Alexandra court looks bombed out. Covering about 102 cottahs between Bishop Lefroy Road and Suburban Hospital Road it is the largest apartment block on Chowringhee. It has also the distinction of being one of the shabbiest. The Metro railway station within the embrace of its two wings blocks the courtyard and the section behind it from view. So it is impossible to make out from Chowringhee that a good portion of its rear has been knocked down. Now it resembles a giant cake from which a large slice has been scooped out and devoured by some greedy human being. The doors, windows and floors of the demolished section are etched on the surviving wall as if the phantom of the vanished apartments has decided to stay put.

Alexandra Court has a one-of-its kind architectural feature. Unlike other buildings of its time, it does not believe in an external spiral staircase for domestics. Instead it has four tall towers, two on each side of Bishop Lefroy and Suburban Hospital Roads, with wooden staircases within, rising up to the terrace and connected with the kitchens of each flat. Visible from the road and resembling a vast ribcage, the towers also serve as air vents. The wooden staircases and mirror-lined lifts within are for tenants.

The ornamentation of Alexandra Court is subdued, giving it a majestic air. Now the two visible blocks look ready to collapse and the four service staircases have already done so.

Alexandra Court was constructed in 1918, according to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation records, though it is already listed in the 1915 edition of the P.M. Bagchi directory. The plaque that declared its year of construction has done the disappearing act. So the criteria, by which King Edward Court on the same stretch won the label of heritage building, whereas Alexandra Court was delisted, defy common sense. We drool over pictures of the London house that Lakshmi Mittal has bought for £70 million. Alexandra Court is several times larger and more impressive by far. If Alexandra Court isn’t heritage, what else is?

But as anybody who has lived in this city long enough knows, there is nothing that the Calcutta Municipal Corporation will not connive at provided it is kept happy. How else could the gutted Firpo’s Market marked “unsafe” by the same civic body be legalised overnight? Alexandra Court rouses strong feelings. Arun Kumar Mitra says that when he came to live there more than three decades ago, the tenants were mostly white people or ICS officers. Alexandra Court, Paul Mansion and Calcutta Mansion were their bastions. “Now I call it India,” says this 81-year-old gynaecologist, referring to the mostly Marwari, Punjabi and Sindhi tenants who live or work out of about 30 existing flats.

The apartments are sprawling and each looks like a set from a different Hindi TV serial customised to suit a tenant’s fancy. One has white marble floors with a tiny fountain in the middle, diwan-e-khas style. Mokhtar Ahmed from Bareilly, who also owned Mehta Building and headed Mohammedan Sporting Club, had bought this property during the riots before Partition. Now the Fatehpurias reportedly plan to construct a highrise here. Sunil Marwah, 48, has lived in Alexandra Court for over 28 years, and is still excited about this “palace”. “I remember the mango and jamun trees here,” he exclaims. “Now nothing is maintained,” he adds. Once the highrise in the vacant lot is complete the tenants will be rehabilitated there and the rest of Alexandra Court pulled down.

While conceding the advantages of living in such spacious flats Rajan Malhotra, who has lived there with his parents since the time he left school, says that after the Metro construction the road became higher than the courtyard. So if it takes an hour for rainwater to clear in the rest of Calcutta, at Alexandra Court it takes about 24, mainly because the damaged plumbing was never repaired. What if the Fatehpuria highrises gravitate towards each other like the two osculating towers opposite Alexandra Court and next to the Metro Railway officers’ quarters? The municipal corporation will not lose its sleep over that minor detail.

Quite unlike Alexandra Court, 60B Chowringhee Road with its five floors is old and beautifully maintained. I met Sherbanu Nathani at its entrance. Her parents had moved into their flat in 1958. Now she lives there with her husband. The elderly couple are the only residents of this building. The rest of the flats, huge beyond compare, are offices. Sherbanu’s husband says the building was requisitioned during World War II. “The flat we live in was the army mess for officers,” he adds.

Construction work is on at full swing in the plot next to 60B. Only recently, the Gokul’s chain supermarket for cut-price clothes came up next to it. Following the trend set by the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, that is being touted as the soon-to-be commercial hub of Calcutta, Chowringhee can show off quite a few glass boxes today — faceless and unidentifiable from one another.

Change is inevitable. But these buildings are only an indicator of the concerted drive to turn the whole of Calcutta into a marketplace where people would do nothing else but buy or sell.

We look at the flyover connecting Park Circus to Alipore from a friend’s flat on the sixth floor of the Metro Railway quarters. Not much in use, it seems to have defeated the purpose for which it was constructed. Although it is the evening peak hour, the vehicles that whizz past the top halves of the Nandan cinema complex and the Victoria Memorial Hall are few and far between. Commenting on the flyovers that miserably failed to solve the traffic problem, a beggar is supposed to have said these were constructed so that he and his ilk could walk from Chowringhee to Park Circus without getting scorched by the midday sun.

While the old order gets displaced, some things never seem to change. The row of shops using the same brand name — “Lakshmi babuka asli dukan” — continue to puzzle passersby. The original jewellery shop at 62 Chowringhee Road was opened in 1872 by Lakshmi Narayan Sen. The customers were from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and also from Punjab and south India. Sales were so high that neighbouring establishments, too, renamed themselves and became clones of the original.

Calcutta Club was opened in 1907 for natives by the maharajas of Cooch Behar and Burdwan and tycoon R.N. Mookerjee. They had taken umbrage because Bengal Club had a colour bar. The British left. They created a caste system more rigid than Manu’s. Now money has created a class of its own. Now it rules the roost. Even in clubs as snooty as Calcutta Club.