KOLKATA.pdf

7/29/2019 KOLKATA.pdf

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Oh! Calcutta

How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I

leave this city.Kahlil Gibrans verse, immortalised in the words of the Prophet as he departed from

Orphalese, resounds through the shadowy haunts of the psyche as a despondent sadness descends

upon the heart of one confronted with the pang of separation from a place, the multitudinous moods

and memories of which are no more alien to him than his own self. The conglomeration of consequent

reminiscences evokes a paroxysm of emotions that oft remains incomprehensible in words and

imperceptible to all but the separated. The pulse of ones own city quivers with the beat of the

individual heart, and its soul, walking in quiet beauty like the night, indiscernibly permeates the very

roots of ones existence as its charm gently steals over life. Therefore, recollections of Kolkata

inevitably educe a nostalgic remembrance of the charm lost amidst the many shapes of joyless

daylight; when the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world, have hung upon the beatings of

my heart. Charming in the architectural grandeur of the British legacy, charming in the people who

take an interest in anothers life and are a witness to it and charming in every aspect that lends it its

unparalleled essence, Kolkata exudes warmth that leaves few unmoved.

The waters of the sylvan Hooghly silently relate a chronicle of the naissance of a city that it

has witnessed over the unimpeded course of the ceaseless passage of time; a tale of metamorphosis of

the three obscure hamlets of Kalikata, Gobindapur and Sutanuti, languishing under Mughal

suzerainty, to a metropolis whose mention strikes a chord in a few million hearts that beat as one. The

alteration which had been thus initiated in the terminal years of the seventeenth century by Job

Charnock proceeds even today, albeit infinitesimally subtly, in a conurbation that seems crippled

under the weight of its former legacy as the greatest colonial city of the Orient, portending an august

symbol of the mighty Raj. The reluctance to change finds apt expression in the citys resistance to

accept the process of progressive detachment from its colonial past, initiated half a century ago in an


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impertinent attempt to transcend the conservatism of Calcutta in a Kolkata which would embrace the

au courant. As one comprehends an inherent disinclination towards the parochial trend associated

with replacement of English with Bengali, succinctly highlighted by the absence of the rechristened

equivalents of Camac Street, Ripon Street and Wellesley Street among many others in public

memory, one perceives a voiceless expression of the citys lamentations that It is not a garment I

cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands. As a prisoner of its own invisible mind,

incarcerated in the penitentiary of bygones, it remains redolent of a distinctively regal aura that

endears it to its denizens as it had in the eighteenth century to the throngs of fortune-seekers who

congregated from across the globe to participate in the nascent phase of a burgeoning settlement. The

cosmopolitan blend of Kolkatas multifarious communities, which intermingle to weave a social

fabric of profound intricacy, owes its origins to this cultural heterogeneity and lends credence to the

citys representation as an epitome of India, socially, politically and essentially in terms of throbbing

life that can seldom be punctuated. Festivals thus lose their religious identity in the social milieu

ascribed to this cultural miscellany and distinctions are rendered redundant as the joie-de-vivre of

festivities engulfs the entire populace. The Durga Puja represents the pinnacle of the citys passion

evinced by the multitudes satiated with blissful contentment at the prospect of welcoming the divine

to her transient earthly domicile. Drenched in the festive spirit and temporarily oblivious to the

concerns of the material world, the populace gravitates to the adroitly designed pandals symbolising

the temporary abode of the deity till the culmination of the celebrations at the conclusion of the fifth

day when the diminution of the expressive fervour to a discomforting stillness in anticipation of the

succeeding year commences. The immersion of the Goddess in the spiritually sacrosanct waters of the

Ganges brings to mind the immortal adage Dust thou art, to dust returneth. and heralds the

departure of the citys favourite daughter from her maternal home to the sphere where she remains

bound by holy matrimony and the grieving city reverts with ineffable lethargy from a glistening

chandelier to a host of fireflies, only to be illuminated again thereafter during the festival of lights and

the season of the Nativity. The soulful rendition of hymns floating through the Gothic stained-glass

casements of the St. Pauls Cathedral, the corpulent figures of Santa Claus on Park Street and the

traditional Christmas cakes and confectionery at Flury's invoke the Yuletide spirit and the buoyant


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atmosphere of genial joviality extends to the bonhomie with which the New Year, accompanied by a

million new aspirations and dreams, is ushered in.

