ULICA PIOTRKOWSKA

It’s been long since I’ve blogged but then I have always blogged on impulse and with no specific agenda. Today, I just feel like it. Darby has returned from the US and we have spent a lot of time catching up, cribbing about being away from each other, planning our end-of-summer vacation about which, by the way, I am very excited, spending hours reading and sitting wide-eyed through lazy, l-a-z-y afternoons in cafes and pubs on Piotrkowska Street.

If there is anything that I really love about my life in Poland, it is the time that this stay has given me to see the world go by. And this is indulged in best on Piotrkowska, a world in itself, our very own Araby, the difference being that our magical fair leaves nothing to be desired. Some of the best times that we have spent so far in this by-now-not-so-new country have been on Piotrkowska. With or without friends, time flies here. Between the cup and the lip, hundreds of personal histories are told.

Piotrkowska Street is the main artery of Łódź and is one of the longest commercial thoroughfares in Europe, with a length of 4.9 km. The northern part of the street is pedestrianised, although emergency and ‘security’ vehicles are allowed to speed along it—and do with alarming frequency, sometimes weaving between the numerous beer gardens in the summer. The street boasts of Łódź’s ‘Walk of Fame’ with stars naming Polanski and Kieslowski right in front of the entrance to the ‘Grand Hotel’. Traversing the musical, literary, film and commercial history of Łódź is easy on Piotrkowska as it is impossible to miss Arthur Rubenstein playing the piano in front of what used to be his home, the Nobel laureate Reymont penning a few lines and Scheibler sitting at a conference with fellow 19th century industrialists. There is Café Horte, reminding the citizens of a time before the transference of power, when it used to be the only ice-cream parlour in town, and when flats, telephones and even sofa-sets were available but only after one was patient enough to wait for one’s turn, sometimes for months (if it was a couch one desired) and sometimes for years (if it was a flat one required), when Poland to the ignorant meant a part of erstwhile Russia, when there were more Russians on the streets than there was meat in the shops. Communist era veterans with their weather beaten faces drag themselves along Piotrkowska, silent witnesses to a change of guard. Yuppies in love, yuppies out of love, yuppies in the latest Vogue fashion, bespectacled intellectuals, backpackers, housewives, ex-wives, mothers with prams, grandparents and toddlers, young technocrats, busking musicians, beggars and tramps pass by in the course of our drinking a pint of Guiness at the Irish Pub. Here, the occident allures the orient and vice versa. Religions, races and countries find representation here, and so 'Istanbul' sells kebabs, 'Ganesh' sells chicken butter masala, 'The Mexican' sells tortilla-s, an Iraqi couple sells exotic spices and the Poles sell napolonka and pierogi. Poland in a microcosm - that’s Piotrkowska for us and for the thousands of tourists who care to stop and see the world pass by on glorious summer afternoons.

And hopeless Bongs that we are, we cannot help but compare some unknown Polish gentleman walking back home from work or some middle-aged couple in a rickshaw, discussing domestic woes to some Tapan Kaku or 'o para-r Banerjees' from back home. It is a strange world we live in. More often than not the comparisons we make are apt.