I wouldn’t exchange growing up in Calcutta for anything in the world. The beauty of the city lies in the warmth of its people. They are simple people (in some countries ‘simple’ means stupid, but that’s not what I mean!) who have time for you. It’s partly because people don’t really work a lot in Calcutta but nonetheless, they always have time for you.
Our favourite public ‘holidays’ as children were the bandhs. A bandh was basically a strike during which no cars were allowed on the roads. On one such day, there was a procession of protesters on the road shouting ‘Cholbe na, cholbe na’. (This is unacceptable, this is unacceptable.) I asked one of the protesters, ‘Ki cholbe na?’ (What is unacceptable?) To which he promptly responded, ‘Jaani na, jaani na.’ (I don’t know, I don’t know.) Even in a communist state, a revolution was available for hire!
‘Our favourite public ‘holidays’ as children were the bandhs’ iStock
When I was a child, a bandh was like winning the lottery...only, no other lottery ever gives you the odds that make you a winner five times a year, and everyone wins! The schools were closed and the streets were an open playground for us. We would play cricket and football matches in the middle of the road. More importantly, we would get on our bicycles and ride to distant parts of the town because on a regular day, we were never allowed to go far. You see, the roads in Calcutta in the 1980s were incredibly unsafe. I used to joke in London that in England they drive on the left of the road and in Calcutta, we drive on what is left of the road!
For the longest time, there were no traffic lights in Calcutta. A policeman would control and direct the traffic at the crossings. I use the term ‘direct’ quite loosely because more often than not, drivers were only inclined to follow directions when left with no other choice. When the first traffic lights were installed at the crossing of Park Street and Chowringhee, they became a tourist attraction. People from all parts of the city came to see them. As more lights got installed, the traffic policemen continued to stand at street crossings and direct drivers to follow what the lights indicated. Obviously, nobody followed instructions. A red light in Calcutta was as exciting as a baseball game in America. If nobody was looking, you would steal a base. You see, nobody really believed in following rules. They were more like guidelines.
‘When the first traffic lights were installed at the crossing of Park Street and Chowringhee, they became a tourist attraction. People from all parts of the city came to see them’ iStock
Around this time, my friend Tushar Agarwal’s father was transferred to Mumbai, where he stole a base at a traffic light, as he had been doing all his life. The policeman shouted at him, ‘Idiot! Have you come from Calcutta?’ Tushar’s five-year-old brother shrieked in excitement, ‘Daddy, he knows us!’
Another friend of mine, Raju, was driving the wrong way down a one-way Park Street at night, drunk out of his skull, sometime around Christmas. The police sergeant pulled him over and started to pull out his pad to write a ticket. Raju then put forth his eloquent defence: ‘Sir. You are Bengali. I am Bengali. Please let me go. It’s Christmas.’ The sergeant, after reprimanding him, actually let him go without a ticket. That is, until Raju carried on driving the wrong way!
The only upside of learning to drive in Calcutta was that your reflexes as a driver were honed like a ninja’s because you had 360-degree awareness and were always prepared for an idiot to jump in front of your car from any direction. I remember how I laughed while taking a driving lesson in London to get my British driver’s license. The instructor pointed at a man forty yards away at a zebra crossing and said, ‘CJ, that’s a hazard’. How I would’ve loved to put him in a car on the streets of Calcutta on a Monday afternoon and ask him to demonstrate the correct way to do a three-point turn. In Calcutta, nothing is a hazard until after you’ve hit it!
‘The only upside of learning to drive in Calcutta was that your reflexes as a driver were honed like a ninja’s…’ TT archives
I drove a Maruti Gypsy in my college days in Calcutta. It was the car my father taught me how to drive in, in the back streets of the area that we lived in. In those days, you could either give a driving test or, for a small fee, have your driving license home delivered. I, however, chose to give my driving test (as I’d like to categorically state for legal reasons). My friend Chetan, a keen auto enthusiast, helped me make a few changes to my mini-SUV. (Side note: Chetan was very careful with his own cars but when he drove anyone else’s, it was like he was in a Formula One race in an indestructible monster truck. The car’s tyres were bound to lose a few years by the time he was done with it.)
The first major bit of work we did to the Gypsy was to put big rally-driving halogen lights in the front. The second thing we did was to remove the silencer from the exhaust and replace it with a one-box, so each time you accelerated, there would be a very loud noise. And the third thing we did was to replace the car’s horn with an old vintage car hooter that was loud beyond imagination. The lights and the hooter were sourced from Calcutta’s infamous chor bazaar, which literally means thieves’ market. It was where you went to buy stolen parts. Urban legend has it that a man in a Mercedes went to buy a hubcap for his car. The man who sold it to him stalled the buyer by telling him that his boy was going to get it from a room at the back. The boy, meanwhile, went to the buyer’s car, stole a hubcap off it, and sold it back to him. Such was the nature of chor bazaar.
Armed with my customised mean machine, my friends and I initiated a campaign that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been publicising in the recent past — Swachh Bharat (clean India). Late at night, we would drive down the by-lanes of Calcutta very slowly, with the lights off. The second we spotted a man urinating on the side of the road, our car would sneak up close to him and then, all at once, the bright halogen lights would focus on him, the silencer would roar, and the hooter would...hoot. Very loudly. We’ve had men running a 100m dash with penis in hand as the vehicle of death chased them down the road. I realise now it was a mean thing to do, but it was very funny for us at the time. And we were doing our civic duty by keeping pee off the walls.
Parts of this column appeared in the memoir, Naked by Papa CJ, published by Westland in 2019.