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.
