My City..My Life.. 3

The city life is sometimes strangely cruel. You will have millions besides you in the city streets, yet no one actually to have a good conversation with. Your families and friends would be scatterred around the globe and only the technological advances come to your rescue. Priorities, committments and responsibilities keep on adding days, months and years untill the next rendezvous.

You can tweet, poke, sms, scrape and call; but our protagonist does not like the digital or virtual communication. He will rather meet someone in person than exchange emoticons. He says, "The person at the other end may be sending a smile emoticon but actually he/she may be in flesh and blood experiencing some other natural emotions. True emotions play out in front of the eyes."

He has hundreds of friends in the virtual world, but the weekends go by without a game of football or a trip to one of the latest movies. Is the reality getting virtual? There is a rapidly growing parallel universe somewhere in a server room that may leave a big void in the 'real universe'.

Lately, he has been going around the city capturing the urban landscape and experiencing the flavours of the street food. He has given a fancy name to his new avatar 'Click Che'. Couple of days back, he went on another of his city tours with his good friend Rudra, who too lives in the same city. Yet, they were meeting after a gap of two months. That's another strange feature of living in a city. Your good folks may sometimes be going out of your consciousness while you are stuck in the intricacies of life.

He had forgotten the birthday of Rudra, which made him feel bad. Well, the two friends caught up with each other lives while they visited the St.Paul's Cathedral. They offered their prayers to god and our protagonist seeked for some inspiration for the future. After a tour in the church premises, they headed for Princep ghat. It's one of the favorite places of our protagonist.

You can walk along the Hooghly river and enjoy the beautiful sunset with the majestic Vidyasagar setu in the same frame. Add a ferry and few fisherman boats into the frame, the picture becomes perfect. There is Scoop restaurant near Princep ghat, not the fancy types, but you can take some rest and have a bite here. Otherwise there is the option of street food vendors. Local fishermen will be willing to take you for a boat ride for a hundred bucks.

Princep ghat has a memorial monument for James Princep, who was a researcher from the British Raj era. Sitting at the lawn of Princep ghat, the two friends savoured the magical view of the bridge, the monument and the sunset.

Late into the evening the friends departed back to their respective lives and the next meeting shall be at a marriage as our protagonist's friend shall be going out of the country on some professional committments.