Indiscernible distinctions, fathered over the course of evolution of the expansive life form

and having permeated through the annals of history, imprint every organ with its individual personage

and distinctive ambience. The relatively older sections of North Calcutta stretching through Bagbazar,

Shyambazar and adjoining areas merge to constitute a mesmerizing district dominated by narrow

lanes and alleys dotted with quaint decrepit buildings, each murmuring a story of pain and delight,

solitude and exultation spanning over centuries within its walls while the dulcet whispers of history

echo through the old mansions of Hindu aristocrats, the most prominently recognised being the

Jorasanko Tagore House, birth place of Rabindranath Tagore, which is now a centre for Indian

Classical Fine Arts with the appellation of Rabindra Bharati University. The adjunct areas of Hoggs

Market, popularly referred to as New Market, (the recognition of its date of inception as 1864

notwithstanding), the faade of contiguous rows of musty bookstores on the serpentine pathways of

College Street and the stately nineteenth century architecture of the Indian Museum captivate the

bystander, entranced by the antediluvian vibes emanating from the borough, in a hypnotic stupor,

transporting him to a period when broughams were not merely confined to the Maidan or the Red

Road. The heart of the city with its auricles and ventricles at Dalhousie Square and Esplanade is

primarily oriented towards commercial business with several archaic Government edifices, which lie

peeling and decaying today, and its avenues have long been choked owing to their inability of further

expansion. The southern and relatively juvenile fringes of the city, having developed consequent to

the attainment of Indian independence in 1947, characterise the modernisation depicted by lattices of

flyovers and gargantuan malls and reflected in the liberalisation that permits the proletariat to

perpetuate their diurnal struggle to keep body and soul together in dilapidated slums alongside the

opulent houses of the affluent or the nouveau riche as also the simultaneous presence of luxurious

private vehicles with the quintessentially ubiquitous Ambassador and traditional hand-drawn

rickshaws, which are vehemently criticised amongst the intelligentsia as a repugnant delineation of

the inhumane nature of human bondage. Traditional modes of transportation retain a profound role in


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the life in Kolkata albeit the peripatetic perambulators constituting the sea of humanity flooding the

streets, oft remain indifferent to the indolent electric reptile that slithers through the narrow and

crowded paths composing the intertwined and divergent web spanning across the citys countenance.

Ever since the dawn of an epoch with the introduction of landaus on rails, the assiduous dignified

gentleman has persevered through an enormity of transformations and impediments in its evolution

from steed to electricity, while observing decades of history through its wheels. As it lackadaisically

meanders through the madding crowds and the congested traffic, the trams blas motion evinces

incongruity to the notion of the modern and the serpentine vehicle serves as a poignant reminder of

the heritage that renders it synonymous with a city that refuses to let the dead past bury its dead. A

journey aboard the carriages on Route 36 is utterly evocative of the romantic allure that one attributes

to this symbol of the lost era of a dying city and akin to the mother of a crippled infant, the people

of Kolkata remain overwhelmingly possessive about the very last survivor of the Raj; their

unconditional love for the object of their pride would extend till its last run, when the choking

metropolis would eventually wring out its terminal breath. The smell of moist rain-soaked earth

emanating from the lush Maidan, recurrently alluded to as the respiratory organ of the city,

accompanied by the gentle ring of the bells on board the vehicle sliding under verdant foliage

immerses the passenger in a serene reverie amidst a realm isolated from the incessant cacophony of

traffic. Further down the course, the Victoria Memorial Hall and its stately gardens, designed by Sir

William Emerson using Indo-Saracenic style, in memory of Queen Victoria, glistens in the backdrop

of the dolorousness of the lugubrious ethereal spheres reminding citizens of the angel that looks over

the Second City of the Raj as a shepherd watches over his flock. The stately view of the race course

induces a spate of contemplations pertaining to Kolkatas former jugular vein as the crimson Lethe is

impelled by the overhead wires. Once the lifeline of an embryonic settlement, the tram has today been

reduced to an object of mere euphoria for children, a sentiment which tersely transforms to aversion

and ridicule or mere disregard with the advancement of age. The skyline of the Maidan is punctured

by the bronze crest of the Ochterlony Monument and the Governors residence modelled on Lord

