Geography classes weren't typically my favourite. Could be because of my innate aversion to the subject or the teachers (or one particular teacher) who taught it. Nonetheless, of the little that I do recall of those classes, is the notion of a moderate climate (i.e, when summers aren't scorching hot and winters aren't morbidly cold) that Kolkata has, owing to its proximity to the Bay of Bengal (as water takes much longer to heat and cool than the land due to its high latent heat capacity). So growing up, winters would mostly be moderately chilling, as such a worn out school cardigan and skirts up to the knees wouldn't hurt (my male counterparts in school however may still whine about their shorts being too short even for Kolkata winter standards primarily because their socks couldn’t really bridge the gap). Fast forward to the last few years, courtesy of global warming the lowest recorded temperature in the city has even fallen down to as low as 9 degree Celsius (2013). Kolkata, therefore, officially experiences winters, for some years now.


But why am I prodding you to consider the climate of Kolkata? I’ll tell you why.

“I is the hardest word to define.”

In his Turtles All the Way Down, John Green penned down a line that encapsulated the truth of my life. After mulling over it for a few days, I had my Eureka moment, “Oh that explains why I sucked at writing bios!” That felt real good. That is also why I don’t have ‘favourites’: a person, a song, a movie or an animal. I’m just ‘ehhh’ when people have a definite answer for a ‘favourite’ something. I just know how certain places make me alive, a handful of people who bring me joy, songs which resound in me and food that calms my soul. All I’m saying is, all I know of is: how a certain something makes me feel. It is that little high that I care about, that little dose of serotonin-a feeling of something so pristine and precious.

In Ray’s last feature film, Agantuk, when the stranger in Anila’s house, captivates her son and his friends with his profound knowledge of the mysteries of Machu Picchu and the solar system (eclipse to be more specific), he rests against a huge banyan tree, while sitting on a carpet of unkempt green, as does his enthralled audience. As the viewer continues to harbor his suspension in this uninvited guest’s ways and his self-confessed nomadic lifestyle, this particular dialogue allows you to inch a little towards this stranger, makes you want to believe him. That has a lot to do with the setting of the conversation itself, a place known for a thing that is the lifeblood of Bengal, “Bangali’r monopoly”,“Bangali’r invention”: Adda! Adda: made in Bengal. A place that isn’t pretentious, flashy, extravagant, fancy or any of the things it happens to be the nucleus of. A place that modernization endeavours particularly didn’t meddle with, thus never making it exclusive. This one place in the city of joy which gives me that little joy, that little high: Maidan.

My discovery of Maidan was a fortunate accident that happened while we were waiting for the Sikkim House to open for lunch. It was in the December of my first year in college. All we wanted was a place to sit to kill time, for not in the slightest did we intend to head back to the high school of a college we’d managed to momentarily escape from. We walked towards a narrow lane, with high trees on both sides, which opened to this vast blanket of green, but not the bright watered/well-groomed green - a dusty one with elliptical boundaries, flanked by tiny looking yellow taxis and long yellow-blue state buses. On my left horizon was the grey of the flamboyant Victoria memorial smudged by the moist winter fog and on the right was the distant Vidyasagar Setu. The view, it seemed, was surreal given the lack-lustre nature of the ground.

So this is MAIDAN!

I gasped, still gaping at the horses casually strolling like their human counterparts, the mildly cool winds gently reminding me of their presence as an afternoon sun shined on my head. I was in a college that failed my expectations (thanks to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), was pursuing a subject that particularly didn’t excite me, made friends very unlike the ones I had in school. There I stood in that place, where the nearest human who was stretching it in front of me seemed like a dwarf to me, the enormity of that place, made me feel very small and my problems even smaller. We sat there for over an hour and indulged in what Rabi Ghosh in Ray’s words called “Adda. Nirbhyejal adda” (unadulterated intellectual discussions).One of the many firsts of my life. For it is a place, you’d love in solitude and in company, in the muddy monsoons and the sultry summers. However, I’d still hold my ground on nothing like Maidan in winter. Maidan in winters is that complementary good, which you have to enjoy with a bhnaar of lebu chaa and nirbhyejal adda marked by equally long silences. Yes, silences because “constant talking isn’t necessarily communication” (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004), no?

To the lazy in Bengali winters lend a sort of replenished fervor and I’m counting myself also on this one. It calls for ditching your groggy self from the comfort of your cushy bed to witness the dawn break and the trams searing through the winter fog- touring Kolkata while riding in one of the last vestiges of Calcutta. Beyond the self-hugging tendencies under the katha-balaposh (quilt) and fulkopi (cauliflower)-capsicum season, winters are about you consciously entering the vicious cycle of hibernation and feeling guilty but repeating the same regardless. You never get enough of tucking inside hand-knit sweaters of grandmothers and being indecisive about whether to leather-jacket or not? About how much is too much? About whether Christmas in Park Street or Park Street? Because unlike Santa bringing Christmas to the world, here in Kolkata it is Park Street that brings Santa to us. Christmas is Park Street. Park Street is Christmas 101. There is no 102.

It is funny when I think that people I’d discovered Maidan with or had my many firsts with are no longer a part of my life, but those conversations are, the camaraderie is, and so are the memories and will always be. For that unkempt tuft of grass (with no surrounding attractions or distractions whatsoever) was warm to me, even on the harshest of college days I’d survived and even when my people turned their coldest towards me. Maidan, for me, was never just the station I got down at for three years of my college life, but was a place that literally saw me through my best and my worst. Only when I moved on, did I realize how it became a part of me and of the city that resides in my very being!