Have you ever had Jhalmuri? In case you haven’t, let me tell you that it’s puffed rice tossed with shredded onions, nuts, bhujias, oil, chilly and salt. Proportion is the key here. If any of these ingredients are wrongly mixed, Bengali’s favourite evening snack gets wasted. Now you may start to think that this blog is to propagate a recipe. Not at all. This is to let you know that Kolkata is just like it’s jhalmuri; it’s citizen are like the ingredients. Some of them are hot like chilies, some act as a mixer like oil, some can make you cry like onions, some are there to spice things up like salt and the others are just nuts. You can find them all living in one spicy pot-boiler that is Kolkata. It is the city which acted as a shelter to the refugees of East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) time and again. From pre-independence era, it has been crowded by the wealthy as well as the destitute. The mass migration of 1940’s and 70’s flooded the city with millions of homeless refugees. The city became dissected between it’s natives, termed as “Ghoti” and the refugees named “Bangal”. The conflict between these two uni-lingual races has been there forever. You will surely find one Ghoti and one Bangal in any group of Bengalis and time to time they are bound to lock horns, but all in a sporting way. This is the story of a division among Bengalis in Kolkata. But Kolkata is not just for them alone. It is a cosmopolitan city. As a traveler, you should know that Kolkata is a more affordable place to live in than other metros of India. Hence people from all over the country shift to this place. Recent account shows that Kolkata’s downtown regions have been flooded with non-bengali households, most of them hail from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar, Jharkhand and UP. So the population of Kolkata has become a blend of different cultures, ideas, cuisines, and rituals. With the IT sectors opening up for jobs, young fellows from every province are blending into this large, diverse mob. Anthony Reddy, a south-indian who is working in an MNC in Sec- V, Salt Lake spoke to me some days ago saying, “I thought it would be difficult for a guy like me who’s from Pondicherry to make his way in Kolkata as my lifestyle is completely different from any Bengali guy. But after spending a couple of weeks, I feel like this city has become my home now.” Why won’t it be? The people here are extremely friendly and helpful. If you stop at a crossing and ask one man for road direction, five more will gather around to help you reach your destination. The population of Kolkata according to latest census report (2011) is 44,86,679.
Even the religious mix of the city will leave you astonished. The city has people believing in various religions and living side by side without any problems. Kolkata has many Hindu Kali temples like Dakshineswar, Kalighat, Thanthaniya etc; it has famous mosques such as Nakhuda, Tipu Sultan , Niyamamatullah etc; churches like St. Andrew’s, St. John’s, St. Paul’s , Assembly of God and more. There are Jain temples, Buddhist dharamshalas, Sikh gurudwaras and many more such.
From markets to malls, from Durga puja to Eid, from ilish maach to dhokla, Kolkata is like a mixed bag of different kinds of people, different in many ways but with one common place to live.
Blend all these people in the correct proportion and you have your perfect ‘Jhalmuri Town’.
– Explorer Krishanu