In all my years of living in Kolkata and knowing it closely, i have found the most pleasing places to be are the public transports. Firstly it’s absolutely cheap, i mean you can travel from one part of the city to another in mere twenty or thirty rupees. And it feeds you with so many stories. Stories that are happening right in the moment. A man going to places and finding ways to struggle a bit more, dream a bit more. Somewhere you see a beautiful girl tying her hair up and some loose strands falling on her neck, a desire blossoms and you find it disappearing in a flash. You see an old couple sitting closely and looking out of the windows of a bus, they are sufficient, they are crushing the juices out of all the banalities. A seller selling his time against the moods of an incoherent culture. You see all these and you realise that after all the efforts to be understood, all that matters are the stories. The tales of madness, the legend of nothingness. This city bleeds to deliver these wonderful moments to dissolve into each other’s existence. So ride the buses, the local trains, the trams, the autorickshaws…there’s nothing more to a creation than living a shared life even for a speck of a moment.

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Photograph: Snajiv Kapoor

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