The old plaque at the entrance of the building is a near blank wooden rectangle, the Bengali lettering on it all but obliterated. The new signage identifying the house peeps apologetically from another corner
In 1828, Raja Rammohun Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj to reform the Hindu religion. In January 1830, its first prayer house was consecrated in north Calcutta's Chitpur Road, close to the Tagore family home - Jorasanko Thakurbari. Today, the tall, slim, elegant three-storey house, the cradle of a remarkable movement, is a marble godown and factory.
The staircase creaks as one climbs to the second floor, a scene of devastation. The second floor has no floor. The very ground of the prayer hall has been gouged out, leaving a great hollow. Looming over it is a largish empty bracket on the wall, where once an organ used to be. A discordant reminder of the banished harmony
In the absence of records, it is difficult to say when exactly the "takeover" happened. "It was probably after World War II," says Kumkum Banerjee, convenor trustee of the Adi Brahmo Samaj Trust that was reconstituted around the turn of the millennium.
Miniature marble temples guard the entrance to the building that once nurtured the movement to do away with idol worship, among other things. There’s irony embedded here, but it barely strikes anybody
Once you get inside the building, every floor reveals fresh horrors; a sustained assault on history. The first-floor prayer hall is now the factory where temples, bathtubs and other marble artefacts are being churned out.
At one end of the first-floor prayer hall, behind all that junk and clutter, survive two original stained-glass windows, though barely. Light streams in through the blue and green glass. Etched on one is a solitary bird on its perch, about to be wiped into extinction any day
Banerjee and the trust are thinking of ways to restore the building. So is Reshmi Chatterjee of the NGO, Halo Heritage. She organised a walk on April 18, World Heritage Day, to raise awareness about the condition of the building.
What used to be the ground-floor prayer hall is now the office of Jaipur Marble Emporium — the marble manufacturers. The lawful tenants, who were let in by the Samaj itself, pay a rent of Rs 500 per month and wreak inestimable damage upon a heritage
In the meantime, the mutilation continues. There's marble and there's marble. Some of it folks used to conjure the dream that is Taj Mahal, some of it other folks used to create this nightmare.
The climb up is really a descent. The native mahogany has been stripped off the staircase, which is now covered in places with concrete. Perched precariously on the first-floor landing are two slatted wooden doors ripped off from the building
Text by Chandrima S. Bhattacharya
Photographs by Pradip Sanyal
