LAND OF SHIVA: The blue Alipore bridge; (below) the trident street lights. (Amit Dutta and Bhubaneswarananda Halder)

Calcutta, we were told, is transmogrifying into London. Till now there has been no sign of it actually happening. But is it turning into the seat of Shiva — the second Varansai of India? Shiva, the legend goes, had swallowed a pot of poison to save Earth from destruction. Thereafter, his throat turned blue, and hence his name Neelkunth. And Calcutta is awash with blue now.

Trees, which were painted white for better visibility after dark, and the cones used as road dividers, are all being painted a bright shade of this colour and Red Road looks a sight after this smear campaign. What is astounding is that in this zeal to turn the whole town blue even heritage structures are not being spared, and the most conspicuous example of such a transformation is the age-old Alipore bridge that has existed, in another form, from the time of Lord Hastings. But heritage be damned when Calcutta has to be turned into Rhapsody in Blue.

As if blue was not enough to symbolise Shiva, now all the streets are being lined with trident street lamps. The forked lighting made of steel rods apart from its ugliness is slight and puny and does not look strong enough to withstand the terrific wind force once nor’westers break loose in a few weeks’ time.

And why are these trident lamps being planted all over the city — to throw light on pavements from which the newly-laid cobblestones have all but disappeared, or on the open-air toilets that many of them have turned into? And that too at a time when the coffers are empty and West Bengal is going around with a begging bowl once again, as it did for the past 30 years and more. Some things never change.

In case we don’t feel blue at night too, all statues at important intersections and road crossings have been strung with twinkling blue lights. It is as if Calcutta is celebrating Diwali throughout the year, although there is nothing to be really happy about. Please drive away the blues.

Delegates of Tea Traders Association at CCFC. (Rashbehari Das)

Tea party

It was not just tea that the delegates from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, East Africa, Assam, Siliguri and south India spoke of as they gathered to celebrate the 125th year of the Calcutta Tea Traders Association in the city. Jayantha Keragala, the chairman of the Colombo Tea Traders Association, was on his first visit to Calcutta and was interested in a bit of sight-seeing. And friendship.

“In the tea fraternity, we do compete with each other for business, but the varieties of tea that the different nations produce are so different that we also help each other out. I have been to Calcutta frequently and have many old friends here,” said Salman Ispahani, chairman of the Tea Traders Association of Bangladesh.

The relation between Tea Traders Association of Bangladesh and Calcutta Tea Traders Association is especially close. “Even after 1947, we continued to auction our tea from the auction houses in Calcutta and it was only later that tea auction started in Bangladesh,” said Ispahani. The Calcutta Tea Traders Association is the oldest tea traders association among those that were present.

The countries share knowhow. The Calcutta association members, as well as members of tea boards from Bangladesh and east Africa, are just back from a convention in Colombo. “We are campaigning for all tea produced and exported from Asia to follow guidelines for quality control,” said Keragala. In India, e-auction of tea has started; the east African countries will start it in two years.

OUP turns 100

Jim Corbett, whose unpublished works will be out soon

OUP India, a subsidiary of OUP, Oxford, is celebrating its centenary year, having started its journey in Bombay in 1912. “The first office was set up in Bombay in 1912 with EV Rieu as the manager and Mangesh Rau, the first employee,” says Manzar Khan, the managing director, OUP India, at the recently concluded Calcutta Book Fair.

The first book published by the Indian branch was S. Radhakrishnan’s The Essentials of Psychology in 1912. “This will be re-issued as part of our centenary publishing list,” says Khan. By 1915, OUP also began selling Oxford School Atlas with maps by John Bartholomew. There will be a special centenary edition of the atlas as well.

The press arrived in Calcutta in 1922 when it set up a branch office here and its first English translation was Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Srikanta. The Calcutta branch also published Jawaharlal Nehru’s Letters from a Father to his Daughter. Through the 40s and 50s, OUP India acquired the works of some of the most renowned writers like Jim Corbett, Salim Ali, A. Appadorai, Raja Rao, Asaf A.A. Fyzee, Romila Thapar, Granville Austin and others.

In school and college text publishing too, the press also strengthened its presence by preparing locally suitable school and degree texts. David Horsburgh and son Nicholas’s New Oxford Modern English, one of the longest running popular series, D.H. Howe’s Active English and Guided English helped OUP to become a key school ELT publisher.

In 1976, Ravi Dayal took over as manager of OUP India and oversaw the publication of the seminal Subaltern Studies edited by Ranajit Guha. Keki Daruwalla’s Keeper of the Dead won the 1984 Sahitya Akademi Award.

Among the notable publications of OUP India are The Encyclopedia of Indian Natural History, Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India and the Oxford Companion to Theatre in India.

As part of its centenary publishing, OUP India will publish Jim Corbett’s unpublished writings from the OUP archives, a translation of Dakshina Ranjan Mitra’s Thakumar Jhuli by Sukhendu Ray and a coffee table book by National Geographic photojournalist Steve Raymer on the streets, ghats and corridors of Calcutta.

Correction

A picture that appeared in this column (German hamper, January 22) was not that of Martin Waelde, the director of Max Mueller Bhavan. We regret the error.

(Contributed by Soumitra Das, Poulomi Banerjee and Anasuya Basu)