When Memories Catch Fire

I came to office today, a half sleepy, half awake self. Usual Tuesday mornings, not even a week after I got back from home, I was still in a Kolkata mood and still reluctant about work.

Suddenly my friend pings me. One of my closest friends from school, her pings always make me happy! She asks "Did you see the news?" I readily thought it was about another school friend who recently had a baby...but she said "no...Stephen Court's on fire!" First reaction in such cases is always a "whattt???"...and she went on, "Pritha! Park Street, Flurys, Peter Cat, Music World...there's a huge fire there, see this link..." I opened the link, and modern technology brought the inferno live in front of me..and I saw a part of my memories on fire, I saw pieces of my nostalgia burning under red flames...

Park Street! If I look back, I will have so many memories here that I will forget the count of it.

My earliest memories go back to the time when I had first learnt to cut a birthday cake...my first few years' birthday cakes where from Flurys', Park Street...a much older Flurys' when it had enjoyed a firm monopoly as the most popular cake shop in the city. While growing up, I remember to have thought about Park Street as always a "wow" part of the city...as the place for the most expensive restaurants where you go only with your parents, and let parents decide, do not order much from the menu yourself, and eat with more etiquette than you ever thought you had...Park Street has always been a place from where you come back before it's too late at night, which is near New Market, so that you officially need to visit it during shopping sprees...Throughout school, Park Street has always been a place of awe and something you look up to.

Things change when you grow up, and in college Park Street became a darling hangout...but still a place where you either go for window shopping, or sharing food or spending when you really are sure you have saved a lot. I remember my first date at Music World (a place with wide arrays of CDs and DVDs). I remember when three of us friends had waited for our fourth friend's boyfriend to come and meet her for the first time...the time when, tired of waiting, we had gone to the cheapest of the Chinese restaurants there and shared two plates of noodles among the four of us (so little we had to spend, but such big hearts we had to share!).

I remember Park Street for all the college life silliness! Running across the roads to find a tree to do a "touch wood" on my first date, waiting eternally on the steps of Music World for friends who perennially come late for every planned meet...Oxford book store to choose a book which my first boyfriend gives me as his first valentines' day gift, Archies' Gallery to choose the best of cards for the best people in my life - him or my best friend or my sister...

I remember St. Xaviers' on Park Street where I won my first Creative Writing prize, I remember Magnolia (invariably one of the costliest restaurants there) where me and my friend suddenly think of going during those college days when we hardly had so much money...end up buying the least costly item, a veg sandwich (every moment cursing the price setters there and repeating for the hundredth time how I could have made the same sandwich at home with one-tenth of this cost), and then falling down on the stairs and shocking the person at the gate with such un-sophisticated behavior!

I remember my first try at CCD and Barista coffee, I remember T3 Tea Table, which I found too sophisticated and over-priced during college...I remember the roadside rolls, the pavement junk jeweleries, the long walks to the metro station, the hunt for cheap restaurants on the most costly streets of the city. I remember buying old books for lesser prices outside the museum, I remember the treat at Barbeque's from the French Institute I was then associated with...

I remember going to Park Hotel for the first time to listen to Violin Brothers with a free pass, having coffee for a hundred and fifty rupees, trying to sit cross legged while listening to the music, debating with my equally "un-sophisticated" friend on whether to have the brown colored sugar that came with the coffee (I still can't believe, we thought it was 'brown sugar'!)

I remember growing up on the streets of Park Street...I remember to have gone to press conferences for ten times to Park Hotel after that when I was working with a local TV channel as a reporter, I remember a much "grown-up and knowledgeable me" checking out and interviewing the people at almost all these big restaurants here for a story on Christmas food for a newspaper I was writing for.

I remember to have gone around Park Street one last time before I left the city for work in another part of the country...and, I remember to have come back at those same restaurants to re-unite with old friends...all grown up, with heavier purses, and a much more "sophisticated" group...

But Park Street had remained the same, with all its old charm, with every nook and corner carrying a bit of nostalgia here, a piece of memory there...a tear, a smile, a hug, a goodbye...

And, today, when the fire brigades are late and the smokes cover my Park Street, when the municipality and political parties debate on who to blame, when news channels show only flames and report casualties of fellow Kolkatans...I see a part of me burning...The nostalgia. The memory. The tear. The smile. The Hug. The goodbye.