In the early nineties, when we moved to Kolkata from what now seems like almost virginal terrains of Kohima, life offered of a labyrinth of experiences…. Everything was new and dazzling… city life was sampled by us in small installments during brief summer interludes… everything used to fascinate us….the tiled bathroom in our grandma’s as opposed to the cemented one in Kohima …the overhead shower as opposed to the tin drum which was the receptacle for regulated water supply… The paper Kwality tubs of vanilla ice cream which we used to lick to the last drop with an equally fascinating wooden spatula like thing... the spatula like thing in turn would be chewed to a pulp to extract the last drop of vanilla essence….years later when I were to see Durga Puja pandals adorned with those very spatula like things stuck on the walls to make various decorative patterns (the ubiquitous Indian paisley included) my first instinct would be to chew them up …

Me and my sister were a capitalist lot…identifying experiences with brand names… hot sultry afternoons were associated with frantic glugs of gold spot ( the zing thing )… comfort was a bite of Cadburys milk chocolate ( Cadburys , interestingly was so ingrained in the Bengali/Indian psyche that it became synonymous with chocolate …so one had to ask for Cadburys when one wanted a bar of chocolate….chocolate was a generic term for all kind of lozenges … things that took a long time to seep in)…
The clammy Kolkata weather ensured that my bar of golden foiled “Cadbury” (poor Amul catering to a thankless market even after it’s innovate marketing campaign displaying cute amul looking couples on the wrappers) was always melty and messy leaving a trail of sticky brown spots of my summery shirts and shorts…evenings meant darkened rooms enveloped in the blue shadows of the Weston colour television…the drawing rooms were animated with coming of age tales in Star Plus… beaming the American way of life to our collective psyche …oh how I identified with Kevin Arnold and his teenage angst though I couldn’t follow half of what he said in that cute American twang…

Sigh ….how I digress… where were we? Oh yes the dazzling city lights…Gah have completely lost thread now ….funny how I start saying something and inadvertently end up saying something else…