Arnab Acharya travels back in time to unveil the charms of one of the most walked-upon lanes in the city of Kolkata. Though much has changed over the post-Independence decades, the Street still tells tales of alluring times.
If streets had faces like us humans, would they grow from young to middle-aged to old? Would they perish like do those who tread upon them?
In the hot middle of the year, after finally getting over the business of climbing a seemingly-endless flight of stairs at the Metro station, you find yourself at Central. But like everything else, the place is not the same as It was an epoch ago. The age and time I’m speaking of, was a time when my grandfather went to college, sharing a rented room with other young men on Bhabani Datta Lane, or of the relatively recent era when my parents frequented the place.
Protesting whom?
This is Post-Colonialism Calcutta nay, Kolkata (somehow, that name nomenclatured by the British has charms of its own, which are not easy to ignore). In our desperation to get rid of the ‘Colonialism’ tag, we have found away. I say ‘we’, simply because, isn’t it our collective responsibility, at the end of the day? Well, the way is Non-Cooperation. The Medical College once had marble stairs; decades of meticulous neglect have performed a remarkable, almost reverse- alchemism, changing marble to something worse than coarse stone and broken concrete. The Morgue is fuller than the hospital wards, and there’s the acid-odour of urine and a lot of rotting smell to greet you.
I am taking you through the campus of the Medical College, since this one’s a short-cut, compared to coming to College Street via Colootola Lane.
A slight detour
Before you come to College Street proper, and are lost in the maze of myriad subjects Literature, Medicine, Engineering, Geography, AIEEE, JEE, IIT-JEE, ICSE, CBSE, NIOS, Madhyamik, you will need some replenishment of energy… Yes, that’s Calcutta University; we shall come here presently. But first, let us cross this road.
You can see on a yellow board: ‘Surya Sen Street’. My forefathers (no, they aren’t T-rexes) knew it to be Mirzapore Street. The street we are walking upon, is wider, more congested than the street that I’ve heard of in their stories. It is jam-packed with shops on the pavements, pedestrians on the road, sharing survival space with vehicles.
There are tiny shops selling everything from hair pins to cell-phone covers and files. This surely wasn’t the picture a few decades back.
PutiramModak
Anyone who has been to College Street knows the allure of this century-old mishtir dokaan (sweetmeats shop). No, they don’t sell their notoriously-famous dhaakai-porota anymore. But their kochoori-chholar daal are magnetic, enough to pull you there. Those, of course, who have seen better days, find cause to complain about the deteriorating quality, but not we. The chhaanaar pora captivates and holds us in ecstasy.
You walk a bit more ‘Kalika’ famous through the ages for its variety of telebhajas, mangshor chop, chingrir chop, bhetkir chop, mochar chop, beguni, aloor chop each bite a tram ride into el paradiso. Just as you are about to get inspired by the Poetic Muse, and are on the verge of composing a ‘Paradise Re-regained’, a man with an umbrella, in his satanically maniac rush, pushes you, leaving youto salvage your beguni from the apparent fall.
Round this off with a yummy, though not spitefully healthy, glass of daaber shorbot from ‘Paramount’. Though fallen from past glory, the places I’m talking about are visited and revisited with religious regularity by the food-lovers of the city.
Back to College Street
CU stands tall; no, it is not an imperialist educational institute anymore. In fact, today’s examinees, sitting for their year-end graduation exams are best described as gamblers. The transparent opaqueness of examinations is not an oxymoron here, but a reality.
And to know, St Stephen’s (oh, yes, the hallowed college of Delhi, the best in the nation) too was once under this university, you feel a bit proud, curse DU, then curse CU back again. Calcutta University, shortened to CU, is shortened in more aspects than just name. The curriculum is dinosauric; the extra-curriculum is politics.
Fair enough. No other comment shall be ‘politically correct’.
Hare School and Presidency College
Presidency boasts of a ‘rich and varied heritage’ with the ikes of Netaji and Amartya Sen as alumni and Derozio and others as teachers. The canteen contains more smoke than food. Everyone is smoking cigarettes (Health Ministry be damned!), or worse stuff than that. That’s liberalism. Liberalism is not about getting rid of age-old dogmas, it’s not about looking beneath the skin, it is not about a liberal mindset. Liberalism is a wonderful shamiana. If you have experienced the ecstasy that LSD gives, if you have been on hashish or marijuana, or better home, bhang and siddhi oh, you are such a liberalist!
Liberalism is about not frowning, if you’re spending your free periods as well as pass-subject periods in the canteen, but frowning ferociously if you’re missing a class or two a week, since you’ve got a month-long workshop to attend. It’s the very system that’s botched. There’s no easy solution out of it.
A slice of history
The entire College Street is lined with bookstalls that sell more guide books than text books. It is a commercialised, easy guide to Success Road. The houses on Bhabani Dutta Lane that have seen centuries, are now dilapidated. Bookstalls choke the street, and it smells terribly. It was a residential area, once upon a time.
However, as you sit in the ‘Coffee House’, waiting for your fishkabiraji and coffee to arrive sometime in the next 1 hour 20 minutes, after which you have a class with your HOD, and the ceiling fans were from the ceiling where the plaster is chipping off, you can’t help feeling like a part of history.
That’s the old charm, the magic of College Street: untouched, unhampered, even through the generations…
