New Market in Kolkata broke my brain a little

This trip is definitely stuck in my head so obviously the writing is not done. There is an incident on one of the afternoon walks that I haven't recounted yet and this incident has my uncle taking us for a walk on New Market.

The New Market is enormous, somewhat derelict structure right in central Kolkata, in existence since the 1800s during the reign of the British, it seems to be comprised of textile stalls, jewelry booths, a bewildering variety of fruit sellers, and a section of cake and cookie shops that is a relic of some colonial confectionary hangover apparently. Uncle navigated New Market with unerring precision, bypassing tourist-infested stalls and making a bee-line for the "real" ones as if he were in a video game where all of us are non-player characters in his journey.

However what moved me more than this sprawling complex (relatively speaking of course) was something much smaller. An aging gentleman who had been hawking fruit, had overheard my murmurings in Bangla, inquired about where we were from, and on hearing that from Bangladesh began asking questions about Dhaka as if it was a place very precious and fondly remembered, in spite of knowing for a fact that he had never even been to Dhaka! I found his account of Dhaka to be so very similar to my father's descriptions, the same wistfulness in his tones as he narrated tales about Dhaka with the same fond intimacy for a city he did not even belong to.

What can one do or say on hearing such a revelation at an innocent age and in a still-immature mind like mine is something I am still pondering. Apparently something truly does binds Bengali hearts across the dividing lines of passports; this ideology of 'we are all same culture divided by politics' which I have always heard from adults as merely a quote suddenly seemed to hold a definite reality, hearing the stranger smile uncontrollably talking about my father's native town as if it were his own.

Of course my mother bought an exorbitant amount of material; my uncle bought us rosogollas from a place which he deemed was the 'only good one', while everybody else sells fake. He spoke the gospel ofrosogollasand honestly, I agreed! I have no neat conclusion to draw this, but at least it has been written down before the thoughts of it start to fade for, ironically enough I was struggling with what was the name of the textile store from New Market that I visited for a good 15 minutes straight earlier this afternoon.