Kolkata Chronicle

At the outset, let me clarify that I'm not put up at Sonar Bangla. And even if there is a company that would put its summer interns at Sonar Bangla, I'm sure it won't take me :) In fact, I'm put up at a guest house on Middleton street (just next to park street) and I'm living reasonably comfortably.

First day at work was quite cool. The branch office at Kolkata was quite upmarket and highly unlike the headquaters at Hyderabad. One distressing thing about Hyderabad office is the fact, that all managers' chambers are airconditioned, whereas the rest of the staff operate out of a workplace whose central airconditioning, going by the look of the ducts, perhaps stopped working when I was in first standard.

And as for Kolkata, one feels that you are in a time warp, you don't expect a city to look like this in todays world. Whatever little I've seen today (Eden Gardens, Dalhousie, Victoria Memorial, Park Street, Camac street, Lee Street, Howrah bridge, Jackson Lane), seems that this place is not engulfed by the waves of prosperity that have swept some of the other larger cities. If people are wealthy, it is not apparent.

Interstingly there are still a lot of good old Ambys around in Kolkata. But you really have to come to this place to see how many of them are here. Just go to any road and look right, left, here, there, Amby is everywhere (there are other cars too, but not as many!). And unlike many cities, couldn't see any autos. Whatever little I could gauge, I felt that perhaps this place, with its metro, sidewalks, buildings, crossings and everything, would be one of the finer modern cities of India, but unfortunately, it didn't progress much further. And no, I couldn't feel any old world charm here. It is terribly crowded with its narrow streets, polluting vehicles and lack of parking space. On the flip side, traffic is a lot well behaved. Didn't look to me if pedestrians were treated like dirt. Contrast this with hyderabad where after spending a couple of days you'd realize that the average IQ of all the drivers on its streets should not be more than 15.

Not much of a paper market here in Kolkata but as my guide put it, enough to get my feet wet!!!