

A : I don't really think of life so much !

Me : Do you think about Death then ?

A : (In a really surprised and shocked tone) Death ?

After this I stopped asking A questions rather disappointed. It was clear that I will not get anything interesting out of him. And he had so much potential. He could have been a goldmine of interesting shocking unbelievable tales.

• NAME : Biswajit
• AGE : 30
• PROFESSION : Senior Bartender
• ETHNICITY : Bengali

Me :   So you have an unconventional job ? Why did you choose this job ? And you don't have anything confidential so if you can please tell me.
B : I have always wanted to do this. I studied Hotel management and then joined this job . This is such a happy job . This is like Happy Hours all the time. When the bartender is happy, the guests are happy.
Me :   So tell me something fun that has been happening ?
B : The fact that a novel idea such as the winter carnival is happening in Kolkata is fun. The reason behind this is Karan Paul and Apeejay Group, owner of Park Hotel. This is his initiative. The place brightens up with youngsters coming here to enjoy themselves. I enjoy seeing them enjoy.
Me : You know how we see in movies, some dude gets extremely drunk and then pours his heart out to the bartender. Has something like that happened to you?
At this point A chimes in that if anyone tried that with him he would have taken the poor soul to jail. To which I reply, that is why no one will tell him.
B : I had this guest and every night he would come down to drink at the bar with his girlfriend. After he would get drunk he would suddenly realize that his girlfriend is nowhere to be spotted. The girlfriend would already have gone away with someone else.
Me : Tell me something, some unexpected incident that has happened with you ?
At this point A chimes in , " You doing this, talking to us is unexpected. This has never happened before. "

Rajshree

• NAME : Rajshree
• AGE : 26
• PROFESSION : Corporate Employee
• ETHNICITY : Bengali
• LOCATION : V9 Bus from Tollygaunge to Bengal Unitech Part.

This really pretty girl dressed completely in black was sitting calmly in a bus putting dark red nail polish on with so much grace, composure and poise that I could not stop staring at her. She was completely concentrated on painting her nails. I gathered up all my courage and sacrificing my relatively comfortable standing point, I approached her. I asked her if I could take her picture. She nodded yes without even looking up from painting her nails. I took her picture and waited for her to finish. I would have loved to record her voice but the radio in the bus was blaring at the highest possible volume. Here are snippets of our conversation.

Me : Do you do this often ? Like paint nails in the bus.

Girl : Yes. I do spend an awful lot of time on these buses.

Me : How long ?

Girl: Atleast 3 hours each day, one and a half hours for each trip to office. Sometimes I wish I had a car. I could do more personal things while traveling to office.

ME : Tell me something that you like or not like about these bus journeys ?

Girl : Well these A.C. buses are fancy but they do not have reserved seats for the handicapped or the senior citizens. And it is very difficult to stand in these buses since they move so fast. I have noticed that no one gets up to offer their seats to the elderly anymore. But I do. I don't know why ? Just do,

At this point the bus applied the brakes a bit too forcibly and I realized that it prudent now to hold on to something instead of  breaking pretty girls's and my neck by falling on them face flat, while talking with them.

MEERA G

• NAME : Meera Ghosh
• AGE : 80
• PROFESSION : Homemaker all her life
• ETHNICITY : Bengali
• PLACE : Lake Gardens 

She was alone and was crossing the road and the way she slowly, calmly but firmly crossed the road caught my attention. I am one of those people who never know when to cross the road and end up running the last few steps.

I approached her and said my stereotypical, tentative "Hi". She replied back with a very smart "Hi". So I explained to her what I was trying to do. And she told me that she does something quite similar. She writes down notes about people she meets or encounters or even reads about and then mails them to her son in Delhi. I asked her if she goes out every morning and she replied yes for morning walk cum day to day shopping. She appeared very strong and independent for a woman of 80. I then asked her to say something which might be trivial but had an impact on her. She got a faraway look in her eyes and then asked me if I would like to come to her home. I readily agreed because it would mean I could record her voice too. Once in her house she told me about a dog she named Mamata. 

This was an incident that had happened a long time back when she used to live in Salkia. She was standing on the roof of her house when she saw two dogs approaching around 6 PM. One of them was visibly very sick and the other one seemed to be guarding it. The ailing dog came and fell asleep in front of her door.  At around 8 PM she got up on the roof again. She saw that the other dog had gotten some food for the dying dog and was trying to nuzzle the dying dog into eating. The dying dog had no energy and did not eat. Seeing this Meera went down again. At around 10:30 PM she heard a loud wailing noise from the other dog. She went up and saw that the dying dog was still lying there and the other dog was keeping it guard. The next morning the municipality people came and removed the dead dog from their doorstep. They told her that the dog probably had died around 10:30 PM the previous night. After that the other dog whom Meera named Mamata left as well never to be seen again.

I am uploading the story in Meera's voice. It is in Bangla.


At the end of the interview, I was thanking her profusely since she happened to be the first person who talked with me. Not only that , she even invited me to her home . She thanked me back instead.

Me.

I am a very ordinary girl. I yearn for an ordinary and boring life. I hear this from everyone around me. That they are so ordinary. But I believe every ordinary person has some extraordinary story, an extraordinary perspective, some extraordinary revelation.

I live in Kolkata. Always have and plan to for the rest of my mortal life. I love this city. I have loved and lost and found myself in this city over and over again. I am also a loner. I am very shy and find it difficult to interact with people in a social circle.

I also am a planner. I had my life all planned out. But then in 2012 October, life threw me so many lemons that I did not know how to cope with it. But I did cope with it by buying a really large bottle of tequila. ;D .

Then very recently a friend introduced me to "Humans of New York". 

And then I decided to do this social experiment of going up to people and asking them anything they would want to tell me. It might also get me out of my shell of super shyness and in the process I might get some fabulous stories. This, I guess is more for me, than for anyone else.

Now to some statistics. As per provisional reports of Census India, population of Kolkata in 2011 was 4,486,679; of which male and female were 2,362,662 and 2,124,017 respectively. Although Kolkata city had population of 4,486,679; its urban / metropolitan population was 14,112,536 of which 7,319,682 were males and 6,792,854 were females. I think it is safe to assume that the number has only increased. 

So it should be easy to find people in this city right. They are everywhere. But I am finding out that it is extremely difficult to actually do this. Firstly the obstacle is me and my shyness. It is a process of several hours worth of internal conversation to overcome it and go upto people with this bizzare request. Secondly most people just look at me very suspiciously. I am honest and I tell them that I am going to put their pictures up on the internet. This makes them even more suspicious and to good measures I am sure.

But still, I am going to do this. This crazy bizzare project. All I have is my Samsung Galaxy Y Phone and that seems to be pretty much all I need right now.

Here is wishing a very inarticulate me "luck".