5. 6. 08

I am not in the mood to write a blog. I just got up from a cushy leather armchair after grabbing forty undeserved winks in it. Now I am consumed by too much holiday laziness to write more… hehe...


6. 6. 08

Finally I’m gonna write…

Day 1: A taste of ‘Dirty City’

Kolkata is rightly called the ‘Dirty City’ and ‘’The City of Joy’. I am staying in the ‘City of Joy’, where there’s plenty of towering trees, fresh air and very wide roads. Part of my first day was spent in the ‘Dirty City’, at a place called New Market. Noisy place with hawkers and shopkeepers giving strong competition for Pondy Bazaar wallahs. I had gone with the Aunty I am staying with. We went to a tailor shop on a lane stinking of mutton, beef and god knows what, located right near a huge mutton/beef/god knows what market. Am writing about this dirty smelly part so that when I really gotta let off steam sometime, I can crib about this. We also went to a couple of other shops that unfortunately were located at quite a distance from each other. To sum it up, New Market is a confusing place full of shops and crisscrossing walkways (on which we ended up having a good walk – a great substitute for a morning walk). But everything is an experience (am consoling myself, and trying to end on a cheerful note)!

In the evening we went to the church, spotted trams on the way, and clicked a nice pic of a tram.

Day 2: Yoo hoo

I went with Aunty and her son (my ‘bhai’) to the swanky, spacious South City mall, where we made small purchases and did a lot of window shopping (ah! The pleasure of it…). A really cool thing about the mall was the messages written on the doors of shops that hadn’t opened yet. Some examples are: ‘You guys will stare at anything’, ‘Patience, dude’ and ‘Sorry, we didn’t want to use funny messages like the other shops’. We had lunch and gelato at the mall (gelato was so yum. I should have had it before).

The evening was fun-filled too. After dropping Aunty at the church, bhai and me headed to a ‘shopping street’ with Westside and Vardhan Market (noise, gaudy clothes… you get the picture. But it was air-conditioned). First I got my bhai a nice tee shirt. Then we had some Kolkata chat (artful blend of spices and junk food for a more discerning palate, nothing like the messy but yummy Chennai ‘chat’ that I prefer). We then went to Vardhan market and did some roaming, following which we went to Westside and waited for Aunty to come. Bhai was checking out sunglasses after which we went around the ground floor. I was checking out clothes with no intention of buying anything (to curb my spending habit) and hopping from one rack to another on a far side of the room, right when a salesman turned up at the rack to help me. Then Aunty came and we headed to the first floor, where I bought a pretty pair of shoes (to add on to my growing collection – this was my fifth pair. Still my ma would object, because of my aforementioned spending habit). My bhai said I would have to face a ‘very strong woman’ at home. I spoke to that strong woman – obviously my ma, at night, and broke the news. She seemed ok with it. I guess she was expecting me to splurge on something on a trip. Now, if you think all this talk about spending was inconsequential, you don’t know what a big spender I used to be.

Day 3: Boo hoo

Kolkata’s gonna be the ‘Sleepy City’ today and tomorrow… now I don’t literally mean that, of course. These 2 days are bandh days. So I sat indoors, slept too much and read Cineblitz (which I’d hardly read before, and don’t consider a great read – its gossip and time pass cine news).