Tasting Times!

 One of my friends once asked me how can I get lost so often in a city I live in and yet manage to find my way around completely strange cities! Well the answer is simple: You can’t get lost if you don’t know where you are supposed to be!
And it was on one such ‘Oh-God-I-Am-Lost-Again’ afternoons, while walking through the meandering lanes and bylanes of North Kolkata, part of the city I call home, that my gourmand’s nose led me to a humble food stall. What caught my attention was the name —  Baruah & Dey— a rather unusual name for an eatery! There were seven-eight people eating outside sharing a long wooden bench and inside was a man making fresh batches of fries. “O kaku panteras hobey? (Uncle do you have panteras?) A boy with eyes hungrier and bigger than mine was peering from behind. “Panteras? Now what the hell is that?" I had never heard anything like it before! I went in to check the menu — maybe he meant something else I thought. The menu read: breast cutlet, fish fry, chicken fry, fish roll...and yes ‘Pantaras’!


I asked the lady at the counter what this weird word meant and of course she had no idea! But she told me that Panteras is to the Dey and Baruah what Kati rolls are to the Nizam’s — a house specialty. I knew that I had to taste it! And as I took the first bite I realised I was not lost! I felt like Columbus! And it was my destiny to discover the Panteras—a heavenly piece of cutlet made with chicken and eggs and more (however, I still have no clue what the word means. The closest I found on Google was: St Pantherus, martyred in Alexandria, in a slowly burning fire with Paul)
A friend once said: “Families of north Kolkata are very particular about their food. We are brought up on a strict beguni-kobiraji-fish fry diet. Our Sunday mornings are never complete without parar morer gutey kochuri ar jilipi. We need ‘cha’ er shathe ‘ta’ and more oily the ‘ta’ the better!” As a true Bangal should know his ilish and a ghoti his chingri, a quintessential north Calcuttan should be tested on his knowledge about cutlets — how coverage cutlet (chicken cutlet covered with egg) became kobiraji cutlet, and why not to look shell-shocked when someone says: ‘O dada duto breast deben’ and in reply comes another equally shocking question: ‘Kaar?’
And it is for this very reason that in north Kolkata at some non-descript corner of some dark unknown alley you might stumble upon a shop selling even a mouthful of sky (coated with breadcrumbs and deep-fried!). Some such must-try foods of north Kolkata are radhaballavi and chholar daal at Puntiram, mutton Afghani at coffee house and egg devils at Bholanath Cabin. And if you like ‘moton’ and you are a bong, it would be a sin to stop you from sampling Gol Bari’s kosha mangsho (I have always found their mutton a bit dry and stodgy though). Lakhinarayan Shaw’s (on Bidhan Sarani) peyaji— a favourite of Subhas Bose — still remains one of the best the city offers. Another shop famous for its telebhaja is Kalika Mukhorochok Telebhaja on Surya Sen Street — their mochar chop chingrir chop, fish chop, mutton chop and egg chop are simply ‘gorge-ous’!
However, if you are neither the explorer kinds nor belong to the bharey cha-Potla’r telebhaja-roakey adda clan and the ghoogni gali at Hatibagan doesn’t make you salivate, then the cafes and cabin restaurants are just the right place for you.
Cabin restaurants, as the names suggest, had small wooden cabins with curtains (usually red!). Today most of these hotels have tore down these cabins to make space for more customers and gone are the romance of the red curtains but what remains is the cha with some lip-smacking, oil-dripping ta and the bikeler adda. Mitali, Dilruba, New Malancha, Ratna and Silver Valley are some such restaurants which still serve great food. However, a few cabin hotels in and around Hatibagan still boast these romance and nostalgia-laden wooden cabins as does Niren Cabin at Shovabazar. Initially made to provide some privacy to the ‘family crowd’, these are now hot favourites among the lovebirds!
I still remember whenever ma took me to Hatibagan for shopping; we would go to Shupti or such cabin restaurants and gorge into heavenly moglai parotas (famous at Anadi Cabin) and mammoth-size dhakai parotas (I don’t know of any place that still serves this variety). But more than the food, I used to love those cosy little cabins and always insisted on closing the curtain and shutting the world out—now this can be my train, my chariot, my horse-drawn carriage and even my thatch-roofed hut!
However, it was when I was in college that I got introduced to the ‘real thrills’ of a ‘cabin hotel’ with Dikhusha becoming a part of our everyday life. And these 'thrills' had absolutely nothing to do with their amazing kobiraji (which even my brother, who describes eating a oil-soaked kobiraji as similar to having a cold dalda-laden biryani and cough syrup after five days on anti-biotic, found delicious the last time I went)!
These cabins were places where ‘first meetings’ between prospective ‘lovers’ were ‘organised’, where the shy guy would take five cutlets and nine cups of tea to propose to that ‘trying-to-look-shy-but-am-bored-to death-and-I-hate-red-rose’ girl, where friends would console the ‘heartbroken’ by offering him their own precious cigarettes and tea and paying the bill of a mammoth meal, and where the waiter will always peek with the bill when you have finally manage to muster the courage for that first kiss! So much were these cabins a part of some love stories that according to ‘urban legend’ a famous cabin hotel at Shyambazar had specially decorated one of their cabins to celebrate the marriage of one such couple!
Among the existing cafe’s one of the most popular one is the Mitra Cafe at Baghbazar and their brain chop can be easily regarded as Kolkata’s answer to the Mumbai’s bheja fry (even Sarvi’s!). However, near Mitra cafe, is a small cafe called Allen Kitchen, with a brief menu but scrumptious food including the best (even if a tad expensive at Rs 74) prawn cutlets (also try their chicken stack!) in the city. The members of the family still supervise the kitchen and the recipes are never given to outside cooks.
Unlike other restaurants, these eateries serve tea along with food and are ideal for long uninterrupted adda sessions. Although, food in these cabins and cafes are usually drowned in oil, it is nonetheless fresh and unbelievably cheap (and you also get onion- cucumber salad and mustard sauce free! Free! FREE!). Some of these restaurants serve amazingly appetizing stews and a few (like Purbani near Hatibagan) even make mouth-watering mangsho’r shingara (not to be confused with North India samosas) on Sundays!
And then there are cabins meant just for intellectual and political discussions—where all the items on the menu are within Rs10 and includes kata cake, paan cake, lebu cha, biscuit and the likes!

Once upon on Sundays!

