Calcutta was different then. Just five years back even, it didn’t race to collide, but walked to guide. Romi chuckled out softly. ‘Ma’s habit of thinking in poetry is catching up with me. Ma would’ve definitely made a face and replaced the word guide with abide. I still remember the day when she and father were watching a television show, where a man was smoking a cheroot and Ma had cried out: Look…how he starts by making one soul of a thousand hungry stomachs…unemployed thinking stomachs. Look, he wants to now extend their hunger to that dank theatre called Academy, where the first three rows are of leather, and the rest are wooden chairs infested with bugs. Hah, land of equals. Equality when there’d be road processions with inquilaab zindabad slogans; locked out factories with inquilaab zindabad calls; obstructing traffic by sitting on the roads for hours with inquilaab zindabad; boycotting of classes in the university campuses with inquilaab zindabad.’ Romi remembered, how she always thought inquilaab zindabad was a call to throw normal life into mayhem and disorder; to interfere in other’s activities.