When I met you at the trackless tangle
In the starless night,
My wish was to offer you my lantern
Though you needed not.

Rabindranath Tagore

Calcutta of the 1950s was not much different from that of today. True, the Metro Railway and the mini-buses were not there, neither was the second Howrah Bridge, but the soul of Calcutta, its culture remains unchanged.

The Bengali society is a very resilient one - generations of North Indians and Rajasthanis have settled here; the Tiwaris and Poddars have got absorbed in this society, so much so now they speak only Bengali at home. Caste distinctions are not prominent here but language barriers do matter, so also decency and frankness.

When Kamal Kumar Srivastava came to Calcutta, where he had got his first job appointment, he was accompanied by his widowed mother, the only other member of his family. He managed to hire a flat in South Calcutta, sparsely populated during those days. Their first floor flat would open into the landing, and the opposite flat occupied by Rudranath Sanyal also opened into it.

Sanyal had come to Calcutta from East Bengal, as a refugee, following the partition of India. He was rehabilitated in a government department with a modest job and his only daughter Kamalika was now studying for her pre-degree. Her mother was content to spend her time in the kitchen and puja room and was not seen outside much.

City life, especially for flat dwellers is highly insulated; apart from those in the adjacent flat there is hardly anybody known to them except the colleagues in their offices. The Sanyals, therefore, called upon Kamal Kumar and his mother and introduced themselves.

Kamalika was beautiful though dusky, slight in build, active and talkative. She was already introduced to Kamal Kumar and used to converse with him in Bengali whenever she met him on the stairs or at the landing. Kamal Kumar, in order to understand her and also to keep up the conversation, picked up the language in a relatively short time.

Acquaintance developed into deep friendship and friendship into love, at least for him. A famous novelist has remarked that the heartening thing about first love is that you have to pass through it only once in your life. Kamal Kumar experienced it in full measure; the sleepless nights, the expectations, the disappointments and the anxieties that accompanied it.

All his efforts to woo Kamalika paid off to the extent that she agreed to go for walks along with him first through the cobbled footpaths of Southern Avenue and gradually to the Dhakuria Lakes where they used to sit at the banks along with so many other couples. Perhaps they were having the same thoughts running through their minds - they sat silent most of the time.

Kamal Kumar gradually developed a taste for all things Bengali - from Jatra to Rabindrasangeet, from theatre shows to the devotional music of Ramprasad. He used to dream of a life with Kamalika with both of them living into ripe old age in each other's company.

In Calcutta, as elsewhere in West Bengal, time is not calculated in years but by the number of Durga Puja seasons you have experienced. Kamal Kumar and Kamalika used to go and worship together at all the puja pandals, which in Calcutta could run into hundreds. They had done so during three seasons.

Kamal Kumar took it for granted that there would be no objection to their marriage either from his mother or from Kamalika's parents. The only thing he used to detest was that he would have to wear the comical white cap with tassles hanging down at the ears. This and thousand other details kept him awake most of the nights during the three years they had known each other. On some days when Kamalika would appear reserved and silent, he would worry much; on the other hand, her jovial and cordial moods would drive him to ecstasy.

Kamal Kumar was surprised to see in his letter box, one day, an aerogram from London addressed to Kamalika. It was dropped there wrongly by the postman. On the reverse he saw the sender's name - Dr. Probir Kumar Choudhury. When he handed over the letter to her, she said that Probir babu was their neighbour in the previous locality and had known her for about five to six years. He used to accompany her during her evening walks along Southern Avenue and the Dhakuria Lakes, much the same as Kamal Kumar was doing now.

Suddenly he felt a little shaky and unsure of himself. Though he loved Kamalika, he had not told her so in as many words. That night he broached the subject of his marriage with Kamalika to his own mother. His mother said, "I shall find you a good bride, from Lucknow, of our own community. Though Kamalika is a good girl, I heard from our maidservant, who also works in their house, that they consider you, a non-Bengali, as an outsider. They would prefer that doctor from London who is well-employed, apart from being a son of the soil."

Though his evening walks with Kamalika continued, he never raised the topic of their marriage or of her friendship with the young doctor. He was afraid of what she would reply, of the impending blow, of her final decision. He preferred to maintain status quo, to allow things to drift.

His long wait finally ended when, one evening, Kamalika's parents knocked at his flat. They came with the invitation for Kamalika Sanyal's wedding with Dr. Probir Kumar Choudhury. At last, Kamal Kumar was freed of the pangs, the tyranny of first love.

That night, Kamal Kumar Srivastava, the outsider, had a sound sleep after three tension-filled years.