Sonya Gogna set out in a quest for the holy amidst the daily bustle of a small town, and was in for a surprise.
Bandel, a bustling small town of Hooghly district has been a major junction of the Eastern Railway. Sounds of the trains, engines, wagons and boggies in the railway yards for change track, cleanup or repair keeps the city dweller and travelers alike awake. Nearby Bandel thermal power plant, one of the largest in the region spews smokes in the air, shows off the importance of the town.
It was the kind of weather and time – high noon in East India’s summer – to find only mad dogs and the working lot out in the sun. Well, we weren’t in the sun, not as yet. We were in the car, trying to be engulfed by the little known city of Bandel.
Today Bandel is nothing more than a bustling small town, but the place houses such little gems of historical interest that it magically attracts the curious travelling lot like us. The history dates back to the Portuguese establishing the town of Bandel, they got along a band of Augustinian Monks from Goa to preach Christianity among the locals. In sync, the Bandel Church was built in 1599 along the banks of the Hooghly River.
The original church was shortlived. In 1632 the Mughals under Shah Jahan ransacked Bandel and razed the church to the ground. 4 of the 5 priests were killed, and only Father Juan Da Cruz survived. JDC was taken prisoner and ordered to be executed, trampled to death by elephants.
If legend is to be believed, one of the elephants, instead of trampling JDC, picked him up and placed him on his back. Then the elephant walked to Shah Jahan and kneeled down as if asking for mercy! Impressed by this feat, Shah Jahan ordered the prisoners to be freed. JDC was allowed to go back and re-establish the church. Whatever the real story, ultimately in 1660 the Bandel Church was rebuilt over the site of the original church.
For my group of ardent travel lovers, this was the stuff of dreams. Our imagination knew no bounds when we planned this trip amidst the sweltering heat of July. Paper maps were replaced by the GPS in our moblies, seriously technology these days sure helps in travelling light and enroute when we stopped to have tea the presence of an 8- year-old who was wondering what these adults were up to seemed pretty fancy.
Armed with such bravado (and little else!) we had set out at 6 in the morning in our machine; we could have taken the local train too, but wanted to explore the routes to this little known city. On the highway to Bandel we got slightly confused and ended up asking for directions, and then we managed to reach Chandannagar, and finally Bandel city. We ran the machine for about a distance of 55 kms from Kolkata. We next travelled roughly around 43 kms from the city of Bandel to get to the church.
We had no idea that amidst this small city, lost in its own charm, we were to find such a majestic and peaceful ambience around the Church. It is said that this church is amongst the oldest in Asia. It stands upright in all its grandeur amidst lush greenery. The Church was declared a basilica in 1988 in front of which there’s a mast presented by the captain of a ship that faced a storm in the Bay of Bengal. The church has three altars, a small organ and several tombstones besides the statue of “One lady of Happy Voyage” in the middle of it. Inside there are beautiful paintings depicting scenes from the life of Jesus.
Once we had travelled the entire length and breadth of the church, we decided to check out the oldest sun dial of Asia at the Imambada. Its amazing how the ancient invention of the early days matches precisely to the accurate technology of the 21st century.
So with this our travel to the city of Bandel technically came to an end, but the impact was so great on us that we had definitely left a part of us somewhere in that holy land with a promise to come back with every chance that we get.
