Calcutta? No thanks. This is the title of yesterday’s post in his blog, BigTripBlog (see the post), by globetrotter Kevin Allgood. He and his companion, Valerie Marshall from US evidently had a different image in mind about Kolkata, but on setting feet here, they did not like the city at all.
In ‘our’ humble opinion, …it’s a polluted, congested, noisy place with little to offer the traveler, particularly when compared to India’s other major cities.
Like any visitor to the city, if he had felt welcome, Kevin could have been a generous messenger carrying with him a good impression about Kolkata. But that was not to be. And so, Kevin and Valerie left in a huff amid a feeling of letdown. Here is what he has to say before bidding goodbye to Kolkata:
Perhaps we’re just missing something, but India’s so huge we’re more inclined to cut our losses and move on, rather than search for something we’re not sure is even there.
Having spent fair number of years in this city, and currently residing here, I’m aware how Kevin would have felt when he came here. That we as Kolkattans could not make him comfortable is a collective shame on us.
But frankly, does that matter to most of us? The truth is nobody cares a damn. In a city (and the state as a whole) where politics rules the roost to the exclusion of everything except vested interests, it’ll be way beyond us to offer a decent welcome to visitors.
And so even as we go gaga over non-essential and trivial issues, we strive to live in hell-holes of proverbial frogs whose only sky is the small round that they can see when free from petty bickering. No wonder even many ‘Indians’ avoid coming to Kolkata.
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