I am 11. Already, I go to the library alone. It is a treacherous route, I like to think, from Kidderpore to Ekbalpore and beyond. The difference in these worlds is discernible almost immediately as I turn left from Mansatala Row, down Pipe Road. At the corner is a hair salon. We call it 'saloon', as does the text arched across its window.

It looks like it belongs to an old Westerner. I have been there only once, but its sepia bleached interiors have made it an easy memory for me. Swing doors, hat racks, faded newspapers with curly serif fonts, dusty mirrors and gossip about the race tracks. Bits of hair now fly around the unknown creased faces I associate with it.

One day, quite suddenly, the place was gone. I wouldn't know when. I hadn't been looking for it till I knew it wasn't there. I try to recollect, even now, what shop or service replaced that old saloon. But I cannot. Though the tailor next door still operated out of its blue tube-lit corridor, its neighbour had disappeared like an optical illusion at the wrong angle.

Poof.

I am 11. And Pipe Road divides Kidderpore and Ekbalpore, the Hindus and the Muslims. The distinction is apparently important. I have, at 11, educated myself to identify rowdy boys with sleek, jet black hair and chiseled features as Muslims. They are abusive and volatile. Muslims, I learn on Pipe Road, are either barbers or tailors, or own meat shops or small roadside restaurants.

After leaving a conspicuous garbage dump behind, Pipe Road opens into Diamond Harbour Road. A little to the right is my school. A poster seller displays his wares on its rough, red walls. Religious depictions of all kinds find unity here, as do sport icons and film stars. And Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon. He is a phenomenon.

On the other side are tram tracks that continue forward even when the road is cut into a four-way intersection. I am 11. I cross the busy road and take a left from Diamond Harbour Road toward Alipore Zoo.

I am told it is the biggest zoo in India. It has many birds and animals, and it smells like disease. I used to like going there, but I could not find the giraffe enclosure on my own every time I went. That bothered me to no end. Where were they hiding the giraffes? Later, I'd go there only to smoke in relative secrecy. I used to mouth fag, but this was to happen much later. Now I am 11. And I go walking by.

Straight ahead, if you cross the road, are the palatial gates to the National Library, the largest library in India (I am told, again). But these gates are closed. They are merely a secondary entrance, and hence shut forever. Kolkata logic. I walk left, and it is a long walk till I meet the Zoo exit. Here, I cross the busy road and find myself at the entrance to the library grounds. White lions, I believe, sculpted in stone, await the weary booklover.

Inside, there are trees. And that is an understatement.

Bird poop everywhere. Like lime on forgotten paan leaves, they streak the august ground. A trek later, I am at the stairs, the library doors. Here, I walk past. Ahead, to the right, forgotten in a corner is a door that marks the free entrance to the childrens' section.

The smell of books everywhere, old and new. Mostly old. Heavy books, hardbound covers softened with age. Light books, pages tattered and worm eaten. It feels like coming home.

I was 11. Now, at 26, all routes in Kolkata are treacherous. I dare not cross the street. And dust flies off the books in my grandfather's cupboard to give me an allergy.

The garden reeks of piss -
an acrid, offensive stench.

I doubt the wet earth beneath my feet.
I wonder where all those mosquitoes breed.

Among the aged trees, roots bared,
are millions of white plastic chairs.

So removed they are from the reality
that the garden espouses.

How does one become intimate with them?
How does one believe

that the people floating to their rest are real?

These people trapped in the white plastic chairs.
Do they feel?

Surely, it is an other worldly affair I am privy to.

 

And yet, there she flits.

A spirit, a fairy,
a goddess, even, she is,

here in the humble garb of the tangible
and, therefore,
the tantalising, the available.

But she is not; she cannot be.

Her disarming flight
among us unsuspecting mortals
gives her away.

At arms distance, always,
she is part of us.

She belongs to us

as we, we all,
belong to her.

In one corner of her fingernail,
we live

and in the curve of her ample navel,
the world.

And when she walks away,
life follows
her unbound, primitive pace.