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Memories, Monuments, and the Magic of a City at Night
“Where are you?” A buzz in my pocket. A text from Mir. I quickly responded, “Just 10 minutes.”
I knew it was not just 10 minutes. I was at least half an hour away. But I couldn’t say that to Mir.
Mir, Vasu, and Shaurya were waiting outside the station.
“I’m very late. They will be pissed!” I thought.
It had been months since I visited them, my friends who I went to school with, who skipped classes with me just to do nothing. After school, our paths diverged.
Mir and Shaurya went to pursue medicine in different cities. Vasu, now working at a satellite internet company, pursued Electronics.
I went to study Aerospace Engineering, only to find out that I liked Electronics better (which is ironic, since I’m now a graduate student in AeroAstro!).
“It’s been six years”, I said to myself as I counted the days since I had last met them.
COVID happened when I was finishing university. When things started to become normal again, I joined a company far away from home.
Believe it or not, Mir and I lived within five kilometers of each other. We had never found time.
Today was different.
Park Street is the office hub of Kolkata, with old buildings from the city’s colonial past and modern high-rises suffocating each other with the warm exhaust from window air-conditioners.
It was humid. It was hot.
But the scenery quickly changed as we walked past to reach the Maidan.
Maidan is an open space at the heart of the city.
On one side, the hustling, bustling modern life; on the other, Victoria Memorial—materializing Kolkata’s eternal romanticism.
This is what balances the city.
We sat in a circle.
“Remember, in school, how we used to torment the teachers?” Mir started.
I laughed. We were horrible. We used to sit in the front bench, making all sorts of noise, while the other side of the class studied.
There was one day when things got too bad.
One teacher got so angry that he started shouting at a student!
Well, being yelled at was a form of punishment that was very normal to us—we grew immune to it after a certain point.
The one year we were in school together went by very fast.
Every day, we used to write poems, prose, songs, and discuss films—when we weren’t busy disturbing our teachers.
We even made a few songs to participate in a band competition, only to realize how ill-prepared we were.
But our spirits were high, and we blamed the judges for not understanding the beauty of our music.
I even dreamt of being a writer!
“Let’s go towards Victoria,” Vasu proposed.
It was getting dark pretty quickly, and the space didn’t have any lights.
We slowly walked forward, swimming into the dark.
After walking for a few minutes, we reached the Victoria Memorial.
The white marble monument, shimmering in the yellow light, faded into the darkness of the city.
Kolkata is beautiful at night.
The lack of light hides the blemishes; the broken pieces curve into beautiful silhouettes.
It had been an hour. We were walking in the dark, trodding the alleys of Park Street.
We started to feel hungry.
The one thing about Kolkata is the food.
The food never disappoints you.
After some careful thought on the trade-off between distance and price, we decided on Peter Cat.
Peter Cat still carries colonial charm through the uniforms of their waiters.
The service begins with an unlimited supply of peanuts and cold tap water.
The soft, spicy chelo kabab melts in the mouth.
Vasu had picked up a new skill: drawing portraits on pen tablets.
Mir was starting his practice very close to my house.
I guess we were all growing up.
As we stepped out of the restaurant, the city had slowed down.
The streets were quieter, the breeze a little cooler.
We didn’t say much.
Maybe because we didn’t need to.
Some friendships don’t need constant tending—they just wait patiently, and when you return, it’s like you never left.
That night, Kolkata didn’t feel like a city; it felt like home.
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