Curzons home, at Keddleston Hall, Derbyshire, holds command in the North. As one progresses on

to Karl Marx Sarani, the tranquillity of the journey precedes a discourteous arousal of the passenger


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from the epiphany by a veritable bedlam of noises associated with a menagerie of modes of public

transport. The spectacle of buses and auto-rickshaws, overloaded with passengers to the extent of

being gravitationally unstable, chaotically roaring past in wild fury and vehemence, moving to the

beats of Shivas frenzied dance with blatant disregard for traffic regulations, remind one of the sundry

fragments of the spirit scattered among the streets that amalgamate to fabricate the city of joy.

Relentless periods of turbulence and the perfidious machinations of fate including the

relegation of the city to a secondary echelon after the transfer of capital to Delhi in 1911, the

excruciating angst associated with the partition of Bengal, the zenith of the Naxalite movement

characterised by wanton and gratuitous violence four decades ago and the political betrayals unknown

to other Indian conurbations, have rendered the city synonymous with poverty and deprivation

disconcertingly reminiscent of Eliots poetry. A sense of despair is discernible amongst a society

caught in the mire of its own decay in a city witnessing the burnt out ends of smoky days . Beneath

the superficial exuberance embellishing the exterior, the shroud of joy may be lifted to reveal the

monotony and innate dissatisfaction among the lives of the people raising dingy shades in a

thousand furnished rooms for whom the world revolves like ancient women, gathering fuel in

vacant lots as life proceeds with intolerable lassitude ignorant of the exigency of progress. Albeit

the whirlpool of the Bengal Renaissance, which originated in the nascent stages of the twentieth

century for the cultural ablution and intellectual refinement to purge the dross from the indispensable,

had its crux in the city, Kolkata today exemplifies an aura of listlessness that encompasses all spheres

of life and is reflected in the economic stagnation under the thirty four years of the Communist

regime, the sloth and ennui of government officials and public servants who remain unreservedly

satisfied with being able to leave the office prior to the fifth chime of the clock or simply, the

unadulterated public elation at the prospect of suspension of work for a day on grounds of an

unforeseen bandh. Political discourses therefore inevitably constitute a focal point for the freestyle

intellectual exchanges (adda), a distinctive idiosyncratic foible among cohesive neighbourhoods

(paras), intermittently diverting to issues of association football or the gastronomic gratification

obtained from the various cross-cultural culinary options ranging from K.C. Dass rasgullas to


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Nizams delectable delicacies. The perplexing aspect however remains the archetypal Bengalis

sedate acceptance of the galling menaces that plague the city even when wading through waterlogged

streets or the mephitic filth and indeterminate brown substances on the potholed roads that

characterise entire stretches and his contentment that induces the ability to remain apathetic to the

same. Despite the concoction of ethnic influences, a single unified voice cries from the heart of the

city, echoing through the ether without a tongue or a lip, and resonates with the message that the

Bengali sobriquet means everything to the people for whom passionate ardour flows through their

veins as much as Bengali blood does. The indefinable realisation that Kolkatas beauteous forms,

through a long absence, have not been to me as is a landscape to a blind mans eye thus

substantiates a subtly comprehended emotion that the vivacious metropolis is not merely a thought

left behind but rather a heart made sweet with hunger and thirst. To a Bengali, irrespective of the fact

that Kolkata may have lost the beauteous halo that circled around [its] brow, the language, the city

that one calls home, and the motley group of emotions associated therewith shall always remain an

object of pride and reverence. As Bennett, Coleman and Co. had rather eloquently expressed, West

Bengal may be our history and geography but Bengal is our reality. Every home, every dish, every

adda and everyone here breathes only Bengal.

-RHINE SAMAJDAR

(SR. NO. 11-01-00-10-91-12-1-09939)

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