Calcutta! Oh Calcutta!

Calcutta is my birthplace and a city with which I have ties that only death can severe. I left the city temporarily for college at 18 and for an indefinite duration when I was 24. Since then, I have been returning to my home city, now and then, work and finance permitting. I have been keenly observing the changes in the city. During my trips, I observe a change in attitude, a decline in tolerance and acceptance and, in my humble opinion, a shift from traditional values that I grew up in a middle-class Bengali Calcutta. While not in Cal, I keep in touch with what's happening in the city through the Bengali newspaper Anandabazaar Patrika. Most of the time the news are scary, hinting to the changing values as a function of globalization in a city in pursuit of money. The following lines capture how I interpret the changes that I see, read and hear.

This is not the beloved city I left.
Flyovers, citycenters, 2nd Hooghly bridge -
the city's landscape changes for better -
while compassion and tolerance erode.

A father kills his son,
The wife prays he be hanged.
Neighbours outcast an HIV infected man,
Hospital returns a dying one

An old man is left to die on a footpath -
Passersby oblivious to his gasping.
Life goes on as lives are lost.
Why is everyone turning a blind eye?

Kids don't play outdoor anymore
Homework and cable dictate their lives.
The teachers don't train the mind
The village doesn't raise the child.

No one laments that Nano left Bengal
Too many cars already bring life to a halt.
The traffic cop pockets the bribe as
cars park illegally on a busy street.

Highrises mushroom where kids once played
Ponds fill up by domestic wastes
Landfills now house exotic hotels
And malls spring up everywhere.

Now there is a mall on a factory premise
with elegance and grandeur -
where there is grandeur there is pomp
and with pomp there is temptation

So much so that a young girl from
a decent family leaves a bar with a fat belly pig
with an even fatter purse.
And no eyebrow goes up! not even for once.

On EM Bypass, a beamer takes over a bullock cart
A speeding bus almost kills a man but no one flinches.
People crosses the road wherever convenient
The crossing light blinks out of sheer habit.

Everyone is busy, even the ones jobless.
Everyone is busy doing something or nothing
This is not the city I knew.
This is not my Calcutta.