Kolkata

Its been raining in Kolkata for the past week. And I have conveniently lost my umbrella. I miss my blue umbrella.
I love it when it pours down after nightfall....there are so few people on the otherwise bustling roads; you actually get a feel of the city. I am glad Kolkata still isn't the posh metropolis that Delhi is trying to become. I hope it never does. It ensures that you can walk with your friend for five hours on the rain soaked streets under an overcast sky after a taxing day at college. It lets you walk down Park Street at 9 in the evening in a slight drizzle and not care about it being unsafe. Where you could walk for hours and get lost and not care.
It allows you to talk to people without worrying that someone is stalking you. I have grown up in a small town where cows lined the avenues in neat rows and fields flanked the paved roadways. Where you could walk for hours and hours and not get tired. Where a cycle would be quite enough for transporting you if only your ego would allow it.
Kolkata still retains some vestiges of being a city of real people. It isn't the City Of Joy. It is, for many, the City Of Eternal Sorrow. In a way I am glad Kolkata hasn't become Delhi.

Or I was. Kolkata isn't such a nice place anymore. Not since the blasts in Delhi. People exchanging glances of disgust at the government and roadside "Adda"s have transformed into people walking at night knowing full well that this Puja might well be the last Puja for them.
There is a rumour going around that Kolkata will be the next target. And it will be the Pujas.
I don't feel safe any m0re. Nobody does. Not the mother in Delhi who lost her son only because he had tried to warn the terrorists that they had left their bag behind. Neither the mother here who isn't sure if her headstrong son will come back at the end of the day.
We can no longer trust. Nor can we hope. A friend of mine said yesterday that she was afraid to go shopping because she was afraid she would die.
I am much too little to blame anybody. So its pointless talking about Shivraj Patil or the Police. The only thing I noticed was that as I reached home last night, I couldn't find a single channel which giving uninterrupted coverage about the blast; I saw cricketers instead. ...It seemed we had already moved on.