Old Calcutta with grainy, crumbling buildings, edged and squeezed on each other forming a cubist’s delight, has many nooks and corners for memories to cling on to, and for me especially, has a much greater personal charm than the new high-rise buildings.
Many of these buildings are from Georgian times and all from the colonial times indeed, though some have been repaired and remodelled later.
Embellishments in the forms of antennas and poles to hang cloth-lines as well as vegetation both intentional and unintentional peeping over ledges and cornices are regular features here.
Here, the true character of the city in spite of all the changes of social and economical values remains even today, but it would be appropriate to mention that visible changes are making rapid inroads in the skyline of old Calcutta.
Innovations of the rapidly moving world may reshape the metropolitan contour at places, but the basic spirit flowing in "The busy bustling city" has not lost its vital energy that accepts life for the sheer joy of staying alive.
Sorrows, grave problems and mismanagements mark the life of this topsy turvy metropolis that defies all attempts of any systematic order, yet a definite "Method in its madness" underlays the human side of life in the unique city of Contrasts.
The morning Sun with its golden rays, bursting in its splendour in the pale blue sky inspite of all the pollution layers, the hot dusty noon times of deep shadows over parched roads and narrow lanes, the warm afternoon with buses and trams clanking along with homecomers and strange tropical nights with flashes of colours and darkness, jostling crowds and solitary misery in utter despair. - all have their place in this shaky collage.
Summer, monsoon and winter with their heat and slush, smog and filth, flow in and out of the life here. Groaning under all the pressures, yet the city, defiant in festive spirit, in dedication to fine and literary arts and in the urge to accept life in its own stride, triumphs over the crushing misery with a human sensitivity.
Intense human aspect of life in Calcutta makes this city pestered by water logging power failures and political shambles, a place of dynamic interest.
It must be kept in mind that the panorama of any city in modern times changes rapidly with the new socio-economical values brought about by the fast moving world. So my pictures depict impressions of Calcutta at the time when I made the sketches.
The Calcutta of my childhood had changed to a great extent when I made these drawings. The cleaner, comparatively less crowed streets and many efficient civic services have deteriorated to lanes and roads overflowing with jostling crowd, piling up dirt, endless traffic jams and hopeless bureaucratic inefficiency.
Very often it seems today that a lot of tinsel hypocrisy attempts to cover up the gaping misery in the shade under the lamp.
I cannot accept "My Calcutta" with bland delight but with intense pain and joy in queer harmony. I should say that there is neither any positive nor negative side of life in any given city but a continuous flow with its own peculiarities.
My pen and ink drawings depicting the mood of "My Calcutta" in my own way are in keeping with that flow.