Fifty Years Ago
Click here to start from Part 1
I explore the city travelling by buses and trams with friends. At a few paise per trip, one can go all over town, all day, without spending a rupee. Buses all over India are overloaded, but Calcutta gives the word a new meaning. Remarkably, a female can get into a 40 seater bus carrying 80, be offered a seat, travel in peace and come out of it untouched. In Delhi it would be a miracle to emerge unmolested.
In fullness of time I land in Park Street; virtually a carry-over from colonial days with its continental food restaurants, western bands, crooners and cabarets. There is even a smallish Moulin Rouge with a rotating windmill on its fascia. Most men are in suits or at least ties, and most women in western dress. Calcutta, one finds, is the only Indian city without a hypocritical attitude towards alcohol, entertainment and romance.
The Burra Bazaar with its Marwari dominance is a different city within a city. Here be the chaps who make money and create jobs. One of them, R D Bansal, produces and finances Satyajit Ray films.
The colleges, the book shops and the coffee house of College Street are another fascinating world. The coffee house is a hotbed of student politics increasingly turning left. Marx, Engles, Che and Mao are the heroes here.
Tangra is a sizable Chinatown from where emerge beauticians, excellent shoes and other leather products as also superb banglafied and indified Hakka Chinese food.
Bihar is everywhere in the city. From Rickshaw pullers to coolies to water haulers and herders of butchery-bound live-stock, you name any backbreaking job and there is a Bihari willing to take it.
The city is full of aesthetically pleasing buildings. Most are poorly maintained. The Victoria Memorial will never grow up to be a Taj Mahal, but it is a pleasant place to go to, as are places like Belur Math, Dakshineshwar, Bandel Church and Botanical Garden.
Some of these are also places where urban romance flourishes. There is nothing more romantic than a walk by the lakes, or a slow sail boat across the Ganges, with the light rain and the setting sun conducting the background music playing in one's head. Young couples have a hard time getting any privacy and head out to a dozen or so lover's lanes just to get away from prying familiar eyes. Like in many Indian cities, the cheapest and best private space is cinema seats in the last row - after the show starts.
Indian Statistical Institute founded by P C Mahalonobis is a nationally and internationally famed place of academic excellence. This is where, for the next six years, I live and learn. Learn to live - neither wisely nor too well, I am afraid. And to love - too well but perhaps not wisely.
It is an idyllic place to study and work. Its vast campus is an eclectic mix of the ancient and the very modern. Fellow students are from all parts of India and a few are from other countries. One learns the ways of 'others'. One learns about local cuisine, music, film, theatre customs and so on. One learns the local language. And Addabaazi.
The ISI faculty harbours many tall intellects of a calibre rarely seen together in any one space. It is the cradle for India's statistical back-bone, giving birth to the Central Statistical Organisation and the National Sample Survey. ISI also plays a large role in shaping the Planning Commission and later the National Informatics Centre.
ISI is where India's first mainframe computer will be installed and the very first post-graduate programme in computer science will be started. In course of time, there will be no academic or professional space on earth involving statistics which will remain untouched by ISI alumni or faculty.
After I left in 1968 I have gone back to Calcutta a few times. Sometimes for business but sometimes also 'just'. To touch favourite places. Or to touch base with favourite people. As I write this I have tried not to update my first impressions and have referred to later events only where they bore a direct relationship to what I observed then.
As I write this Mamata di is the Chief Minister, her Trinamool having displaced the CP(M) after thirty-five odd years. She promises to turn Calcutta into London of the east. And has started out by painting the town blue.
Click here to start from Part 1
I explore the city travelling by buses and trams with friends. At a few paise per trip, one can go all over town, all day, without spending a rupee. Buses all over India are overloaded, but Calcutta gives the word a new meaning. Remarkably, a female can get into a 40 seater bus carrying 80, be offered a seat, travel in peace and come out of it untouched. In Delhi it would be a miracle to emerge unmolested.
In fullness of time I land in Park Street; virtually a carry-over from colonial days with its continental food restaurants, western bands, crooners and cabarets. There is even a smallish Moulin Rouge with a rotating windmill on its fascia. Most men are in suits or at least ties, and most women in western dress. Calcutta, one finds, is the only Indian city without a hypocritical attitude towards alcohol, entertainment and romance.
The Burra Bazaar with its Marwari dominance is a different city within a city. Here be the chaps who make money and create jobs. One of them, R D Bansal, produces and finances Satyajit Ray films.
The colleges, the book shops and the coffee house of College Street are another fascinating world. The coffee house is a hotbed of student politics increasingly turning left. Marx, Engles, Che and Mao are the heroes here.
Tangra is a sizable Chinatown from where emerge beauticians, excellent shoes and other leather products as also superb banglafied and indified Hakka Chinese food.
Bihar is everywhere in the city. From Rickshaw pullers to coolies to water haulers and herders of butchery-bound live-stock, you name any backbreaking job and there is a Bihari willing to take it.
The city is full of aesthetically pleasing buildings. Most are poorly maintained. The Victoria Memorial will never grow up to be a Taj Mahal, but it is a pleasant place to go to, as are places like Belur Math, Dakshineshwar, Bandel Church and Botanical Garden.
