For someone who had boarded the ‘Deluxe’ train from an overwhelmingly large and forever busy Howrah station, the railway station of Delhi appeared so small and so very provincial. It was during the biting winter of 1967, and I had been told by panicked relatives back home to wrap my muffler tightly around my neck and over my ears.
I had complied, until my guide, Father Noel D’Souza of Saint Xavier’s Collegiate School, Calcutta, and I reached Springdales School. This was the venue of our ‘international high school students’ conference’ and the place was full of delegates from all over, turned out in smart school blazers. My tightly wrapped muffler received giggles from the smartly dressed girls of Delhi, which prompted me to quickly unwrap the unstylish piece. I slung the muffler loosely and rakishly over the shoulders — even as the cold got straight to my vulnerable Bengali throat.
To a Calcuttan, the Delhi of 1967 appeared to have too much space, and public areas were far better maintained than Kolkata. But it also seemed somewhat bleak, lonely and not warm enough to endear. The cars we saw were Fiats and Standard Heralds, and some honking Ambassadors, as in dear, congested Kolkata — but as the roads were consciously wider, they looked consequently emptier. God knows why one had to walk miles along deserted roads to locate a teashop, or a paan-cigarette shop and I missed them, not because I was hooked on tea or smoke or paans, but because these shops exuded life, attracted chatty customers and blared Hindi film songs over Vividh Bharati.

Scooters and cycles were more numerous and my first trip by autorickshaw in Delhi taught me that they specialised in taking outstation passengers ‘for a real ride’ — as they went round and round in circles. I learnt two new Punjabi words from the drivers — they were ‘Khabbe’ and ‘Sajje’ for left and right turns — no one seemed to understand the Hindi equivalents in Delhi then.
After this foray, I visited the city quite a few times, and saw it grow, literally, in front of my eyes — through the UNCTAD meet of 1968, the Asiad of 1982 (how could one miss it?), the massive 7th NAM summit of 1983 and so on. I was very much in Delhi when truckloads of money were poured in to build India’s quickest and most extravagant Metro Rail network. I envied Delhi’s Metro for boring underground tunnels without ripping the city apart, while Kolkata’s Metro slaughtered the cramped city’s main overground thoroughfares for a decade, the best years of my youth.
But thank God, for Delhi’s superior and bigger metro network— or else, by now, both traffic and commutation would have collapsed — as the city just expanded and bloated beyond imagination. Later, the Commonwealth Games of 2010 added a lot to Delhi and over a hundred flyovers have come up by now, where there were hardly any when I came for the first time.

There are now some 35 five-star hotels, where only a handful on one’s fingers in 1980. The DND bridge and Barapulla have improved life so much. It is impossible to explain to anyone at all — except to some old timers — the phenomenal growth that has taken place between that chilly morning of 1967 and the autumn afternoon of autumn 2024 when I left Delhi at 72, for good.
I lived as a denizen of Delhi, a city that I proudly called my second home, for nearly two decades, in three phases, and have now returned to Kolkata. The latter looks so behind the times and surely lacks the pulsating growth of other metropolises and their dazzling prosperity. But it still nurses a throbbing, warm heart. In fact, I think I am the only ‘Kolkata Bengali of West Bengal cadre’ who has spent a long period of twenty years in Delhi — by deliberate choice and then returned to Kolkata.
Also Read: Ameen Sayani, Who United The Soul Of India
I am not comparing my years spent with the much smarter Delhi-born Bengalis or the always-ahead Pravasi Bengalis from other parts of India, who have clung on to Delhi until they were yanked out. The ‘locals’ of West Bengal are usually apprehensive of venturing to Delhi as they view it as a cold, calculating city and a rather difficult place to work in or adjust to. The nation’s capital and its slick bureaucrats, its no-holds-barred politicians and the jet-set businessmen ‘who must get their deals done’ give them a distinct sense of unease and trepidation.
So much so, that most ‘local Bengalis’ and (surprisingly) even most of other-state officers of the West Bengal cadre of the IAS, IPS do not also usually apply for Central deputation. West Bengal is not known to be highly competitive and is/was quite comfortable to work in. It is sometimes quite laid back in many respects. This suits a particular class to stay put in Kolkata, even though they pride themselves as ‘All India Service’ officers. In any case, Kolkata is still among the top six metropolises of India — though both the Centre and the State are trying quite hard to make it slip out this list.
Along with this personal reluctance of IAS and IPS to work in Delhi, is a second reason and this is the most unjustified reluctance of the State government in not forwarding their applications to work at the Centre. The third and the most unfair obstacle is that the State does not release these officers for a central posting, even when they are selected through a highly competitive process. This cruelty has been the prevailing administrative malaise in many States (especially Gujarat before 2014) and now West Bengal leads in this pettiness.

I had my first taste of this when I approached the State government, in the tenth year of my service, to be permitted to move to Delhi on deputation. I had no idea that my illustrious Bengali batchmate had met the Chief Secretary before me, to plead that he be allowed to go to Delhi as deputy secretary as his family and roots were in Delhi — which was true.
The very business-like Chief Secretary dismissed me even before I could explain why a ‘local Bengali’ needed to work in Delhi. He told me clearly that since I had no aged parents (has anyone heard of ‘young parents?) who were pining in Delhi to see me, I should give up the idea of working in Delhi. And, he mentioned, in passing, as an old Delhi-hand, that it was, indeed, a ‘challenging place’. I learnt from him the art of diplomatic rejection.
I went back, quite dejected, to Bardhaman, where I was then District Magistrate of the-then undivided and impossible to manage district. My wife consoled me and I learnt to live with the rejection. But, within a few months, my luck took a dramatic turn. Mr P.R. Dasmunsi, the new President of the State Congress, who I had accosted not too pleasantly a couple of times when I ‘controlled’ his agitations against the Left government of the State — due to law-and-order problems.

Dasmunsi was appointed by Rajiv Gandhi as the Union Minister of State for Commerce. And, lo and behold, he chose me (though I hardly knew him) as his Private Secretary. I felt that this was a chance I should not miss— whatever be the political fallout. I seized it, and despite a lot of objections and hurdles, I managed to land in Delhi on the 30th of November 1986 — even without any formal letter of appointment.
My batchmate (who had beaten me to the game) welcomed me warmly with a good dinner and then took me out for drive to India Gate for an ice cream. My teeth were chattering, as it was some 5 degrees Celsius — on the 3rd of December — the date and temperature remain embedded in my mind even now. The green lights of ice cream carts and the frozen delights taken out of their iceboxes are still synonymous with pleasure. There was a chilly wind which only added to the pleasure. A bit of Kolkata was left me that night — as I learnt to brave Delhi.
Image Courtesy: Pinterest, Hindustan Times, Youtube, India.com
Jawhar Sircar is a former Member of Parliament. He retired from the Indian Administrative Service as India’s Culture Secy and was later Chief Executive Officer of the public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati. He is well-known for his articles on history, culture and politics and his columns appear in several leading Indian and foreign newspapers and magazines in English and Bengali. Sircar has also been the Chairman of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.