Finally the ordeal was over. But once I checked the wall clock and my heart sank. I was late. As I walked out, the road was almost empty and all I could hear was a dog barking at some distance. I clutched my bag and started running as fast as I could. I was still a few minutes away from my house when suddenly the eerie silence was shattered by a shrill sound....
MAHABHARAT...atha shree Mahabharat katha...aaa
All the television sets of our locality had started singing. And I am yet to reach home. “Why does this always have to happen with me? WHY? How can anyone even think of drawing oranges and apples (I was never too much into Cezanne really) while Arjun has already arrived for the swayamvar? ”
As I scurried towards my house I kept praying that I would make it before the Kaalchkra was over with its ‘Main samay hun’ flashback—they surely won’t show Arjun or Krishna before I reach the television set, I assured myself. These two breathtakingly handsome men were the best things that had happened to me in the seven long years of my life on this planet...well...apart from the gorgeous box of coloured chalks that ma got me last week.
Sunday was more than just a holiday then. The day dawned with Rangoli which was followed by some amazing serials like Ramayan, He-Man, Space City Sigma and Indradhanush, Bharat Ek Khoj, Chanakya, Mowgli, Ducktales, Talespin, Captain Vyom (which had the absolutely droolicious Milind Soman) and not to forget the never-ending Chandrakanta and its bushy eye-browed ‘Yakku’ Krur Singh. However, I missed most of these thanks to my drawing class (in those days Sunday morning drawing classes were mandatory for almost every child).
However, Sundays were not only about Doordarshan. After an early (but elaborate as would suit a Sunday) lunch it was playtime! Most of us did not have telephones but we knew how to make optimum use of something that we all had — lung power. Whoever was the first to arrive at the playground was supposed to go to each building and shout the names on top of his voice until the concerned person came down (and strangely enough, in most cases this ‘concerned’ person would only hear his name after you got scolded by almost all the grown-ups of that building for shouting so loudly). After the full cast assembled, it was time to take the big decision—would it be ‘ais pais’ (I Spy) or lock and key or hide and seek.
Usually it was hide and seek which would most often end with people leaving for their homes as the person who was supposed to find the rest, kept counting with his eyes shut. There were also times when we would keep hiding at one place, sitting still as a log, only to find out that the person who was supposed to find us had left as he was too sleepy from the counting part (well numbers do tend to have that effect on many!).
However, on the dull summer days, when it was too hot to play outdoors, it was time to turn creative. I would bury myself in crepe papers, marble papers, beads, wires, crayons and what not. And then, there were times when ma would sit with the Rabindra Rachanabali and read out poems or letters or short stories. During summer vacations, Doordarshan would have special programmes for children in the afternoons as well.
In the evening, we would again gather at the playground or the club house but with strict instructions to reach home by 7pm. As we grew up, the deadline extended and instead of ‘ais pais’, lock and key and hide-and-seek, the guys found their calling in football and cricket and we girls in antakshari, dumb charade and so on. But Sundays were never complete without a long adda session.
Winters were for badminton. And the sessions went on till the older group arrived and threw us off the court. At times, the kakimas and jethimas would also indulge in a game or two before starting with their late night adda sessions mostly revolving around para scandals!
Sundays were also for various cultural programmes (and there was some occasion or the other almost every month!) and rehearsals! We would finish our studies early and assemble at the club house. Usually it would be some dance-drama and the most crucial and difficult thing would be to land a role where you get to play a girl. As the guys were too ‘unruly’ and ‘unmusical’, they were not allowed to take part in these hallowed plays and so it was up to us girls to play the role of the male characters as well. All the taller girls were given male roles and I regretted my height.
Later, when we graduated to dramas, the boys also joined us in playing boys (as there were a mere one or two female characters in these dramas, only the most ‘beautiful and slim’ girls got to play ‘girls’ and I was neither!). And even while playing the male characters I would never get the lead roles as I was shorter than the real boys and again I regretted my height.
Another thing I eagerly waited for on Sundays was the hawker who sold puffed rice, door-to-door. Although he came across as the most uninteresting fellow selling one of the most uninteresting items under the sun, his jhola contained many hidden treasures and like a magician he would bring out small packets of badam chaak, tiler naru, chirer moa, aam shotto and other such delicacies!
However, everything was not that rosy. It can never be if you have parents who are obsessed with theatre. So at times my parents would make it their mission to spoil my Sunday by dragging me to the ‘Academy’ to watch people dressed in rags either shouting or crying hysterically over some kind of land dispute or labour strike.
I wanted to grow up, especially on such Sundays. So that there would be no drawing classes and home-work and theatre and I could watch all the cartoons, and play as long as I wanted, have long adda sessions and return home real late. So, I eventually I grew up. But by then it was too late. Doordarshan is now merely a shadow of what it used to be and among the 100+ other channels, none air anything special on Sundays. Instead of Sunday’s Disney Hour, now we have multiple cartoon channels, but Pokemons and Powerpuff Girls can never be a match for the good old classic Disney characters like the crazy Mr Scrooge McDuck and his three nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie or the clumsy pilot Launchpad McQuack or the adorable duo of Tom and Jerry.
As for the playground, it has been converted to a parking lot as the younger generation has no interest in any kind of games apart from video games. And as for the adda, it is mostly on Gchat or Facebook these days as we seldom get to see each other. But as for returning home late on Sundays, I guess I got lucky with that! I get to return home as late as 2 am these days. Well, I work on a night shift and I do not have a Sunday off!

The Doll House

It was a Sunday and the Hooghly River was blushing from the subtle flirting of the morning sun. I was taking a lazy stroll along the Strand Bank Road watching the city slowly wake up. Lined with old dilapidated buildings, time seems to have come to a standstill on this narrow stretch between Sovabazar and Kumortuli. I have walked this walk many times but never noticed what I did on this winter morning. Half hidden behind trees and other ruins, like a mirage, was a lone man standing with one arm raised amid a bunch of fragile women on an ornate terrace — all frozen in time.

The statues had something sad and eerie about them and it seemed they were beckoning me to their world. But there was no door!

I asked a man brushing his teeth on the street: “Dada oi baritaye jabo. Rasta ta...?”

“O putul bari jaben! Eito edikey,” he grinned flashing his lather-laden teeth.

Putul Bari! Doll House! Interesting I thought!

