Visit to Kolkata

The last weekend I had the opportunity to visit Kolkata to attend a friend’s wedding. It was after a year and half that I was visiting the city again and I was nostalgic about almost everything.. right from the roads to various locations and on seeing my friends. It was absolutely great meeting friends after such a long time. However the morning was spent visiting my in-laws relatives in Kol. They are pretty nice people and it was good to spend some time with them. Just that they fed me too much for breakfast starting for chips, dry fruits to paratha’s, sabji etc. It was just too much for me to handle at 10:30am in the morning after eating mysore masala dosa and wadas in the flight. I left their home at 11:30 or so and then headed to meet my friend Zoohie at her house. I was staying at her house.

It was so good to see her after such a long time. It was even more awesome to see her son Parth who has grown so much since I last saw him. I played with Parth in the meanwhile Chaitali, Arindam, Indranil and Sudha also arrived. I was feeling so good that I was meeting with my team members with whom I had worked 18 months ago. It felt good and bad to know how they were doing in their personal and professional lives. In a way, I do feel somewhat responsible for the situation they are in currently in their professional lives. I wish I had done some things differently. Zoohie had prepared delicious biryani which we all enjoyed while discussing our lives, interspersed with movie songs and who is the hottest actress currently etc. After speaking with everyone for sometime Arindam, Indranil & Sudha decided to leave, while rest of us decided to head to City Center to get a gift for my friend who was getting married. We got her a couple of things from City Center and had dinner there and returned home. I was dead exhausted when I reached home and just went to sleep while Chaitali and Zoohie chit chatted.

Day 2

The next morning me and Zoohie had to go Priyanka’s house to attend her wedding function, while Chaitali was at home and we asked her to stay back saying we would be back in an hour. It was a typical Punjabi wedding function where the bride was gifted with bangles and “kalires”. I was the camera man and thank god for that else I would have got really bored with so many unknown people. I think people become more friendly when they see someone clicking snaps. The function was good. At one point Priyanka and Zoohie were crying together.. the whole scene was very moving. The ceremony took longer than we anticipated and at one point we wanted to skip lunch so that we could return back and be with Chaitali who was waiting for us. However, we did have lunch and left for home. We reached home and left again for Mani Square mall in another 30 mins. The mall is huge. It had started in a few days after I had left Kolkata for good. We spent some time there and decided to leave since we had to attend Priyanka’s wedding. I bid good bye to Chaitali as she left for home.

We reached home and changed into the wedding “costumes” and headed to Calcutta Boating Club. The venue was awesome, open ground next to water, though I felt the stage could have been bigger and grander. But then it was good and thats what it matters. We greeted the bride and the groom and then went about speaking to the bride’s relatives. The dinner was sumptuous and there were a lot of different food varieties, chinese, italian, chaat, amritsari etc. The desserts included jalebi, carrot halwa, malpua, baked rossogollas and ice cream. We thoroughly enjoyed the dinner and then spent quite some talking to the bride’s relatives. It felt very strange and good sharing so many things with them. We finally left for home at around 10.45pm. After reaching home, I packed for my morning flight and called it a night.

I woke up with a cough at around 230am and since then couldn’t sleep at all due to very terrible cough. Zoohie gave me some cough medicine, then advised me to take steam. I was not sure that I wanted to take steam at 2:30am in the morning, however I decided to go ahead with it. It was very strange to take steam at 2:30am in the morning, however coupled with D’cold and Vicks it proved very effective. I fell asleep in sometime only to be woken up by my alarm. Sadly it was time to go. The cab arrived at its designated time and there was waving good bye to Zoohie, not knowing when next I would be meeting her. Overall the trip was very good and I enjoyed a lot. Hoping to go there soon.