It appeared to be a frenzied amorous outing of an entire city. Every inch of the stone benches that lined the walkway were taken. Every tree trunk had backs resting against them. There was the stamp of feet on every blade of grass and there was a twitter beneath each bough. Instead of a cool waft of breeze, it seemed a humid air rose from the still sheets of water. Light was sinking in the sultry sky forming lazy silhouettes. I wondered how could a bustling metropolis offer such unsullied leisure in the middle of a week?
It was not the lines of Tagore that came to mind, but of Neruda:
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The radiant summer leads the loved ones
in uniform melancholy regiments,
made of fat and skinny and happy and sad couples:
beneath the elegant coconut trees, next to the ocean and the moon,
there is a continous life of trousers and skirts,
a rustle of stroked silk stockings,
and feminine breasts that shine like eyes.
Perhaps 'melancholy' is the only word that needs to be replaced with a slightly cheerful term to get closer to the mood that evening at Rabindra Sarobar in south Kolkata; the rest, of course, can be easily localised.
Love or romance usually concocts a solitary environment. It longs for cozy confines where the rest of humanity is banished. It is always a corner table and a candlelight. A glow that is just sufficient to light up two faces. But here it was just the opposite. Each couple found enormous privacy in the spaces that their two bodies marked on the benches. They were in tight freezes of embrace. Rodin never scultped such embraces in stone. They did not move and the world around them did not move. They were engrossed, cent per cent. Their eyes didn't register the swarms of people, but imagined solitariness by looking up at the azure vault. It was themselves and the clean unpopulated clouds. On each bench you saw at least four such couple, some young, some middle-aged, their backs rubbing the other's partner. Some others encircled the trunks of trees or sat in straight lines facing the lake. Never mind the mild stink of the locked waters and the ripples of squalour washing ashore.
On some benches there was a greater surprise. Old men or women or aged couple with their barking pets punctuated the embracing freezes. They sat vacuous, perhaps knitting a time past; or trying to wash away melancholy in the company of life's new hopefuls. Every minute, streams of people entered the park, surged ahead chatting on the walkway, walked past these rapturous freezes to reach Ramakrishna Mission or Golpark or Gariahat at the other end, but they weren't in the least voyeurs. The hawkers made a shrill pitch for their ware, they sat at the feet of the freezes. The beggars too spread their tattered mats there. Yet, nothing would penetrate the fortress created by their two pairs of arms around each others body-shrine. Only such worshipful trance could cancel out the throbbing noise of the world. A statistically-oriented friend accompanying me counted about 73 pairs in a small distance that we walked. Now tell me, does this tell us something about the culture and the people in Kolkata? Would any such thing be possible in any other city of India without the moral police descending to hound? Can this lake and its banks be a metaphor for the city?
Contrast all of this with the sanitised environs of the Sankey tank in north Bangalore, around which I walk each morning. Neatly laid out lake-park. Manicured lawns with exotic plants. Cemented walkways. Toilets with glazed tiles and attendants to keep them clean. The watchful eyes of the security guards. A huge board with a set of instructions:'You'll be fined if you step on the lawns'; 'You can't take plastic bags or bottles inside'; 'You can't take your pets inside' etc. People, even if they come in pairs, learn to walk alone the moment they enter the park. Those who come alone, use their i-pods to grow deaf to the world around. People who walk in groups have a strange discipline that puts to shame the gregariousness of a mob. The young women whose eyes you can never reach ensure their oomph is intact within their body-hugging track wear. They don't sweat and so their make-up does not run down like rivulets. The walkways are as smooth as the ramp anyway. Some other naturalists come with their binoculars to watch migratory birds that sit in the ancient corner of the park. There is a yoga and 'pranayama' corner too. The jog or the stroll here is not about pleasure and leisure, but strictly about health and learning. Its about bags of clean air, burnt calories and weight loss. In fact the hawkers lined outside are peculiar too. They offer you green papayas as you walk out. Thankfully they don't carry placards that preach you about how proteolytic enzymes in the fruit that help digestion. They also offer juice of neem and bitter gourd.
Let's now turn to benches with backrests. They are a story by themselves. They are cold and mostly empty. But what they carry are boldly painted moral instructions: 'Don't display your love in public.' 'Maintain your dignity.' 'Maintain our culture.' 'Obscene behaviour is punishable by law' etc. Since the benches face the lake, if people are seated on them, these warnings appear pasted on their backs. That's the insult and punishment you have to bear for warming those dead benches. And what is ridiculously true is that there is a committee, of humourless middle class citizens perhaps, to oversee the upkeep of the park. I have seen a couple of them walk around with prying eyes. I haven't seen anybody protest against these insulting statements, for that matter neither have I. I have simply become indifferent to their existence.
And how does this hold a mirror to what my city is or has become? Does Kolkata represent human vagaries and Bangalore a variety of technolgical precision? What set of ideas controls our lives here and their lives there? What set of conclusions can we reach with this line of thinking? Is it fair to say that what I saw in Kolkata a week ago was a culture shock? Is it a statement on the political systems that these two cities and the states that hold them have nurtured over the years? Will Kolkata too change? Should it change?