When I reached the half-ruined building I wasn’t much impressed. It looked like the other multitudinous dilapidated structures. I was not too sure if I should go in. I knocked on the door:

“Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes...,”

But, I was luckier than De La Mare’s traveller and the door was not locked! As I pushed the door it screeched and a strip of light made its way to the dark cobweb-laden wooden staircase. As if in a trance, I started climbing the stairs and it was then I realised how dilapidated it was. At certain points the wood was crumbling and with each step it screeched, piercing the dead silence of the house. But the sight

that greeted me when I reached the first floor almost took my breath away — a courtyard hemmed with elegant Corinthian arches oozing baroque grandeur. And the mellow chiaroscuro was lending it an ethereal charm.

As I stood mesmerised at the middle of the courtyard, I started feeling increasingly uncomfortable —as if there were people staring at me from all corners. I looked around. There was no one but a strange bearded man peering from each of the arch. There was something eerie about the face. It seemed he was keeping an eye on trespassers like me. I tried to shrug away the feeling and concentrated on the intricately designed figurines perched on the columns. Although the elaborate detailing in stucco and plaster has fallen prey to the ravages of time, I could discern almost all the popular members of the Hindu pantheon from amid thick layers of moss.

As I explored the ‘shadowiness of the still house’ I realised that the house, tagged as a heritage structure by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, is not inhabited by ‘Phantom listeners’ but with real people! Makhan Lal Natta, an old man who owns a more than the 140-year-old Natta Company, acquired the property in 1978 and now the third floor of this grand mansion doubles as his office. The rest of the rooms are occupied by ‘tenants’.

It is hard to believe that this magnificent building which served as a shooting location for Roland Joffé’s City of Joy and which Desmond Doig tagged as ‘a perfect example of Calcutta rococo’ was built as a warehouse. The Hooghly River was navigable then and barges laden with spice, jute and such like would dock in the ports nearby. Hence several warehouses were built in this area to store imported goods. But why such an elaborately decorated structure for a warehouse? Well, the answer is surely lost in the mists of time.

The dream sellers of Calcutta

The feriwalas, on a sweltering afternoon, not only enticed women and children of the household with their goods, but also like magicians would cast a spell on them

Even with the monsoon being officially over, it is still raining at times and my favourite umbrella has a spike jutting out. For the last one week not a single repairwala could be spotted in the vicinity. It was Sunday morning, the best time to catch a repairwala or a feriwala. I sat myself by the window keeping a hawk’s eye and an owl’s ear on the street to grab one. One hour into the ordeal and suddenly realisation dawns: the Sunday soundscape has ceased to be what it was even four or five years ago.
There is no prabhat feri. The sound of Disney cartoons merging with old Hindi film songs and mythological serials only to be broken by an occasional “G-O-A-L” from the nearby football ground and the cacophony of a cricket match is no more. And the street that used to be abuzz with hawkers shouting on top of their voices to sell their products and services has faded making way for an eerie silence of a claustrophobic sophistication.
Yet, I could almost hear the voices:
“Aataa oyiiiiiiiiiiii...” whenever I would hear this scream, I would run to the verandah to catch hold of the custard apple (aata) seller but all I could see would be some old newspaperwala or some random hawker. To me it seemed the most surreal event on this planet. It seemed nobody else but me could hear the custard applewala’s shrill loud cry. But Ma never took this seriously. Older people never take children seriously. Not until one hot summer morning, when Ma caught me running from one window to another trying to spot the fruit vendor once again. “Certainly, this is not the season for custard apples!” But I was not convinced. I made her listen carefully: “Of course you can hear his shout! Aaataaa oyiiiii... it is loud enough!” And then she bursts out laughing: “Of course it is loud enough and it says “Purono khata boi’! It is the chap who buys old newspapers and books.” But, even after so many years I am not absolutely convinced.
Feriwalas or hawkers selling glass bangles, ice-lollies, plastic dolls, balls and cameras, Kashmiri shawls, mangoes, fish, jasmine garlands, mattresses, sweets, brooms and dreams were an integral part of the streets and the soundscape of the city till a few years ago. Every house would have their set of fixed feriwalas who would pay a visit to the household just when you ‘need’ them.
Ma would often tell stories of the Magnolia ice-cream vendors, the bel phoolwalas and the chanachurwala who was so ecstatic to have extracted some compliment from my rather reserved and strict grandfather once, that for the next few months his usual hawking chant boasted an addendum: ‘D-a-k-ta-r b-a-b-u kh-e-ye b-o-l-e-che-n bh-a-l-o h-ye-chhe! (Doctor babu said it’s good).
