Auto Ban – Breathe Fresh

The sudden surge of the anti auto-rickshaw campaign, courtesy, Kolkata High Court, has given the city and its denizens another new issue to talk about. This subject, however, connects to the endangered welfare of the ecosystem and so deserves special mention and discussion as well.

Surprisingly, it took unexpectedly long to enforce the law of taking illegally running autos off from the city roads. Amidst clouds of polluted black air spewing out from the tailpipe of the three wheelers, thanks to the kaata tel funda, I feel my metabolic system being nastily overturned whenever I encounter one of those monster vehicles and what with older people of my parents' age! Myopics are gifted with several more layers of smoky dust, weak-hearts get blood pressure surges, chronic lung patients and dust allergies cough a lot more and even the most robust of mortals see a marked decline in their overall health system.

Had the West Bengal Government been a bit more cautious about their duties and responsibilities, there could have been much cleaner air to breathe in this city. Having abetted the plying of illegal autos (be it two stroke or five sitters or kaata tel feeders) for over two decades, the ruling party has encouraged outlawry, air pollution and a rise in physical maladies. This is an earnest plea to the government : wake up and take the blame on yourself and act accordingly to make the already dying city a better place to breathe in. Now!

Visit to the South City Mall

I know I should have visited this awesome shopping plaza named South City Mall at Anwar Shah Road, Kolkata, much earlier, but for my job, home and not to mention my famous lackadaisical me replicating the true spirit of my dear city held me from doing so for so long.

Well, thanks to my bro who had come down from London for a vacation, that I was literally pulled out of my room to this massive piece of extravagance. As I stepped into the mall I stammered to measure its hugeness, most of it lying in my blind spot. Getting into it was even breathtaking...Huge is a derogatory word perhaps - the ground floor spread across several square meters and the floors above held similar opulence to the core. The Christmas tree added zing to the scene as it was around the winter festival.

Having had rounds of the exclusive showrooms of Marks and Spencer, Next, Pantaloons, Shopper's Stop and many such houses of stunning salable items was really great. My bro even picked a bagful of goodies for me and we shared some good laughs over a cup of coffee and cake as well at the cafe upstairs. But while checking out of the mall the sorry faces of a few street urchins begging along the mall area was not all that entertaining. Wish the new year, 2009, strives towards a better effort on our part to narrow the gap between the rich and the broke.

Phuchka - the Ball of Fire

Guys, you have got to believe this. I made Sara have her first run of phuchkas in one of the by-lanes of Kolkata, India. Hang on, this is something I will gradually unfurl and you will suck in bit by bit to have a hell of a time laughing for the next twenty five minutes.

Sara, my American friend through a chatting site, happened to visit India a few days ago and for obvious reasons, dropped in at my place to have a good round of this communist kingdom.

So much for the phuchka episode...A good six feet tall, Sara looked awful beside my diminutive magnitude of a bare five feet in front of the hugely built mustachioed potbellied phuchka vendor along Vivekananda Park. The scene in itself was hilarious as ever, but more was to follow.

The boss of the situation as I was, I ordered some five of those roly-poly crispy covered spicy stuffed balls of semolina for each of us. As the first ball of fire dipped in tamarind water crawled into Sara's mouth, to our amazement and her woe, briny waters began rolling down her cheeks – Sara was crying. Guess what! Touched by her comic gloom, the phuchka vendor offered her some sugared phuchka balls, sans the filling of spicy mashed potato and she loved it. Or should I say she was relieved! But something in those little little globules of fire must have allured her so that she proposed another round of phuchka gobbling session before leaving for the US.