The staircase of Tagore Castle

On a fine morning of sharat, when the sun glistened in a clear blue sky after days of hard rain, I journeyed to the heart of north Calcutta for the first time in my life, and a new planet swam into my ken. I had heard tales about the selective modernity that is supposedly the hallmark of north Calcutta — for instance, that the ladies of the household here serve their husbands beer in pots (ghoti) made of bell metal — and laughed them off as apocrypha. But I was startled to discover that some of the clichés about north Calcutta were indeed true, even if the abovementioned legend is probably the creation of the overheated brain of a south-Calcutta male. North of Esplanade, the landscape and ambience of this city do undergo a noticeable change. Time is preserved in the streets and lanes, so much so that characters from Hutom Panchar Naksha would not quite look out of place here.

However, this fact was not apparent all at once. As I walked down Bentinck Street, much looked usual — from the shacks selling jalebis and kachuris, men bathing in near-naked glory at roadside hydrants to the ubiquitous pigeons, which, I have since concluded, constitute one of the strongest links between north and south Calcutta. If anything was different, it was the rows of shoe shops bearing Chinese names. But then there was the familiar Khadim’s, and I learnt later from Soumitra Das’s A Jaywalker’s Guide to Calcutta that this chain of stores was started by Khadim Hussain, one of the Bengali Muslims whose shoe shops have always existed alongside those of the Chinese in this stretch of the city. Walking past lines of shops selling sewing machines, cycles or hardware, I reached Lalbazar, and a dear remnant of the past, the good old tram, rattled by, its clang sounding like music to my ears.

As soon as I thought of boarding a tram to Bagbazar, I was reminded of the awkward realities that the rosy tints of nostalgia tactfully hide. Certain things never change, and one cannot always be thankful for that. The trams on the up route had been derailed — drivers and conductors chatted lazily inside the compartments, one picked the corns on his foot while another was in deep, open-mouthed sleep. So I continued walking down Rabindra Sarani, the Chitpur Road of yore.

Here the contents of the shops changed — now there were rows of shops selling musical instruments (the board of New Standard Music House announced that it “sells everything musicals”). If Eliot, or one of his personas, had heard the “pleasant whining of a mandolin” near a public bar in Lower Thames Street, I heard the dull thud of drums and a few nagging notes of a harmonium. Yet there was an underlying similarity. Seediness, or its memory, was in the air — the musical instruments’ shops probably owe their origin to the fact that this stretch of Calcutta once housed famous courtesans. The nymphs are departed, and their poorer modern cousins have their addresses elsewhere now.

Suddenly, I had a revelation — on that morning, even as the road bustled with traders, coolies, cart-pullers and vendors, not a single woman was to be seen. That perhaps explained the stares I was getting. Disconcerted, I hurried my pace, trying my best to avoid the blobs of spit on the pavements, and banged straight into the posterior of a billy-goat tethered to a post. It gave me a look of such solicitude that I wished with all my heart that the butcher in whose hands it would soon meet its end suffers an attack of paralysis of the limbs. Lost in my musings, I had not noticed that I had arrived at Nakhoda Masjid. The shops all around me were selling attar, ornamental topis, colourful gamchhas and lungis. Of the last item, “lattu marka — top [of the spinning variety] brand” is the top brand, according to the label.

The grand structure of Salehjee Musafirkhana that goes back to 1889 was before me. Its frontal arches, along with the pattern of the grilles on the verandas and the gates, seem straight out of the Arabian Nights. Other old buildings, not as well-kept as the Musafirkhana though as beautiful, competed for attention. Shrubs had sprouted from the roofs of most of these houses and the plaster on the façades had crumbled off, baring the bricks. Hideous new grilles that would make a prison cell proud disfigured the windows. But one could still get glimpses of their original forms in the stuccoed columns, the verandas with elaborate latticework or in the domes at the top. I sailed past the shops selling Moradabadi utensils (the ‘New’ Moradabadi Shop was established in 1884) and those dealing in puja provisions. As the smell of camphor wafted to my nose, I remembered that it was Durga Puja time. The thermocol-rocks of the cave that was the pandal of the Machua Bazar Sarbajanik [sic] Durga Puja materialized out of thin air as if on cue.

The next time I am in north Calcutta, the Pujas are in full swing. The lights dazzle, the conflicting strains of songs befuddle and I barely know where I am, although this time, I have a Virgil to guide me. I am taught to look, in spite of all that light, and there are the telltale signs of north Calcutta — a medallion with the face of Queen Victoria engraved on the façade of a building in Bowbazar, stained-glass windows that open into dark, ancient rooms of a house on Tarak Pramanik Road, haunting classical figurines staring down from a building’s terrace in Pathuriaghat Street, or the angels that are gas lamps inside a thakur dalan on College Street. Many of the old buildings have been renovated — so bathroom tiles now grace their walls and the new coat of paint is often a cute shade of pink.

After making our way through grotto-shaped pandals, milling crowds of people who seem to be terribly fond of standing and staring in the middle of the road, automatically forcing us to do the same, and taking directions from a kindly madam on Rai Chand Boral Street, we find ourselves standing below what was once the Tagore Castle. I have wanted to be here ever since I read about its clock tower and fairy-tale turrets. Jatindramohan Tagore (1831-1908) had started its construction after he was knighted. In its heyday, the Union Jack is supposed to have fluttered from the castle’s flagpole while the clock in the tower had kept time with Big Ben. Today, the broken clock face looks like a mouth full of missing teeth and the turrets resemble ghosts pasted on an uncaring sky. The interiors of the mansion are broken up into numerous pigeon-holes which house tenants who have managed to give the castle a democratic air of unrecognizability.

Standing in the lively street below, looking up at the castle, I realize that I have never felt so lonely amidst people. The Puja songs have suddenly fallen silent, the lights have gone out. I wish with all my heart that the contractors in whose hands Tagore Castle is likely to meet its end before long, perhaps to give way to a mall, suffer an attack of paralysis of the limbs.