The cacophony of these different distinctive calls created the background score of the drama of daily life and social essayists, poets, dramatists used these characters and their cries copiously to recreate the city streets in their works. Rabindranath Tagore immortalised the simple but scary-looking, tall, bearded, Afghan dry-fruit sellers who were a common site on the streets of Calcutta in his classic short story Kabuliwala, and in Gora he brings to life a typical old Calcutta residential area replete with the distinctive calls of street vendors. And who can forget the Doiwala (curd seller) whose chants mesmerised little Amal in Dakghar! The monotony of the slow-paced, black and white ‘opera binoculared’ world of Satyajit Ray’s Charulata is often broken by the calls of street vendors. But the most noted works on hawkers and their cries are by Amritlal Basu, Kaliprasanna Sinha, Ishwar Gupta and Sashi Chandra Dutta.
However, the first hand-painted depiction of the hawkers of Calcutta was probably by Balthazar Solvyns. Published as early as 1799 from Calcutta, A collection of 250 coloured etchings descriptive of the manners, customs and dresses of the Hindoos, this book provides a glimpse into the streets of European Calcutta. This was followed by Twenty-four Plates illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal, published in 1832 by a certain Mrs S C Belnos. The book, which later received the approval of the Royal Asiatic Society of London, has three plates dedicated to the hawkers. Titled The Pedlar, Cloth Merchant and The Boxwallah, the paintings not only give us an insight into the trade but also stress the importance and prominence of these people in the society. Mrs Belnos writes that these vendors were accompanied by three/four coolies laden with huge boxes stacked with almost all things imaginable-ribbons, gloves, plastic beads, pearls, French satin, Dhakai muslin and what not and thus earned the name ‘boxwallah’.
A vivid account of these boxwallas is found in William Tayler, Thirty Eight years in India, published in 1881, where he writes: “The Bengal Boxwalla is an animal per se; hawker, pedlar, itinerant, no known word of civilised or uncivilised vocabulary will truly and befittingly describe the phenomenon. Isolate him from the angular appendage of tin and padlock, he sinks into a cipher mingling with the mass of brown humanity in which he lives.
After gaining entrance to a house, he peeps into the room or knocks at the door with confidence, sufficient for him is the listless and unequivocal assent of the unoccupied matron or an idle damsel, and in another minute he is in the middle of the room, while at his heel, two, three or four semi-nude followers, with capacious boxes on their heads enter and with silent and stealthy action deposit, in turn their freighted burdens and their own bodies. Their presence for a time is hardly noticed, but the head-man commences his exhibition by removing the choicest specimens of his goods; the quiet perseverance of the boxwallah triumphs in the end. Some attractive objects are produced and forced upon her attention. The love of bargaining or the desire of possession, forces itself on her mind and she condescends to examine one or more of the articles.”
Apart from boxwallahs and vendors, hawkers included street show artistes like jugglers, snake charmers, magicians, monkey players, tight-rope walkers etc boasting various levels of ‘bizarre’ quotient. And then there were the various ‘service providers’ and the most sought after among them were the kuor ghoti tola walas. Most houses in those days had paat kuo (water wells) and every now and then the ‘favourite’ earring of the wife, or the ‘precious’ plastic doll of the daughter, or the ‘ancestral’ brass bucket, or the ‘goodluck charm’ ladle of the servant would fall into the deep dark gorge of the well and these bounty hunters would be called and entrusted with the job to bring the treasures back from their watery graves! Although wells were long replaced by Hindware taps, and kuor ghoti tola walas by plumbers, there are still some ‘service providers’ like sheel kataowala, chhuri kaanchi shaan deoawala, chhata sharaiwala, purono ghori, gramophone sharaiwala, purono khata, shishi botolwala, chaabi katawala, khaat palong toierwala, toshok, balish toierwala, etc remain as indispensible as ever.
But the hawkers were often elusive — when you are in dire need of one, you would hear their cries and keep waiting impatiently on the street only to realise that they have passed by or changed their route.
Often every member of the family along with the neighbours, extended neighbours, visitors, servants, roadside shop keepers — all would join in this ‘feriwala spotting’ exercise. However, it was us, kids, who would usually win the challenge. But of course, we didn’t believe in free service and our parents would have to place formal requests along with the promise to buy us one 25-paise worth orange lozenge each (the deal worked fine with both the parties).
Most of these hawkers were men but when it came to popularity, it was those few non-Bengali ladies, with huge rag bundles on their heads, who stole the show. Usually tagged along by one or two young lads with tubs full of utensils, these ladies would take old clothes and give new utensils in exchange and the dupurer meyeli adda (women indulging in afternoon chats) would often revolve around who got the best deal and what they are planning to exchange next.
However, it was always the kulfiwala and the gas balloonwala who made me go weak in my knees. Then of course there was the ghotigoromwala who always seemed to arrive from nowhere on rain-drenched evenings!
And with that it starts pouring again soaking my train of thoughts. I rush back to my present and immediate concern — how to get my leopard-print umbrella repaired.

