Kolkota Diary-3

Travel expands mindspace is something like a credo to me.

New  surroundings. New set of people. New food tastes. New language. New challenges and new responses.

Yes, there is a lot of''new'ness in travel.

On Day 2 in Kolkota, the die was cast that we would be heading for Petropole - on the Indo-Bangladesh border -  for meeting with Customs Station staff on Saturday. Chief Commissioner of Customs Smt B D Dasgupta categorically warned: "Don't ask for meeting on Friday. It is a holiday across the border. So for our team too. And if you ask for Friday meet, then I have to pull them out of their homes on a holiday. I won't do that."

So, we decided to travel to Bongaon (less than 10 km before Petropole) and lodge ourselves for Friday night and reach Land Customs Station on Saturday first half after prefixing the appointment.

Having done that, we slept Thursday in a Salt Lake guest house for the second night as it was drizzing the whole night - was it? - and woke up Friday morning for the usual tea on the roadside stall and some veg puff and water at the nearby Sweets & Spice eatery.

Checked out just in time as the Tata Sumo arrived.

The next four hours offered such a panoramic countryside view of West Bengal. Blanket green on the entire stretch which I never imagined. Absar Alam, my companion, recalled the Bengal Famine and we chatted on that issue for a while. According to him, India has faced several famines - one worse than the other. If he were to be believed, there were famines even during Emperor Ashoka's reign, Akbar's and the British. Each time, it was a nightmare fighting famine due to poor distribution system that prevailed then.

Many towns and villages which were just tiny or marginally larger dots on the India map became actual spots that we crossed.

From Salt Lake upto Rajhat Main Road, it was a typical 4 lane, landscaped road. It ought to be because the road leads to Dum Dum Airport.  Our Bengali driver kept reminding us that the vast expanse that we were passing by was once upon a time a huge lake and he explained how a local firm bought the entire stretch of lake and filled it up and then sold large swathes of it to various construciton companies.

We could see brisk construction of huge residential and official towers on both sides.

"The potential buyers or occupiers of these flats will never know - unless they are curious - what this place was before their building came about," quipped Absar Alam. Does development mean destroying something natural like a lake? he asked no one in particular..

Suddenly, our passage to Bongaon turned into a narrow and congested road. For a while, we rode on that stretch before everything opened up. There wast a vast open space on both sides. Road was being laid with broken bricks. Over that, a bit of mud was thrown and above that bitumen  (liquid tar) was sprinkled. Am sure, they will throw some more mud/sand and run the road roller and call it that the road is ready!

We halted for a chat with some women workers on highways (see picture above). They said they were working for the past 18 months and no idea how long the work will go on. Driver commented that it would go on and on because the length of road to be laid was very huge and work was happening very slowly.

And there were large water presence on both sides. We learnt these were fish farms. Alam stepped out to click some snaps. Later he confided that back home (in Bihar), his family is into fish farming.

(to be continued)