Some of these are also places where urban romance flourishes. There is nothing more romantic than a walk by the lakes, or a slow sail boat across the Ganges, with the light rain and the setting sun conducting the background music playing in one's head. Young couples have a hard time getting any privacy and head out to a dozen or so lover's lanes just to get away from prying familiar eyes. Like in many Indian cities, the cheapest and best private space is cinema seats in the last row - after the show starts.
Indian Statistical Institute founded by P C Mahalonobis is a nationally and internationally famed place of academic excellence. This is where, for the next six years, I live and learn. Learn to live - neither wisely nor too well, I am afraid. And to love - too well but perhaps not wisely.
It is an idyllic place to study and work. Its vast campus is an eclectic mix of the ancient and the very modern. Fellow students are from all parts of India and a few are from other countries. One learns the ways of 'others'. One learns about local cuisine, music, film, theatre customs and so on. One learns the local language. And Addabaazi.
The ISI faculty harbours many tall intellects of a calibre rarely seen together in any one space. It is the cradle for India's statistical back-bone, giving birth to the Central Statistical Organisation and the National Sample Survey. ISI also plays a large role in shaping the Planning Commission and later the National Informatics Centre.
ISI is where India's first mainframe computer will be installed and the very first post-graduate programme in computer science will be started. In course of time, there will be no academic or professional space on earth involving statistics which will remain untouched by ISI alumni or faculty.
After I left in 1968 I have gone back to Calcutta a few times. Sometimes for business but sometimes also 'just'. To touch favourite places. Or to touch base with favourite people. As I write this I have tried not to update my first impressions and have referred to later events only where they bore a direct relationship to what I observed then.
As I write this Mamata di is the Chief Minister, her Trinamool having displaced the CP(M) after thirty-five odd years. She promises to turn Calcutta into London of the east. And has started out by painting the town blue.
Anil,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on a supelative summary of Cal of the 1960s - coinciding largely with my own first impressions of the city in 1960. (Pardon me , I was headed to IIT, Kharagpur to become an engineer to create jobs for statisticians and the like!)
I must add a few more remarkable impressions of Cal . Got caught up in a spontaneous rioting which erupted in the bus yard outside Howrah station when a pedestrian was run over by a bus. My pocket was picked in the melee and I walked home to Alipore. Next - I felt miserable and wretched to see central Cal as a ghost city under curfew with only machine guns mounted army trucks patrolling Chowringhee during a (very rare) communal riot, perhaps in 1970. And then the impression of the awesome parade of tribals with bows and arrows walking down Esplanade towards Writers' Building, saluting the Viet cong and other leftist forces of the world with Laal salaam .
India has many great cities - Cal is the one with a vibrant and expressive soul!
Ramesh Phadke
ReplyDeleteExcellent Anil, congrats.
The second five year plan created a lot of jobs for engineers! This is the case of a statistician creating job for engineers. PCM was an adviser to Nehru in mordernizing India, and this included creating IITs.
ReplyDeleteI am out of touch of Bengal and Calcutta for nearly two decades. I remember only a few things. During Durgapuja I often used to walk the entire city of Calcutta. Many a day, while I was in ISI, I used to walk all the roads, rail roads and villages around ISI, day and nights for many miles - I would often carry PRHalmos' Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces - my favorite to sit down and read under a tree before a pond or lake or river. I hear many things about Calcutta now - there is no rickshaw pullers! I entered ISI last time a day before my marriage. I met most of my ISI teachers at my marriage. Before that they held healthy curiosity about me whenever I walked in ISI - a touch of intimacy unmatched perhaps by any other institutions!
ReplyDeleteAnil ji,
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful sketch!!
You have drawn a moving picture of Kolkata of those days – when it was Calcutta.
I am truly very impressed with your crisp narration.
You have re-created the regal city of Calcutta of the 60’s.
I had read about Mirza Ghalib’s trip from Delhi to Calcutta around 1827. This legendary Urdu poet had gone there to get his pension (awarded by Mughal court) renewed by the new rulers. He took the river route – Jamuna, then Ganga/Hooghly. Though he did not succeed in his financial endeavor but he was quite impressed with the new majestic urban sprawl. He met many a literary figures from different background and liked the new British concept of metropolitan environment in India. He literally swooned at Calcutta and its friendly people.
In one couplet he says:
CALCUTTAY KA JO ZIKR KIYA TOO NE HUMNASHEEN
IK TEER MERE SEENE MAIN MARA KI HAI HAI
(Oh my partner, you reminded me of Calcutta, Ah! it feels as if an arrow is piercing my chest)
Anilji, I sincerely present this couplet of Ghalib to you. You have become that friend of Ghalib who became the source of providing that sweet feeling about this lovely and lively city.
Sayeed Akhtar
Wonderful, takes back memories. I have not been back to Calcutta since I left in 1970, and was planning to go next year. This piece has rekindled my desire to visit Kolkata...
ReplyDeleteThank you Anil.
Oh Calcutta !
ReplyDeleteYou have laid the City bare so vividly just like the off-Broadway musical. Reading your piece is the next best thing to being there.
Me
Superb ending too, living up to the promise of the first part. Will look forward to more!
ReplyDeleteFinally, some light has been shed on just why you thought Parineeta was worth watching.
ReplyDeletebrilliantly observed and beatifully translated in words..you make the city come alive...its interesting to note that this one city has so many different threads one can weave & talk about..
ReplyDeletewhen do you write about the bhadralok & street side food?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletebyapok (could not but resort to Bangla!)
ReplyDelete