I have been in Kolkata before for a number of times in last ten years and one thing I always pragmatic about is that this city is not at all moving. The old buildings, the wooden bus, chaos on roads, Old Trams and filthy Metro; always come in my mind. This Monday I was in this city again with my wife and had whole day as leisure as our flight was in night only. We decided to visit few places and roamed around for the day. In morning we started for Bellur Math which is at bank of holy Hugli. The Math is the legacy of swami Vivekanand and a very quiet place to spend few hours. From there we hired a taxi to go to the Victoria Palace. Taxi took the bypass road which is very long in comparison of going through chaos roads of Howrah and Kolkata city. In whole route, I tried to compare the development happening in this capital city of West Bengal with rest of the country and can easily say that it is lagging significantly. Considering the population and size of the city, I hardly saw any new infrastructure coming up.
When we reached Victoria, it was full day. The museum and inner premises of Palace were closed. Not sure if it was due to Monday or some maintenance work going on. Though Palace was not in its best state but premises and garden are well maintained. We spent an hour there and started for our hotel which was in Dharamtalla street. A number of lanes and sub lanes are numbered in a very complicated means and so it took some time for us to find our hotel. We had a good lunch then and rest before starting for the airport. The yellow taxi making lot of jingle and shaking reached the airport in time. This whole day was joyful for us. Few years back, I read a book “City of Joy” about Kolkata written by Dominique Lapierre. Hope Kolkata will be the joy city one day.
