New Year in Kolkata
Sabreena Ahmed, On e-mail
On the 31st of 2005 I was on the bus with other 24 members of my greater family. We were on our way to Kolkata to attend the Boubhat ceremony of my cousin. As the clock struck 12:00am we played a song on the CD system of the bus. The wedding cake of the previous day was brought by one of my aunts and we cut it into pieces with the Swiss Army knife of my eldest uncle. A cousin lighted a candle and I played on the small drum hanging down from my neck. Entering into the border of Kolkata was a great surprise for me as I heard the different tone of the same Bangla language, smelt the smoky Dhup that the Kolkata people burn before opening the shutters of their shops. The spelling of certain words was different from ours. Most of the taxi drivers were Marwari or Bihari and so were the shopkeepers. South Kolkata is full of tourists from Bangladesh, other parts of India and other foreign countries. North Kolkata looked like our Old Dhaka where the natives were great in number. They told that Kolkata has changed a lot in the last 8/10 years. The celebration of the New Year was a great festival to the city dwellers and they enjoyed the night dancing in the night clubs. We found all the stores closed as the 1st of January is a government holiday in India. It was great to meet some old relatives there and celebrating the New Year in the Bengal which is a bit different from our Bangladesh.
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