I was born and brought up in central Calcutta, schooled in central Calcutta, but then grew up to become the core Bengali who had an American childhood! W e Bengalis know the characteristics etched in someone from central Calcutta. Her strings are pulled from both ends. She owns the traits of the more settled in old North Calcutta while desirous for the contemporary South Kolkata (Eastern Kolkata wasn't so prominent then.) We still lived in our hundred-year-old rented homes with 20-inch deep walls and cut-glass floors. But, we went to the top schools in the city. We religiously fed the street dogs, cats, and cows but reluctantly swapped our indoor plants for lack of water. Though I have been a Central Calcuttan all my childhood, I was never pulled by either of these strings. I held on to an American fiber that tugged me on and off! My mom's best neighborhood pal was an American lady! Well, I know you could expect someone of British descent at that location and era
A place where they (the elderly) too can be as preoccupied as their children and grandchildren and a time where they too are alive and not merely living. “Y ou do not know what it is like to be lonely until you spend time alone wishing for companionship.” These words uttered by one of my most favourite changemakers, Ratan Tata , in the recent past finally stimulated me to serve up those thoughts that had been simmering in my mind for long. A stalwart supporter of meaningful societal change, Ratan Tata made this statement when his investment in ‘Good Fellows’, a one-of-a-kind start-up in India, was announced and made public a few weeks back. Ideated by the feisty 28-year-old, Shantanu Naidu, who apart from being Ratan Tata’s assistant also shares a beautiful bond with the 84-year-old tycoon, ‘Good Fellows’ is an aspiration towards a more compassionate living. It aims at forging intergenerational friendships between senior citizens who are lonely, and felicitous young graduates,
So find out what drives you and maybe at a crossroad, you too could get lucky like Kamran and meet yourself!… But beware in this inward quest, you will incessantly face the fundamental fact: “ Why am I here? ” and the sway between delirium and deliverance. A t a time when each one of us is seeking for some sort of inspiration to be able to connect with her inner self, ‘Kamran on Bike’ surely drops the penny in the precise spot. Now who is Kamran? Last weekend, casually, my friend had chanced upon him through a Facebook page and, intrigued by his vision, wanted me to dwell upon it. Some minutes into the page and I knew that I was delving into a man who perhaps emphatically embodied the words of Louis XIV. “ There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself. ” And indeed here is a man who literally does everything on his bike, a borrowed one to start with. He travels, unbridled, conquering not only the terrain without but also the territory within, and every