Back to U.S.S.R and Baba Yaga

It was a Friday twenty years ago. Moscow woke to the sound of tanks in the streets. The television channels went off. Troops were deployed in all major cities of Soviet Russia. President Mikhail Gorbachev, vacationing in Crimea, was taken under house arrest. There was a military coup in the USSR. And it failed within 72 hours. But, this changed the world as we knew forever. Four months later, on Christmas Day, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe. The United States of America celebrated as its most formidable enemy was brought to its knees. The Cold War between the two superpowers finally ended. The newly formed Russian countries faced an overwhelming task to develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes.
But, none of these really had any effect on the little girl in Kolkata who was sitting by her window waiting for her latest copy of Misha—a Russian children’s magazine translated in English. Named upon Misha, the bear mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, the magazine within its colourful glossy papers had a world of stories, news of sports, discoveries, science and technology, cartoons, pictures, fun games and craft ideas, ’How and Why’ s, poems, riddles, and what not!
The big black and white television was saying something about Russia—the snow-covered hand-painted land where the wise Elena, the witty Alyonushka, the dashing Ivan and the wicked Baba Yaga (in her hut on chicken legs) live. She runs to get a glimpse of the wonderland and all that flickers are heavy boots, blood, canons and chaos on streets—this was certainly not the Soviet Russia she knew. But then she was just ten and fairy tales were more real than reality.
I had grown up on Roosh Desher Upokotha (The folklores of Russia). My very first memories on this planet are of my dida telling me the story of the cunning ‘Chhotto Gol Ruti’ (The Doughnut) that escapes from the window of the old lady who bakes it and as it starts rolling through the streets it meets many hungry animals who lust at it but it escapes all by singing:
‘I am a doughnut round.
I was fried and browned.
From a flour bin scraped.
From a corn bin swept,
I have sour cream inside,
In butter I am fried.
They left me to cool,
But I am not fool,
Grandpa didn’t get me,
Gandma didn’t get me,
And, you Hare, won’t get me either! (Adapted by Aleksei Tolstoy)
After a rather adventurous journey the bread meets a fox who tricks it into sitting on his tongue and eats it up as soon as it lands there and with that dida would trick me into having one more morsel of food. Eventually, the black and white sketch of the haughty, cute, round bread became what the bell was to Mr. Pavlov’s dog!
However, this beautifully illustrated book with fascinating stories of Ojani desher najani ki (Go i know not where, bring I know not what), Jholmoley Baaj Finist (Fenist the falcon), Alyonoushka bon ar Ivanushka bhai (Sister Alyonushka and brother Ivanushka), Borof Buro (Father Frost), Byang Rajkumari (The Tale of Frog Tsarevna) managed to keep me under their magic spell for the first few years of my life. I would listen to the same stories each day and at times the same one twice or thrice in a single day and knew almost all the rhymes by heart!
The stories were all translated in Bengali and translated so well that for many years I had this notion that Russians are actually fur-coat clad bongs with weird names who lived north in a big blob of land of snow-capped fern forests throbbing with all kinds of weird but friendly animals. Russia on the small tin globe didn’t seem too far from India—the tiny triangle where I was told we lived. I would dream of going to Russia and talk Baba Yaga into letting me take a peek inside her ‘bone-fenced hut spinning on a chicken leg’. I was mesmerised by this creepy witch with iron teeth who rode a large mortar with her knees almost touching her chin, used a pestle to push the vehicle across the forest floor and swept away her tracks with a broom as she moved. Although she was notorious for kidnapping and even eating children, I was never scared of her. I was simply in awe of her sheer wisdom and I was convinced that there was a reindeer-drawn sledge car service from Calcutta to Russia and I was sure if searched properly one such car can be found amid the rows of horse-drawn cars that stay lined in front of Victoria Memorial—after all reindeers were nothing but horses with long-branched horns!
It is important to be literate and it is even more important to have a chhotomashi and I realised this pretty early in life. I was in upper nursery when chhotomashi got me a copy of Anari (Dunno) and after that there was no looking back! With each book I realised that there was more to Russia than snow, sledge-cars, magicians, witches and Ivans. In the colourfully illustrated (by Boris Kalaushin) pages I discovered Dunno and his clever antithesis Doono and their friends Blob, Gunky, Swifty, Rolly-Polly; Flower City—an Utopian land located by the Cucumber River where Dunno and his friends live; the tech savvy world of Sun City where Dunno goes on a road trip; Greenville¬¬, inhabited only by ‘girl-Mites’ where Dunno’d balloon crash-lands; and the spirit of adventure. These Nikolai Nosov books were a unique mix of fairytales, adventure stories, school stories and science fictions.
Slowly, stories from around the world started making their way into my life. But none could measure up to the Russian genius for storytelling coupled with quirky and intricate art and design. Published largely by Progress, Mir or Raduga, these included a variety of topics ranging from fables of Leo Tolstoy, fairytales of Alexandar Pushkin, folktales of Alexandar Afanasiev, adventures of Two toreadors from Vasukovka Village by Vsevolod Nestaiko, adventures of the curious little curious Pochemuchka by Boris Zhitkov, short stories written in verse by Samuil Marshak, story of Legging the robber by Leonid Yakhnin, Hello, I am robot by Stanislav Zigunenko (with wonderfully detailed illustrations by Eric Benyaminsona that elucidated the Soviet view in the late 80′s of the future of robotics) to stories of Lenin, Revolution, Communism and the Red Stars of Kremlin. Illustrated by stalwarts like Yuri Cherepanov, Ivan Bilibin, Vladimir Lebedev, Evgeny Rachev, Igor Yershov, the books were translated in Bengali mostly by Nani Bhowmik, Supriya Ghosh and among the English translators were Irina Zheleznova, Fainna Glagoleva, Benard Isaacs, Olga Shartse, Miriam Morton and others.
The Bolshevik regime regarded children’s books as major vehicles for transmitting Soviet ideology and propaganda among the future ‘soldiers’ of Russia and by 1924, two years after the Soviet Union was formed, the Central Committee of the Party rejected the pre-Revolutionary era, children’s literature that primarily consisted fairytales, legends, and fantasy stories. Children were the great red hope for the Marxist-Leninist and as early as 1918 Pravda affirmed: “the children’s book as a major weapon for education must receive the widest possible distribution.” And Soviet educator believed: “Even if the child cannot read . . . [pictures] will stimulate an interest in study and the child will to learn to read.” However, it was not until 1934 that the new regime granted folktales, fairytales and magic was a new lease of life.
My heart always remained loyal to Vasilisa the Beautiful and Baba Yaga. These folktales, fairytales and fables of Chukchi, Nanian, Nenet, Caucasian, Belorussian, Moldovian, Ukranian, Turkmenian,Yakut origin seemed more interesting and multidimensional than Hans Christian Andersen’s and Disney’s. The stories exuded an earthly charm and it somehow seemed as if these were stories about ‘real’ people. Each story reflected the culture, customs and costumes of the region it was set in. Unlike its Western counterparts these characters had variety in their wardrobe and not all wore tuxedos, leggings and long gowns. These were not typical stories of a hero rescuing his damsel in distress-- the stories were mostly centred on a girl who wins battles and hearts through her kindness and wit. Magic and sorcery could be triumphed through intelligence. And even the evil usually had a kinder side and can become quite lovable creatures at times! The vivid description of the locations and the hand-painted pictures would often transport me to the snowy Tundra,’ a barren realm of fierce frosts and howling blizzards’ and I would dream of living in a ‘choom’ (tent made of animal skin), wear deer-skin boots and have a gold-feathered ‘finist’(Falcon) as my pet.
But, it all changed after that Friday. Soviet Union seized to exist and the publishing houses that churned out ingredients for my dreams slowly pulled down their shutters. ‘The next issue of Misha’ never arrived, what happened to Dunno when he finally landed on the Moon remained a mystery, nobody ever knocked on Baba Yaga’s ‘spinning hut-on-chicken-legs’ again and frost accumulated on the memory of Tundra. And the man, who once eked out a living by selling these books on the trains of a small far-off city called Calcutta, lost his only source of income (only to be found 20 years later begging on the platform of a railway station).
Today, Russia is still trying hard to stand back on its feet and according to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century and even Boris Nemtsov who participated in the opposition to the coup attempt and later became deputy Russian prime minister admits: “We were very naive -- not only me, but Yeltsin and all of our team. ... Unfortunately, reality looks much more serious and much more complicated than we believed at that time.” The coup had many casualties and among them was the thriving children’s book industry. There has been much debate on the deep impact of the collapse of USSR on world politics and economics and diplomatic relations between countries, but, one of the best kept secrets of the fall was perhaps the expunged legacy of its innovative children's book industry that had revolutionized art and design and captured the hearts of young readers all over the world. And it was a sheer delight to discover a few reprints of these nostalgia-laden treasures on the streets of College Street after two decades!

Fairy's Wheel and all that jazz!

