calcutta is a super-awesome place (college streets is the absolute whatever-the-antonym-of-thepits-is!!)

you know what the best part of calcutta is....it's soooo fucking old!!! you go any place and some bong friend of yours is gonna go 'hey this is where satyajit ray used to eat' or 'you know subhash chandra bose used to drink coffee here all the time' or 'ishwar chandra vidyasagar used to pop down here for a sherbet'. you can't but love a place like that. you always get this feeling that you're part of some great historical shit. it's brilliant!!  And I mean BRILLIANT in big red capital letters with blinking lights and trumpets playing. it just gets to you this place. look at college street for example. you're completely down one day cuz you caught your boyfriend cheating on you with your best friend and then you go to college street and in the blink of an irritated eye, all your sorrow and despair and feeling of betrayal are all just washed out by the simple feeling of peace you get when surrounded by books. i'm talking entire streets lined entirely by book shops interspersed only with the most awesome food and drink places. if you died and went to paradise this is what it would like -

imagine this stretching for 2 km with smaller streets leading out every 200 m

The Indian Coffee House is wonderful it defies description. every time i go there i am completely and utterly overwhelmed! 

this is about 1/6th the number of people who are usually found
there at a given point in time

ICH has a style of its own. a complete lack of pretension. you go there for the simple cheap food, waiters who ignore you for ages no matter how hard you try to get their attention, the buzz of constant chatter, the smell of coffee and cigarettes, the large number of excited old men discussing politics like college students and the overabundance of kurtas and jholas not to mention the hot coffee with cream. you go there with your book and read for hours without anyone giving you a second glance, or with friends after a long day of book shopping or just because you have nothing else to do. 

and this is why calcutta is so amazing. cuz it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from or what you do or how much money you have. once you're in this city, she just accepts you like you were always a part of her. and no matter where you go, calcutta will always wait for you to come back home.