Strangers straightened their clothes

We're back. In a way.

Not wholly back.

Bits of Kolkata came back in our suitcases, and bits of of us stayed back there. Our three weeks wasn't enough. But then, six wouldn't have sufficed either. No matter how long you stay, in the end, you feel like you're cutting the cord all over again.

Four years ago, we'd flown to Kolkata with a four-month old baby tucked into a bassinet. This time, it was with a four-year old who sat in her own seat sipping apple juice, peering into clouds and watching Mary Poppins.

From the minute we landed, Chotto-Ma loved everything. She loved the cabs with seats like trampolines; no seatbelts, no rules. The colours, the sun, the stray dogs. Hours of playtime with Mamma, scratchy kisses from Dada. She ate shondesh in every shape, and puchkas from street corners. She rode an auto, a mini bus, a cycle-rickshaw. She made new friends. Met family she hadn't met before. She threw herself right in there, and forgot we had to leave.

My photographs can never do the city justice, but here they are as promised. I'm splitting them over two posts - this one diaries the city as I saw it, from dawn to dark. The next, of course, will have to be about the food.

This was the first time I'd ever walked around Kolkata with a camera. The most wonderful thing about taking photographs in India is how much people want to be photographed. Strangers straightened their clothes, smoothed their hair and asked me to take a picture before I could ask them. I had no use for my Anglicised sense of camera-manners, permissions and privacy.

So this is Kolkata. The city, and its people.

I hope the photographs give you a sense of the place, the pace, the people. It's where I grew up, where D grew up. It's where we fell in love. It's where the people closest to us live. And where we'll always go back.