Paas woh aaney lagey zara zara, zara zara zara zara zara zara... was playing in a loop. The fairground was just waking up from its slumber— the ferris wheel (or what I knew as fairy’s wheel) and the merry-go-round were being oiled, the first batch of jilebis were already floating on the golden simmering sugar syrup and set and the shops were rolling up their covers and sleeves for the evening crowd. It was not a planned trip. The bus was stuck in the Moulali crossing and I suddenly remembered my visits to the Rother Mela which used to take place each year in this very place, leading to huge traffic jams. Today, the Mela was making its presence felt like never before with its absence. The signal was about to go red, I suddenly heard the conductor shout: ‘Astey, Bachcha achhey’ and I saw myself get down from the bus — my grandfather grabbed my hand as soon as I hopped onto the street.
Grandpa was a well-built, tall and serious man who mostly wore white and resembled Chhabi Biswas (the stern, no-nonsense father in Bengali cinema) from every aspect —so much so that I often wondered how the 6-foot-tall man manages to enter the small television box (it was much later, while reading Alice in Wonderland that I realised the trick! Of course the homoeopathy medicines he took were spiked and they had properties that can make you tall and short).
It was on rare occasions that he would manage some time off his busy schedule as a doctor, and be a full-time grandpa. It was on one such evening that I had landed in the same place (which turned into a fairground during this time in those days) with my hand tightly held by my grandpa — I was barely a 4-year-old then. At first I was scared of the crowd and the chaos and being a ‘short’ person made matters worse. If not for grandpa’s tight clasp I would have got lost at least a hundred times amid those tall, fast-moving legs.
It was supposed to be a Rother Mela but I couldn’t discern any roth (chariot). Instead, there were brightly coloured wooden toys, intricate clay vegetables/fruits/fishes, the ‘very expensive’ gas-balloons, and scary-looking paper-mache dancing dolls with large faces and big eyes, some even taller than me, which would roll their heads and waist every time I looked at them. And then there were the exotic winged prisoners — iron cages stashed with birds of myriad sizes and colours. Grandpa would ask the shop-keeper the names and their specialities and would then patiently explain them to me.
As I walked through the same pavement which now seems to have forgotten its past, I struggled to remember the names of those birds, the smells of the achar and papad bhaja, and the feel of grandpa’s huge palm that the little me found almost half of me clasped in.
My stream of thoughts was broken by a cacophony of birds and almost like déjà vu, I saw myself standing next to a row of shops selling birds! ‘Now, that can’t be legal...’ I heard myself mumbling. I could/should have dwelled on that thought but I was too excited to meet my childhood on the lost toyshops and fairy’s wheels. The fair is now held in a park and its past grandeur was trimmed down to fit into the small space. As the afternoon rolled towards evening, the makeshift bamboo shops got ready for business and they sold almost everything under the sun — hair clips, bangles, plastic guitars, bats, and dolls, achaars, hojmi and muri lozenge, stickers, clay figurines, kitchen utensils, customised key-rings, wooden temples, gods, dresses for gods, dresses for children, and dreams for all. However, the paper-mache dancing dolls and the wooden toys that were so unique to Rother Mela were missing from the show. It now looked like any other fair. But, so do the annual fair next to our house. Subhash Mela used to be quite an event. I remember going there with ma almost every single day and was allowed to shop as much as I wanted as long it was within 25 paise! It was the age of the epics and wooden bows and arrows, silver-paper wrapped swords and plastic gada were a favourite among us kids as were wooden drums, flutes and bhempus and the huge horses made of bamboo and hay. But the best thing about Subhash Mela was not these but the palki ride! They had an original palki which was carried by four men and kids like us (after being a ‘good girl’ for days) were allowed to take the royal ride for just about `1 (which was considered a rather expensive affair then and could be indulged into only once or twice a year). I would wait for the days when thamma would take me to the fair — there would be no 25-paise-limit then and I could take ‘as many’ rounds of palki ride as I wanted!
As I grew up, the fairy’s wheel got more giant and the simple merry-go-round lost its fans to the more suave (and complicated) Tora Tora, the toy train lost its sheen and the palki was discarded. But, the fair remained — now instead of toys and dolls we would bargain for colourful glass-bangles and kuler achaar and posters of the cute Aamir Khan!
And going to the fair on the evening of Saraswati Pujo became a ritual almost as important as the morning anjali. Love usually bloomed during this time of the year and usually came with an alert sign — and it was impossible to play blind to the fact that suddenly all the flower that were supposed to be going towards the goddess during the anjali was in fact landing on you! Then the chits would arrive, some friend would be bribed to play the messenger, a time would be fixed to meet near the comparatively less crowded turnstile of the fairground, some friends would again be bribed to tag along (by the girl) and some to ‘not’ tag along (by the boy) and eventually it would be a girls’ party sponsored by the boy and the trick here was for the boy to convince the girl that (A)he actually liked all her friends and is happy that all of them came along, (B) by ‘like’ he meant that he regarded them as sisters, (C) he ‘really likes’ her a lot and by this he ‘does not’ mean he likes her as a sister, and (D) the saree is looking great on her and she is not looking rounded at all. The fairground would then double up as Cupid’s playground. The two-seaters of the fairy’s wheel were the ideal place to romance then (provided the girl didn’t have vertigo like me!) and the best way to impress a girl was to shoot the maximum number of balloons stitched on newspapers on slow, rotating boards. Subhash Mela stills readies itself for the crowd each year on 23rd January but the shops are few and the guests fewer—the lovers now prefer multiplexes and the ‘warrior’ kids are too tech-savvy to venture out of their video games, and the middle class have just too much money to be tempted with the yellow board saying: “ja neben 7 taka”! (Anything for `7)
Charak Mela near Beadon Street was a fair I discovered at an age when none of us really bothered about going to fairs anymore (apart from of course the new breed of wannabe Raghu Rais).
This was a fair that came with an ‘A’ certificate— ma would always tell stories of how macabre the practice of Charak is where people would pierce their tongues with iron spikes and hang with ropes from a tall bamboo structure for hours—it was definitely not a site for children. So, I had to wait till I was ‘old’ enough to first venture into a fair that was at a stone’s throw distance from my school. I was a tad scared to go there alone, but it was impossible to convince ma to accompany me to see this ‘horrible practice’. It was much easier to persuade my boyfriend. As we reached the venue I saw a man was indeed hanging from a poll with a rope but I couldn’t discern any iron spike coming out of his mouth. I never imagined such a mad rush and was feeling almost dizzy staring up at the tall poll.
I was beginning to feel like the 4-year-old lost in the crowd when I felt a tight grip on my hand — Grandpa! I turned around ...only to find my boyfriend grinning at me...he had bought me a taal-patar shepai. I had almost forgotten how I adored these palm-leave soldiers when I was young. And it is perhaps a kind of collective amnesia that killed the fairs which once sold unadulterated joy for just 25 paise!

Coffee and Cigarettes!

