My short and sweet tenure at Kharagpur after almost two years of UK and another two in US has been that of an eye-opener - coming down to ground reality - for those [including myself] who had always thought ankle-deep waterlogged city is next to God's curse, come see entire south bengal today - submerged beneath what is still not declared a 'flood' :)
My journey today started at 7.30 from Kolkata and soon after we left Santragachhi it was all the same story till Kgp. What bothered me more is people seemed acquainted with living on the edge and have taken it for granted. They know that each monsoon is probably going to bring home a tide, and they will flow with it. They probably even don't know that there is a 'flood' in someone's dictionary. In their own way I saw many of them netting fish that came home with this tide. With this positive attittude [probably stemmed from a mix of ignorance and helplessness] and a smiling face they kept on fishing for years. And would probably dwell another century in their silence.
