Homing Instinct
Can you really go back to your past? After all these years, the people you knew and the streets in which you grew up, have all changed except in your fond memories. So, when nostalgia directs your steps home after many a year, what do you really go back to? Surely, it is to memories made up of sights, smells and half remembered faces. But the real ones are all gone, vanished in the whirlpool of time. So you wend your way to cherished monuments that still stand in the old city and evoke the past for you, perhaps far more romantically than it ever really was. This is such a journey, personal and yes – sentimental, to my City of Joy!
Charnock is Banished!
Job Charnock of Lancashire, England was a morose and solitary man who in 1668 joined the British East India Company in Bengal. He was not liked by his colleagues, but he was a true Company Man. Landing in the province of Bengal at the village of Sutanati on the banks of the river Hooghly in 1670, he decided that this was the ideal location for a trading post for the company’s Saltpeter trade. Three villages were combined to form a settlement that he named Calcutta.
Today, there is no doubt that it was due to Charnock’s stubborn insistence that this location was selected ahead of the already established settlement of Cossimbazar. However, that Charnock founded the settlement of Calcutta is hotly debated by Indian historians. Recently, the dispute went to the Calcutta High Court which ruled against Charnock. In 2003, the Court accepted the claim that a thriving settlement already existed there since the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family was granted the feudal land ownership or Jagirdari of Kalikatah by Emperor Jehangir way back in 1608.
Thus, by a court order, the city was delinked from Charnock and from the year 1670. Consequently today, she has neither an official founder nor an official birthday and Job Charnock has been banished from the pages of Indian history! When history gets rewritten and the past is lost in the shifting sands of time, we turn to what still endures, to the city’s colonial monuments.
A Cathedral is Uncrowned!
St. John’s Church located behind the Governor’s mansion was the seat of the Archbishop of Calcutta and thus, its Cathedral till 1847. Then a grander creation, the new St. Paul’s Cathedral befitting the greatly expanded new city and the capital of British India took St. John’s crown away! The new building was completed in 1847 in Gothic Revival style with stained glass windows. The tower and spire was originally modeled upon Norwich Cathedral. After the earthquake in 1934, the tower was rebuilt along the lines of the central tower of Canterbury Cathedral. St. Paul’s is an Anglican cathedral of the Church of North India – a united church which is part of the Anglican Communion. It is also the seat of the Diocese of Calcutta and of the Bishop of Calcutta.
Today, St. Paul’s is the center for Christians in Calcutta who celebrate Christmas every year with pomp and fervor. Nativity scenes, midnight masses and fairs held on its grounds are true Christmas attractions.
We are not Amused
If the Capitol building in Washington was to marry the Taj Mahal, the child may well look like the celebrated Calcutta landmark, the Victoria Memorial. As these thoughts cross the mind, we can almost hear an imperious voice in the distance angrily proclaiming “We are not amused”!
Queen Victoria died in 1901. In her memory, Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India proposed “a building, stately, spacious, monumental and grand”, complete with museum and gardens. The Victoria Memorial was completed in 1921, but after the British had shifted the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi.
Today, visitors marvel at the structure, visit the museum full of colonial relics and take the air in the surrounding gardens. The Queen sits in solitary splendor near the entrance while lovers looking for solitude, go behind flowering bushes to escape her disapproving gaze. They are noticed however by spoilsport police patrols that spot their public display of affection and ask them to move on!
The Day is Done
From static monuments to the flowing river Hooghly, the stream of time carries us from the colonial past to the living present. Not very long ago, the bank between the two bridges that link the cities of Calcutta and Howrah across the river, was a stretch of dark and crumbling pathways shunned by all except the occasional drug peddler or street walker.
Today however, all that has changed dramatically. The 5 km stretch is being reclaimed gradually, pavements and embankments are replacing weeds and bushes, candelabra shaped lights banish darkness and tea stalls and eateries attract families on an evening out. A view of the sunset from a boat in the river or from the pavements, with the spanking new Vidyasagar Bridge in the background is indeed a spectacular memory to carry home and cherish. The sun goes down in a blaze of gold, the journey is ended and the day is done!
by Jayant Neogy.
I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. – With apologies to Tennyson
What an awesome tribute to a great city! I lived there for a few years and your article took me back….thank you! I took the city for granted then, but I miss it just a little bit as I read your article and look at your spectacular pictures. Thank you for sharing…. truly!
Thank you Bibi. Good to know that you liked the article and pictures.
Lyrical, nostalgic and wistful – the author’s photos and commentary carried me back to my own days growing up in the city that Job Charnock built, and the city that is virtually synonymous with Indian renaissance.
Thank you Amru. So glad you liked the article and the pictures.
Charnock was an India lover; he married an Indian, remained faithful to her and even bled chicken blood over her grave to cast a protective spell. Charnock’s grave, I believe, can still be located in Calcutta (now Kolkata). The High Court may decree otherwise, but Charnock’s place in the city is secure, and where are the Sabarna Chowdhrys of to-day? Few know and less care………….
Thank you Shomru for more on Charnock.
I trust that the photos and the article was to your liking as well.