On a wintry morning in December, I took a walk through Dalhousie Square, a symbol of the financial, political and social aspirations of the British in 18th and 19th century Calcutta. It was a walk down the corridors of historical power and a manifestation of some of the British Empire’s finest architectural schools in the world— Georgian, Victorian and Gothic styles. I wondered why it looked vaguely familiar, then suddenly realised that the cities I had seen before I saw Calcutta— Singapore and Shanghai— took their cues from this city.
But while the copies were spruced up, the original remains shabby and tired and coated with the grime of centuries, Calcutta does not care. The sheer brutality of survival has obliterated all else. My guide had asked me to meet him in front of the Great Eastern Hotel, a much vaunted haunt of the city’s elite, now under renovation. It was said that when the British Empire was at the zenith of its power in Calcutta, one could enter the hotel in the morning and by evening could come away after completely arranging and outfitting for a wedding, so manifold and diverse were the establishments inside it. Bulganin, Kruschev and Queen Elizabeth’s retinue have been housed here.
Flashback express
A slice of history remains in St John’s Church, also under scaffolding for renovation. It is said to have been modelled on St Martin-in-the Field’s Cathedral, with Doric columns and magnificent carriageway down which one imagines carriages rolling down and elegantly-attired gentlemen and ladies stepping down for Sunday Mass.
Inside are Minton floor tiles from England, Burma teak, stained glass windows and an original painting of the Last Supper by Zoffany. At the time it was a controversial subject for many of the people around the table resembled Calcutta characters!
My guide took me to the back of the organ and I saw a world of intricate pipes and slabs of wood. In one of the high ceilinged rooms he showed me a chair which he said was ‘Warren Hastings’. I read that it was from here he chaired the first Legislative Assembly of India.
In the overgrown picturesque churchyard lie a clutch of graves of people who shaped Calcutta. The most important of these is Job Charnock’s. He was the founder of Calcutta.
In August 1690, he decided to set up an emporium for his country here but never foresaw that the three small villages he purchased on the banks of the Hooghly would develop into this metropolis. It is a moorish-looking mausoleum and the Government has plans to set up a small museum here.
The man is interesting in that he is said to have rescued a Hindu woman from being immolated and then married her. It was by all accounts, an unlikely liaison. He was a rough merchant of 52 and she was a 15-year -old Brahmin widow, beautiful and tall. But they lived happily producing many children. It is said that when she died, Charnock sacrificed a cock on her tomb on every anniversary of her death. The use of a stone from Pallavaram for the tomb has resulted in new name for the stone- charnockite! His son-in-law Charles Eyre and his daughter Mary also have their monuments here.
Another eye-catching monument is the Rohilla Monument, a tribute to those who fell in the Rohilla War in 1794. It is domed cenotaph with Doric columns and frieze.
In the side porch lies Lady Canning, or so the marble inscription on her tomb says. Rumour has it that her true bones lie elsewhere. To her we owe some interesting descriptions of her stay in India in her book: ‘Tales From A Burning Plain’. The tomb has a Celtic cross.
At the end, almost obscured by huge trees with gnarled roots, lies the interesting Holwell monument to those that died during the infamous Black Hole incident. The phrase has become synonymous with horror and perfidy and cruelty, but my guide had an interesting side to it. He wondered whether it really happened the way Holwell, one of the survivors described it, for there are anomalies in the story.
Many things were called into question by his description: the size of the room, the number of prisoners etc. And in a corner of the churchyard lies a lady with an interesting history, one probably envied by many of her compatriots. A Mrs Francis Johnson, the grandmother of the Earl of Liverpool, who died in 1812, aged 87 years, who married four times, the last ending in desertion by her clergyman husband. The three earlier husbands had all been well connected.
As I left, I picked up a fragrant frangipani blossom from the path. Directly opposite is the Raj Bhavan, now the Governor’s residence, again modelled on a great house in England, Lord Curzon’s home- Keddleston Hall.
A few blocks away is the Gothic style High Court with arches and columns. It was built in 1874 as a copy of the Staadhaus in Ypres in Belgium. According to popular belief, when the said Staadhaus was destroyed during World War I, it was rebuilt from plans of its copy— the Calcutta High Court.
Black Hole?
On the way to the Water Tank or the Lal Dighi is the Post Office. I was told that in this is the actual room which was called the Black Hole. But I cannot confirm this for fact and fiction mingle here until the lines blur. Part of the Telegraph Office is the Dead Letter Office where letters incompletely addressed or sent to dead soldiers in the British East India Company were kept. Kolkothans now call it the Return Letter Office for too many letters are returned here, probably because the postmen are too few or too lazy.
And now the piece de resistance— the Writer’s Building. Originally a simple stucco barrack, it evolved with embellishment and ornamentation, into a titanic symbol of the power of John Company, now housing the Bengal Secretariat. It has a Victorian frontage, brick coloured with striking green louvered doors and windows. The architecture, as Philip Davies said in his book: ‘The Splendours of the Raj’, was vested with symbolic significance.
At that moment there were only a few policemen who glanced askance at my camera, but once the day started, I could imagine the beehive of activity within this city within a city.
Statues above represented the world in microcosm of the British Empire- every department had three statues on top. The Agriculture Department had the goddess of agriculture, Ceres flanked by a British planter clad in his tropical finery and a poor Indian peasant with hoe and loincloth. Who were the writers? They were the clerks or scribes on whose shoulders rested the bureaucratic duties of the Empire. It is a building worthy of its rulers and its workers- with classic Gothic architecture, beautiful statues along its parapets, ornate arches, and pavilions.
The Lal Dighi now is a stinking water body where families bathed, cleaned utensils and clothes etc. At one point it must have been a place where the aristocracy of Calcutta came to take the air and preen and parade their status. Now in the early morning, stray dogs roamed around in search of scraps of food, and the jumbles of rags were stirring and coming to life.
The waterfront (then) buildings were the storehouses and warehouses related to the Calcutta Fort -Fort William. Some of the buildings had brass line son their steps to denote where the Fort once stood.
To walk through these streets with the extravagantly styled buildings is to experience the slow decay of former majesty. The late Desmond Doig, respected journalist on the Statesman, dedicated his book of Calcutta drawings to: “Calcutta, much abused, much loved and always interesting”.
Today these buildings are being threatened, not only by time and neglect, but by developers. There is an almost irreverent union between British pomp and majesty and the daily ordinary activities of the poor Indian. For in the shadow of these regal edifices, are the pavement dwellers, the tiny chai shops in which lawyers, clerks and clients rub shoulders and discuss the events of the day sitting on benches sipping the sweet spicy tea in earthenware cups which are then smashed on the pavements.
Street food fest
The pavement food stalls are supposed to be the best foods. Golguppas, rice and parathas with egg curry, garlands of coconuts for their sweet water and the ubiquitous snack of puffed rice with peanuts and onions with the tang of lime, salt and pepper.
Calcutta is still a city of relentless poverty and immense wealth. It swims in paradoxes. At the time of its splendour, it must have been a beautiful city. It still shows some signs— in a sudden perspective in the narrow passage way under a fluted arch, a column which is breathtaking in its simple classicism or its baroque extravagance— silent witnesses to the splendour of a bygone era.
