A lecture that held the promise of throwing new light on the history of Bagbazar was delivered by Debasis Bose, a dermatologist by profession and also editor of the journal Koushiki, in a dusty auditorium of Bagbazar Reading Library on Thursday evening.
It was organised by Abakash, an NGO, and the audience comprised mostly greybeards, a telling comment on the lack of interest among young people in the history of the city they live in.
At the end of the lecture, former mayor Kamal Bose, himself a resident of Bagbazar, suggested that the doctor build up a team of young people who would go around streets and lanes, trying to unearth the history of the people who lived there. But given the lack of awareness about our past it would be a task well nigh impossible.
The lecture focused on the topography of this area in north Calcutta with a rich and varied heritage, the possible origin of its name, the six extant records of its past and the neglected documents with private individuals as well as institutions that could yield a rich vein of information on areas as ancient as Bagbazaar.
This is the birthplace of the rosogolla, and this is where Bhola Moira, the well-known songster, used to live.
It was also a great centre of literature, the cinema and the theatre, the playwright Girish Ghosh and his son Danibabu being residents of Bagbazar.
Bose?s contention was that the area was inhabited long before Job Charnock arrived. He regretted the fact that yet, in the past, most writers of history followed in the footsteps of their British masters, never bothering to hunt for facts among indigenous sources.
He named the six Bengalis who did not toe the line, but whose books have unfortunately gone out of print or are difficult ? even impossible ? to find.
The six are Prankrishna Datta, Purnachandra Dey, Jatindramohan Datta or Yamadatta, Mahendranath Datta, Kiranchandra Datta and Radharaman Mitra.
Bose stressed the need to reprint their works with well-researched footnotes.
The other sources one could look into are the street directories, archives, district records and documents with the Calcutta Municipal Corporation such as crematorium records, police dossiers on former freedom fighters and land documents.
Contemporary maps should be placed next to old ones to get a clearer picture of change.
Family trees, invitation cards, menu cards for social occasions such as marriages and engagement ceremonies, obituary booklets for shradhas, pictures, diaries and accounts books, too, could be invaluable for insights into times forgotten.
