Year-end diary

This time I won’t write the usual travelogue, because I did not travel far, and did not visit any place remote and exciting – merely Puri, along with literally tens of thousands of other Bengalis – and lazed a great deal for a few heavenly work-and worry-free days in Kolkata. Let me instead just jot down a few random impressions.

I arrived in Puri by train for the second time in my life after a gap of exactly forty years. Same train, same snail's pace in the last single-track stretch as it was back in 1969! At the beach, the sand was warm but the water cold, except briefly at midday. The sea and the beach, alas, are getting visibly more polluted every year. The hotel we stayed in, upmarket but not posh, served pretty good food. I wish, though, that boarders would stop shouting all the time and at all hours of day and night in hotel corridors – about absolutely private matters, too. If only this country learnt a few good manners… And the sight of an open and busy crematorium right in the heart of a throbbing marketplace was something to remember for the sheer disturbing incongruity of it. The drive to Chillika lake and the three-hour boat ride was pleasant, and we saw dolphins frolicking and people selling pearls which they were taking out of live oysters (though I do suspect some sleight of hand there), but hardly anything of the fabled flocks of migratory birds, hard luck. The locals are gentle souls, though they sound like they are fighting when they are chatting heartily among themselves. Cars are still definitely much cheaper to hire than in tourist spots in western and northern India. I noticed that the gentleman from whom we rented the car, and who apparently owns seven or eight of them, is basically a private tutor just like myself – I fleetingly wished Durgapur were a tourist hotspot! We were granted darshan by the lord of the world without suffering a stampede, crowded though the temple precincts were (and much more heavily guarded than before).

One big bonus was meeting an old boy, Anirvan Choudhury – ICSE 1991 batch – who works in Bhuvaneshwar and came over all the way with his mother in tow to see us. We spent a very happy Christmas afternoon chatting in the sun, re-living olden times. Nothing gratifies me more than meeting ex-students who have such obviously rich and grateful memories, and who have grown up to be such decent and cultured human beings. I wish his whole family long lives, health and happiness, and hope to meet them again and again, especially the delightful little daughter of his, whom we missed this time round because she was too ill to travel.

On the trip back to Kolkata, I wished, for once, that the train had been late. I hate to get up and going at daybreak, and that too in cold weather: Kolkata had become unusually chilly in the few days we had been away. I spent a large part of my time eating heartily, sleeping, dozing in the sun and watching TV, a routine I cannot afford for 340 days a year. Also, meeting some people I had badly wanted to meet, and having very nice experiences, except for one … but then, you win some and you lose some, and I hadn’t expected much better anyway, knowing the sort of person I was trying one last time to build bridges with. Then there were all sorts of chores, like collecting a prize for something my daughter had written for a newspaper, and getting tooth cavities filled, and airing the new house, the sort of stuff nobody wants to read about, I’m sure.

We spent New Year’s Day lunching out with a family of very good friends. The next morning we came back to Durgapur. I fear for my daughter's future, because the moment we were back she said ‘There’s no place like home’. And it is wonderfully cold here, so though I am back to the old grind already, I am enjoying myself still, especially while the sun is bright and warm and when it’s time to snuggle inside the blankets, and I hope to God that this absolutely lovely spell lasts a while yet. If only there hadn’t been so much coal dust in the air, I could have been living in heaven.