You see, this city lives two lives—
One that goes by the name of Calcutta, steeped in culture, nostalgia, and the slow unravel of time.
And the other—Kolkata—the rebranded, fast-paced metro, defined by the chaos of traffic and the digital clock above the Esplanade crossing.

But no matter how much it tries to keep up with its metropolitan siblings—Delhi’s sprawl, Bombay’s buzz, Bangalore’s tech sheen—this city still beats to a rhythm that is entirely its own. A rhythm of adda that stretches through the afternoon, of mishti in clay cups, of trams that dare to survive in a world of Ubers and impatient deadlines.

It rained today in Calcutta. Not the kind of polite drizzle you forget, but a steady, monsoon rain that makes you feel like the whole world has paused to listen. And I found myself thinking of the kind of love that only this city can make you feel—the kind that is sentimental, slow-burning, and impossibly deep.

There’s a reason why Calcutta romances hit different.

Take Metro… In Dino, for example. A beautiful anthology of love stories that unfolds across India’s biggest cities, showing how romance is shaped by the pulse of the places we live in. From the clinical, high-functioning relationships of Delhi to the dreamy chaos of Mumbai, each story is distinctly shaped by its city. But it’s the Kolkata segment that lingers.

Because in Calcutta, love isn’t found in coffee dates and Instagram captions—it is found in silences, in longing, in unspoken familiarity. The story set here doesn’t rush. It walks, like the city. It mourns and hopes at the same time, like the people. And it dares to ask the question: what if love didn’t need to be dramatic to be real?

The city romances differently. It doesn’t just hold your hand; it holds your history. It doesn’t just remember your favourite song—it remembers the time you heard it for the first time on a crackly FM station while stuck in traffic near Shyambazar.

Being born and brought up here, I know what it is to carry a city in your bones.
To know that you’ll never truly belong anywhere else.
And that no matter how far you go, you’ll always be looking for someone who loves the way Calcutta loves.

That kind of love is not flashy. It is built over slow walks through College Street, over crispy phuchka shared between arguments, over Metro rides that are somehow too short and too long at the same time.
It is built in bookstores and tea stalls, in the gap between what you say and what you mean.

People say I’m stuck in the past. That I believe in a version of love that no longer exists. That I still romanticize letters, and Rabindrasangeet, and the poetry scribbled in margins of notebooks.

And they’re right.
Because Calcutta has taught me that love doesn’t have to be convenient to be true.

I will love you like this city clings to ivy-covered buildings and yellow taxis—unapologetically, even if the world is moving on.
I will love you like Kolkata loves Durga Pujo: with an all-consuming joy that doesn’t care about what comes after.
I will love you with the quiet devotion of tramlines still carving their path through madness, and with the abandon of a sindoor khela afternoon.
I will love both your chaos and your calm—just like this city does.

Because this city has never tried to be anything it is not.
It holds on—to its roots, to its language, to its impossible softness.

And maybe that’s why the love born here lasts.

In Metro… In Dino, every city told a different love story, but Kolkata’s story wasn’t about falling in love.
It was about staying in love.
Even when time passes. Even when people change. Even when love is no longer easy.

It was about that one place, that one person, who still feels like home.

And that, perhaps, is the truest tribute to Calcutta.
That despite everything—
the peeling paint, the crumbling houses, the crowded crossings—
it still teaches you the kind of love that stays.

So let the other cities race ahead. Let them find newer ways to romance.
As for me—
I will always choose to love the Calcutta way:
with depth, with memory, and with no intention of forgetting.