A street and the pot of gold

There’s a street in Calcutta with a lot of gold. It’s a track that McKenna is not known to have taken, with or without his mustang, but Bowbazar Street or BB Ganguly Street as it’s called, spawns dreams in huge quantities, just like Hollywood.

The cobbled street is home to scores of sparkling, tinted glass-chrome shops selling some of the most exquisite jewellery in town. Snaking away from the main street are narrow labyrinthine by-lanes, where master craftsmen toil away on pieces of gold, creating designs that have had reputed jewellers in as far-flung places as Surat and Delhi, luring them away with, what else, but bags of gold.

But, breathtaking designs are not the only thing that’s conjured from the yellow metal. Gold also brings in its way hope, hope of a better tomorrow, the belief that the rainbow meets the earth at BB Ganguly Street, the conviction that it’s here that the pot of gold that’s going to change their lives lies.

The pot of gold, according to this school of thought, is the daily dose of astrological prediction that jewellers put up on their shop windows. This is the road to their fortunes. Handwritten on chart paper with whatever writing tool that is available at hand (though chalk is seldom preferred), these predictions are devoured by fortune-seekers each day.

Much like the Reds in this communist state, who huddle before the Left newspaper Ganashakti pasted on boards and strung up at every bus stop, devouring each sentence on capitalist misdoings.

As I don’t need to pass by BB Ganguly Street regularly, I don’t really know if the astro buff finds solace on a regular basis in whatever he reading like the dedicated Ganashakti surfer, but I did stumble upon a man who definitely did not.

This gentleman was your typical Bengali bhadrolok, complete with white dhoti-kurta and the ubiquitous umbrella, and he looked decidedly unhappy as he peered into the predictions strung up before him. Then as he looked away, a picture of despondency, his eyes met mine. He was mumbling something. I thought I heard, “Aajo holo na.” Translated, it means “not even today.”I sometimes think of him when I pass by BB Ganguly Street. I hope he’s found his gold in his pot by now.