India

I grew up in a Kolkata that is vastly different than the one today. My childhood memories are not of afternoons spent in South City’s sprawling food court eating burgers or watching movies in IMAX theaters.

In my youth, Kolkata fell frequently into darkness during incessant power cuts and my brother and I grew desperate to escape the thick, hot air of my grandfather’s house. We played cricket on the streets and ate phuchka at the New Alipur park. I saw the movie “Yaadon ki Baaraat” at least a dozen times just to get out of the sun, sit under a fan and listen to my favorite Bollywood song, “Chura Liya Hai Tumne.” That was the only way to hear it unless a neighborhood paan and bidi stall decided to blast it with a mic.

Adda was a thing. I mean, really a thing, and we often accompanied Ma on evening jaunts to visit friends and relatives. I lived through food rations and water shortages. I hung from crowded buses hoping my slip-on shoes would not slip off. Back then, only the uber-wealthy owned cars. My father never did; not on his professorial salary at the Indian Statistical Institute.

Life seemed hard compared to the modern conveniences of what middle class Kolkatans have now. We had little in the way of consumer goods or comfort. We slept on hard beds and without air-conditioning, we awoke drenched every morning, our pores opened wide and cleaned by air wetter than a damp towel. I dreamed of a day when we would no longer have to beg my uncle, then a merchant marine, to bring us back Kit-Kats from his adventures overseas. Or when I wouldn’t have to think of creative ways to stretch the waistline on the one pair of jeans I had left, as though I could defy childhood growth.

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