Khardah retake

Maybe a lot kinder
Maybe a lot more balmy
Was touched by the fatigue of traveling
Maybe I should have traveled with you

Khardah is in the North 24 Parganas district. Well, it is north and way down deep along BT Road, near Titagarh in fact, which appeared to me the one and the same place. Extreme suburbs, the transition begins somewhere over the Tala tank bridge. The khal maybe is what it is. We reached there in 45 minutes and 75 minutes early, for which my photographer rebuked me and the driver who in turn claimed he knew all along that the distance could be covered in 20 minutes. Indeed, he had been sanguine about making it quick when we set out but of course he didn’t know what time we were targeting.
My assignment was a Santosh Trophy, Cluster II match between Nagaland and Punjab. So whatever, we were there in a jiffy and then the business of killing time presented itself. Clouds stretched across the sky and the light was pale but not really gloomily so. The air was moist; the Ganga I was told was 10 minutes away but this came up quite late in the day so there wasn’t no actual visiting. We basically took a long circular path through Khardah and around Titagarh where the railway station made me suspect I have passed it before on a long distance train. Khardah, or at least the parts of it I saw, is something of a Muslim ghetto, only its being way out makes it just an amorphous cluster. Nonetheless there are quite a few mosques and makeshift shops selling cheap and excessively bright chiffons, sequins and zardosi. And yes the place was crowded. It being a Sunday sure didn’t help here where all the people had come out on the road to take the air while haggling over bric a brac. I couldn’t see much more except that we also thought of eating to pass the time but imagine the horrors when I saw weevils the size of pen caps hovering over every sweetmeat in every sweetshop. Crazy.
Back at the stadium I was ready with a little masala and that had me all set and looking forward to the match. The match was okay. Punjab were really good but unidimensional. Nagaland were nimble and frisky yet very feeble. Punjab won 1-0.