I get very irritated everytime some1 says "oh u grew up in kolkata? such a beautiful city!"

wait. which kolkata ru talking about? Park Street, Alipore, Southern Avenue maybe-- yes very beautiful. And affluent. And upper caste!

I grew up around Tangra. & Topsia. In the 1990s!

Even today these areas make Bengali UCs 'shiver' & dread as dens of lawlessness+filth. But u know what I saw? I saw slums.. endless slums.. of vulnerable desperate Dalits & Pasmanda migrants frm interior Bengal, Bihar, East UP.. living in conditions not fit for humans..

all working jobs, trying to exist & advance the nxt gen.. also born in deep poverty & precarity. Debates of Marx & Tagore at chai adda famous in folklore, sorry to disappoint weren't happening in Tangra/Topsia.

Just masses of desperate men & women getting by, 1 day at a time..

Communists, Congressi or Trinamul dont matter in those bylanes & back alleys.. the ugly underbelly of the city where even tourists with DSLRs didnt venture seeking exotica.. that is what i grew up around. To me those spaces are the true & authentic Kolkata if there ever was one..

Kolkata- a city of desperate bodies living & dying on heaps of squalor, ignored by everyone, so tht the "bhadrolok" mythology of an intellectual, urbane society of upper caste suaves endures.

There. That is Kolkata/Calcutta. Dont ask me again.