Presenting a new section to the readers : CalcuttaScape. It would be a guest column on One and a Half Minutes, in which published authors will write about their experiences on visits to Calcutta. I will be approaching non-resident authors who have visited for a vacation or stayed in Calcutta for a short while.

I know, dear readers, the first question cropping in your mind would be, why Calcutta? I’m not sure if I have a satisfactory answer for this one. It is my city, at times it has been my muse, it has been a companion in my early adult years, it has been a witness to a major part of my life. This is probably my way of paying a tribute to Calcutta, by bringing to you words flown from famous authors, on a city that never ceases to amaze.

The third article in this column is from Laxmi Haraharan, a Kindle bestselling author and blogger for Huffington Post.

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The Calcutta Comeuppance 

Image Source: ehttp://wordhavering.wordpress.com

Over the years my father has let small clues spill about his past. He lived in Calcutta when he was starting out on his career as a trainee bank officer. I pieced together a picture of the girl he had met here. One who loved to dance the twist and drink lots of cha. She was a widow, someone who flaunted societal rules to enjoy life. He had been enamoured with her but chose

to move on, knowing he wasn’t strong enough to face up to his family and society to marry her. At least that’s what he told me. When he speaks of her, I see the look of a man frozen at the crossroads of life from which he has never really moved and yet lived a lie. But leave he did. Then it was my turn to meet the city.

Calcutta had always seemed to be in a dimension apart. As if it were this planet existed on one plane and that exalted epitome of imagination on the other. Did I have enough soul to be accepted into its fold, I wondered as I walked through Park Street hand in hand with a man who was born in a street not too far away. He, whose parents met in this city fifty years earlier; they had been together since.

Turning up at Trinca’s—me in a kanjeevaram sari enroute to a wedding—we were ushered in past the rows of music lovers waiting patiently to the knee-bump-knee table. Perched on a narrow chair I could hear the ghost of Usha Uthup belting out to the crowd. Why does the past always seem timeless and the present difficult to pin down?

Image Source: http://washermansdog-ajnabi.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/usha-uthups-beautiful-sunday-original.html

Image Courtesy: Flickr

Mistaken for a foreign bou at the Indian Museum, being Lokhi at the family wedding, watching bemused as my husband wolfed down phuchkas on the street, meandering through the now defunct Oxford Bookstore, lunch at Flora’s (served by the waiter who would never leave but when it was time for the other world), haggling for Pashminas at the government showroom, culminating in gin & tonics at the Oberoi. I came a tourist, coming away with a way of life. It wasn’t the architecture or the experiences, nor any one person. It was the collective. There was power in the us here. It needed the us to create that net of support, where you could free think and be understood for what you expressed.

My comeuppance? Having a small shard of the soul of this city embedded in the person I spend my most waking hours with. My own private reservoir of inspiration to dip into whenever the adrenaline of the modern connected world proves too weary to hook into; for I am surrounded by a cat’s cradle of coincidences, all linked to this space.

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Image Courtesy: Author

Image Courtesy: Author

Laxmi Hariharan is akindle bestselling author, a blogger for Huffington Post and a perennial Young Adult – Old Soul. Find her at LAXMIwrites, @laxmi or on Facebook.

Here’s a sneak peek at her book cover, The Destiny of Shaitan.