Sunrise after the Storm

Day 15, Sep 15, 06: Kolkata:

Thursday was a normal day; same old, same old - work-food-sleep and Calcutta streets.

Friday posed an impending disaster. Rahul (my kid cousing brother) was inviting his friends over to spend the night for a musical extravaganza. The boys have just started playing music. Rahul on the drums and his best friend on the guitar kicked up quite a ruckus all night. I am trying to figure out the association with hard rock during teenage life. There seems to be some unwritten law somewhere in the process of growing up that says you have to go through the process of trying to form a band, growing long hair and just emulating all those tattoo ridden rockers if you want to score with the “chics”. Haven’t we all been there?

Anyway I was just wishing that I didn’t have to go to work on Saturday, but I had to. It was quite a boring day at work and I still managed to be there till evening.

I had to drop Kartik at Alipore. Some quiz thing he was trying to go to at IIM Joka. The guy seems to be overly fascinated with Quizzing. Suddenly I was excited. I remembered that the Nursery School I had gone to was in Alipore. As fate would have it, we turned into exactly the same lane (New Road) off Burdwan Road. Ah! I was going to see “Higgins” after 15 maybe 20 years. So after I dropped Kartik and eagerly approached the building that housed the school where I first learned how to speak, I was shocked to see an old dilapidated Building with a “FOR SALE” sign on the gate.

KOLKATA has changed. A flood of emotions and memories raced through my head. Flooding on Burdwan Road, Thums-Up factory near Budge-Budge, Transport Depot Road and the gurad tower at the back of the Factory where my father used to work, New Alipore and all the neighbours we used to trouble while playing hide-n-seek. I wish I had a gazzilion bucks and could buy the place, just to let the kids today know what it was like back then. But then it dawned on me. Mrs. Higgins, the grand old lady who used to run the place might have left us and with her an institution that etched the fate of many of us today. Good old HIGGINS.

Back home and the cacophony from the night before had taken its toll. I was ready to eat and call it a night. I hit the sack like a ton of bricks.