Aashi

Ashi, Kolkata. M. and I leave today after our brief visit. The afternoon sounds filter in through open windows - a crow cawing insistently, a car's engine turning, sparrows and mynahs chirping. Somewhere in the distance, a politician rides around in a cycle rickshaw with a megaphone, declaiming to his constituency. I've always loved this time of the day in Kolkata when the bright sunlight gets trapped in the mellow filters of my mother's curtains to make everything glow, even the grime of the city looks less obnoxious when viewed through this lens. The Kolkata light was captured best (albeit romantically) by Pradeep Sarkar in Parineeta (I've linked to the video, and if that video is removed, there's always Wikipedia).

So until next time, Kolkata. We enjoyed the weather this time - warm but not uncomfortably so, like late spring in Fairfield County, and the occasional need for a ceiling fan during the mandatory afternoon siesta. Next time we visit, the city will be in a different mood altogether, when the blazing heat and unsparing humidity of summer drives everyone indoors. And then we will lie gasping, breathless, reeling from the hard blows of a Kolkata summer, but lured back again, inevitably, to the City of Joy.