An obscure entrance flanked by a mundane cigarette shop and then a winding staircase. Almost as if in a trance I got my ‘6 classics’ from the corner store only to remember that smoking is now banned in public places. However, I stashed the sticks in my pocket and started to climb the stairs. The smell of fresh paint was almost nauseating. The walls that used to be plastered with layers of pamphlets and memories now stand white-washed. We were never the ‘first floor crowd’ but still I chose to check out the haloed ‘hall of fame’ (better known as ‘house of commons’)once before climbing to the balcony aka 'house of the Lords'. The dilapidated door was replaced by a plush one and boasted a new signboard- I hesitated a few moments, I was still not sure if I was ready to face the ‘change’. Suddenly, a familiar voice: ‘Ki go didi atodin por? Bakishob kothaye? Opore esho .’ (Where were you all these days? Where are the rest? Come upstairs) –startled I looked around and there he was! Our very own ‘his highness’ in his white formals replete with white turban and green cummerbund (this non-descript man may come across as an ordinary waiter but the character of Don Vito Corleone was actually based on him). He didn’t wait for an answer and I realised that I am inside a sunshine-yellow hallway adorned with brightly painted canvasses and in front of me was a huge full-length poster of young Tagore . This is hardly the Coffee House I left 4 years back! Since 1942, it has acted as a greenhouse to the budding philosophers, writers, actors, directors, politicians and lovers and ever since Manna Dey sang the famous lines: ‘Coffee House er shei adda ta aaj ar nei’, Indian Coffee House at College Street has been a source of collective nostalgia for bongs- even to the first timers! The very fact that the place was once a favourite hangout of stalwarts like Satyajit Ray, Manna Dey, Amartya Sen, Soumitro Chatterjee, Aparna Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen has given it a halo of a sacred place to the city ‘intellectuals’. To be able to sit on same spot where Allen Ginsberg, Sunil Ganguli and Shakti Chattopadhyaye spent hours dissecting romance and revolution over cups of infusion is enough to give a high to most. I don’t remember when I first went to Coffee House. Going to College Street to buy school books was an annual event and this usually ended with a ‘treat’ at Coffee House. At that age the ‘haloed place’ looked rather shabby to me and I hated the long wait for food. But, it was when I enrolled for my Masters in Calcutta University that I truly ‘discovered’ the place (and the fact that there are actually many people like me who really never liked ‘infusion’!). What really made Coffee House an instant favourite among us was not its ex-client list but the fact that it was pocket friendly and you could sit there for hours- and we sat there until they pulled the shutters down and almost threw us out! However, this ‘sitting’ part really needed technique for the wooden chairs and tables were home to millions of bed bugs. But then where there is a will there is always a way and if there aren’t any, you devise one! And as dedicated we were to our adda sessions we indeed came up with quite a few of those. From bug creams to bringing empty folders just to use them as hand rests to the boys trying to impress the girls by finding that rare steel chair-we did all that it takes to survive and fall in love with Coffee House (with its bugs! ). What made this coffee house a ‘home’(for us humans as well) was really its people, especially the waiters- the very soul of this place. Their memory used to store the names of the famous and the ordinary college goers alike; a memorable day that has gone down the pages of history to how many cups of 'infusion' and cutlet you have devoured they kept a track of it all. Apart from serving our orders ‘his highness’ wouldn’t hesitate to rebuke us for having too much coffee and cigarettes, and if we came in too drenched after romancing in the rain, his would be the concerned voice to caution us not to sit near the fan. Then there was the silent cashier with a head-master’s gaze and bell to match-when things got too loud the bell would ring to warn us check our decibel levels! Food was the last thing on the menu as far as the coffee house adda was concerned and we mostly survived on cold coffee (which was actually normal plain coffee served cold) and cigarettes. However, the first thing I noticed on the grime-laden menu card, apart from the grime, was a lot of ‘do’s- Chicken Do, Vegetable Do, Egg Do etc and it took me quite a few days to decipher this code. It was simply a ‘Ditto’ sign under the sandwich! Such oddities were common in this house of commons. But, today’s renovated coffee house hardly looks a place that we-the then-wannabe-rebels would have felt at home. Sitting in front of that huge a size of poster of Tagore can have a rather intimidating effect! However, as I climbed the stairs and reached the balcony I felt a bit less lost. Thankfully, ‘our’ table was not occupied and sat on the bright red plastic chair-- there are no bugs now but you can hardly sit on it with your legs folded as we would in our old wooden ones-- I sighed and closed my eyes. I could almost see the familiar faces crowding around me, the first rain splashing on the staircase through the tall windows, five of us almost crawling out of the classroom, rushing through the corridor, the old elevator, crossing Rakhalda’s canteen where J is still waiting for R, crossing the rain-soaked laal bedi looking as red as revolution, the water-logged College Street, clattering of trams and rickshaws and ‘mundaneness’, smell of wet books, the two of us making lame excuses to ‘the rest’ and taking roundabout ways, getting drenched, finally joining ‘the rest’ at the ‘balcony’ and sinking into the chair--‘his highness’ appears ‘Ki go ar karor dekha nei je? Ki khabe bolo?’ (Where are the rest? What will you have?) –startled, I open my eyes, he had the same stern smile. Suddenly, I realized there was really nothing wrong with the sunshine yellow or the huge poster or even the ‘bugless’ chair- all that mattered was how close you keep your friends and how many rounds of random discussions you can survive!

A Rainy Day!

I have walked out in rain
- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
--Robert Frost

It was raining since morning and the lane that joins our housing complex to the rest of the civilization now looked like a river. The vinyl record was playing Sawan gagane ghor ghanghata from Bhanushingher Podaboli and I had already made seven glossy paper boats made from the pages of Anandalok which I had managed to sneak out from Thamma’s room (my grandma was obsessed with the Bengali film magazine and instead of fairytales I grew up on Tollywood gossips). I was feeling increasingly restless.
Suddenly, it came! The signal! There was a nudge on the thread that was the cynosure of my attention for so long. I ran to the matchbox attached to it and put it close to my mouth: ‘Hello! I station zebra?’ Then I pressed the box to my ear: “I station zebra” came the answer. That was our code for the day. (Well I came to know much later that the name of the book was Ice Station Zebra and I was absolutely heartbroken to know that it had nothing to do with Zebras...adult world was rather difficult to fathom then ) The matchbox on my window was attached to a thread and on the other end of the thread was another box which was stuck to the window of my friend’s house who lived in the building just opposite to ours-this was our very own ‘telephone’ and it was strictly for confidential conversations and hence password protected (although mostly it consisted repeating the words the first person asks). And on days like these when we were not allowed to play outside or go to each other’s house, this ‘telephone’ became our sole source of communication. So, finally it was time! I rushed downstairs with my paper boats.
The last two steps of the staircase were under water. I sat on the third and started floating the boats. We watched dazed as each crossed the bend of the lane and disappeared -one, two, three...seven! I could see another row of boats emerging from the other side as well. It was such a pretty site! I prayed with all my heart ( God was an old man with white beard and an eerie similarity to Santa back then) that it would remain waterlogged till the boats reach the ’faraway land’ and none would encounter any man-hole in the course of their journey. I loved going to school on such days! That gave me an opportunity to get up close and personal with the mud, puddle and the absolutely gorgeous murky water.
I never liked raincoats until I was brainwashed to believe that even Sherlok Holmes wear raincoats and he wears it all the time (of course it was easy to bluff a 6-yr-old and trench coats did look a lot like my Daisy Duck print plastic raincoat.) So, there we were, me, my school bag, inside my Sherlock Holmes raincoat; and my shoes and socks in a plastic bag- all set for the expedition! As I hopped skipped jumped my journey to the bus stand, I would at times imagine myself to be a pirate braving the turbulent ocean and at times I would be a princess in distress but I loved myself as ‘FreeWhilly’ the most.
We never had an official Rainy Day in our school. But, I loved everything as long as it rained (I could survive even the scary maths classes on days like these!) and my mind could wander along the wet wooden staircase that smelled like hot chocolate fudge and run wild in the lush velvety green playgrounds or would just watch the wind caress the raindrop-laden trees after a fresh spell. The school wore a resplendent glow after the rain and the faint music from the grand piano in the chapel would turn it into one of those enchanting fairytale castles (I only hoped they could do away with the ‘studies’ part)
At a certain point I lost track of the winding stairs, the Gulmohars, the European buildings and the report cards with always came with ‘very talkative’ on the remarks column. I changed schools and when I was in class 6 I landed in one which was almost an integral part of our family tradition. Most of the teachers were the same who taught my ma and two aunts and hence kept a hawk’s-eye on me. It was a school where my classmates are still learning the basics of English at class 6 as I fumbled with learning the basic terms of all the subjects in Bengali (and stop using English words in my conversations), the library didn’t have one single book of Nancy Drew, and all girls were supposed to be good at singing and sewing (I abhorred both).
I was a total ‘misfit’ living in a petri dish under a powerful microscope. But, the monsoon would have its magic on such a dull, claustrophobic place as well! The gloomy-looking Corinthian pillars as well as the teachers would suddenly all look cheerful and it would seem as if I can hide myself under the blanket of rain and escape the gazes that had become an integral part of being the ‘fat girl who shows off her English’ experience.
But, what I liked most about a rainy day was the fact that on days when few students managed to turn up, the school would arrange for Kichhuri and Aloo Bhaja for us all! The school still followed the age-old custom of providing lunch to the students (and the fee for that was Rs 10/ month) and it varied from luchi torkari to muri alur chop to plain muri. But, on special days like these, some of us would brave the torrential rain and wade through knee-deep water just for this scrumptious platter--Kichhuri and Aloo bhaja never tasted that good before or after that!

But, it was in college that I fell truly, deeply, madly in love with the rain. The heady mix of the smell of old books and chipped plaster along with the petrichor, wet rings of smoke, and rain-flavoured tea from mati’r bhaar –even the die-hard love-atheist would have found it hard to resist the charm of College Street during the rains! After that there was no looking back! I fell in love with my city all over again. Each nook and corner, each street of this old city had its own story and rain adds poetry to each. And nothing gets you closer to the soul of a street than getting drenched walking through it under a sky cracking up with thunders!
Today, sitting at a coffee shop in Park Street watching the blue neon rain lash the night and tail lights of speeding cars leaving trails of liquid light on the rain-smudged streets, hearing the cacophony of mundane life melt into white noise, and munching on half-forgotten memories I suddenly felt empty inside--a sense of loss gripped me as I mourned lost paper boats that never made it to the faraway land, ghoti-goromwala who emerged only when it rained, dark afternoons spent with thamma listening to weird stories, sound of wet school shoes, singing in the rain with friends, listening to ma recite poetry (which she will forget halfway), convincing friends that there is actually nothing more fun than wading the waterlogged streets, scribbling songs to each other as the professor went on with his lecture and the sound of rain drowned his monotonous voice, bunking classes and getting back absolutely drenched, crazy long-drives amid torrential rain, standing in the middle of the street with arms stretched and feel each drop of rain fall on my skin and seep into my soul, and I mourned the friends and lovers who had disappeared on one such rainy day. Just then waiter arrived with a steaming cup of coffee and I discerned a Cumulonimbus in my cappuccino! I gulped it down. My heart needs some rain tonight.

Re-discovering Kolkata

Mullick Ghat continues to be one of the oldest bathing ghats of Kolkata. This ghat lies where Mahatma Gandhi road intersects the Strand Road right behind Kolkata's largest wholesale flower market.
Trampling through the mud and dirt and squashing multicoloured debris of promiscuous flowers, as one climbs down the brick red staircase one stumbles upon a sepia coloured world very similar to that of Huxley's Benaras and Renoir's River.
As the first rays of the sun kisses the water of the river Hooghly, the Mullick Ghat slowly wakes up from its soft slumber and then as the morning meander towards day, various kind of people start thronging the ghat for varied reasons. Some come for a bath while some consider a dip here to wash away their sins. A favourite with early morning muscle-builders, one corner of this ghaat is converted into an open-air amphitheatre with pehelwaans in their loin cloths wrestling their way to glory. The long matted haired sadhu and his sonorous chanting, a corpulent man, with eyes half closed, enjoying the pleasure of a warm massage amid the entire hustle bustle, and the rituals of birth and death, this ghat sees it all. However, the most amusing sight here is the weird queue in which people sit and brush their teeth.
This, however, is not the original bathing ghat built by the Mullicks of Burrabazar but erected by the British in their name. The silt of the Ganges rendered the old ghats redundant and the British first rebuilt the ghats while making the strand road but with more silting, these new ghats too suffered the same fate and were again rebuilt as the strand bank road came into existence. This is why the maps of 1794, 1820 and 1890 show three different locations for each of these ghats.
Ensconced in the silvery shadow of the cantilever wonder, the Howrah Bridge; this ghat has a special 'Zenana Ghat' (a section exclusively for women) attached to it which is a witness to that era when women of the aristocratic families were brought here in palanquins. The whole carriage was then dipped into the holy river so that the lady of the house was not seen by the proletariat.
Nowadays, this part of the ghat is open to all. Although the filth and stench of this place does not impress too many people, from here the silvery silhouette of the Howrah Bridge along with a pigeon covered sky is absolutely stunning.
Unscathed from the huge waves of urbanisation, time seems to have come to a standstill at this most insignificant bathing ghat of Kolkata. The characters that dwell the place seem to be from a flashback and do not exist in real time or space.
As the effluvia of the day slowly impregnate the morning mist, the activities of this bathing ghat begin to emasculate and by evening, all that remains is the sound of the river gossiping with its banks about the day's scandals.