In Calcutta, in search of the childhood home….and beef
Tollygunge. The big red gate. The corner shop just outside the gate. The narrow verandah with the black grills. I began recollecting the few images of Calcutta of the 1980s that were still left in my mind. We didn’t have a camera back then. In fact, the first camera came quite late in my life. I had to depend on those images my little brain was able to record from age one to four, from 1986 to 1989, and retain, almost three decades later.
The yellow taxis. The window I stood and watched them from. The tram. Snatching the ticket rack from the conductor. Illustrated weekly. Rabindra Sarovar. Esplanade. Cycle rickshaw. Kalighat. Metro. Rasgolla….Part of this recollection has to do with the memories of hearing these names repeated in recollections of the Calcutta days from amma or achan.
So, this whole exercise happened in 2015. I was about to visit Calcutta again, for the first time after I left the place as a four year old. Many a phase of planning and postponement went about, without anything actually happening. I had to return to that narrow street in Tollygunge and check whether I been holding the right mental image of that old house. By then, I was half sure that I would land up in a place unrecongisable to me. A wider street and a new house, perhaps.
But then, with four friends accompanying me, this agenda was kept for the last. We arrived in Tollygunge on the eigth day of the trip, after detours to Sunderbans, Shanthinikethan and Orissa. A call back home was required to get the name of the street and the house number — 17 A, Prince Rahimuddin Lane.
Writing this in 2018 makes it similar to my memory jogging exercise of 2015, before I visited Calcutta. Only that, memories are less well-etched when you are older and when you are in the age of smart phones. So, here I am scrolling through the photographs to recollect that day. I rummage through the pile of notepads, to recover my notes from the trip, filled every night in rooms filled with environment-friendly, green smoke.
The Capital Hotel in New market was our abode. The New market must have been new about a few decades back. Quaint, old buildings, dotted the landscape. Even the records on sale by the street were old, Ventures and Mehdi Hassan being the latest. No, not complaining. Fully soaking it in.
A tram ride takes us to Tollygunge. With the street name in hand, it was not much of a struggle. It was as narrow as it was in my memory. Before the house, I spotted something else, which brought memories rushing back. The corner shop just outside the gate. Not much had changed. No. Nothing had changed. This was true about many parts of the city. It seemed to be the eighties or nineties all over again. Freedom from glass buildings, was all that I was thinking.
The brown wooden panels of the shop opened to both sides and the weight balance hung to a side. I would later come back to buy a toffee from the shop, for old times’ sake.
For now, I was too restless, to find the childhood home. I had found it. The names of the ‘Dastidars’ on the wall was the confirmation. The names had also got stored away somewhere in my memory, from repetition at home during the later years. The gate was not red, as I imagined, but green. Nor was it big. It was big only to a three-year old. The walls were higher now.
The scene inside though was a sign that part of my memory was indeed photographic. The narrow verandah with the black grills, on which I used to climb up. The mosaic floor.
I hadn’t stopped grinning since I found that shop. Now, the grin just got wider, as my friends told me. The grill was locked. It seemed to me, no one had stayed there after we left. The owners of the house, the Ghosh family, used to stay upstairs. But, just seeing this house was enough for me.
Those who came with though had other ideas, as they pushed me up the stairs. Responding to the calling bell was the voice of a frail old woman, who was not quite keen on coming down the last flight of stairs.
“I used to live here, downstairs, from 1986 to 1989”
She takes her time, trying hard to recollect.
“But, wasn’t that baby a girl?”
(Okay. This is not going well)
“No. That was me.” (Mentions names, details..)
She had apparently mistaken me for the child from another Kerala family, who stayed in the house just after us. She says that her husband, Shivaji Ghosh, had passed away in February this year.
“I just came for a trip and thought I would try and locate the old house.”
“The house was given out for rent just a month back. You could have gone inside if someone was there now.”
“I just wanted to see it from the outside.”
“Your parents are now in Kerala?”
“Yes. Can I click your photograph to show them?”
“From up here?” (She was struggling to come down the stairs)
“Yes. Please stay there.”
Stepping outside the gate, I spotted a yellow ambassador taxi parked right at the spot, where a similar yellow taxi used to park regularly, for me to watch from the grills, through the then low compound walls. The picture was complete.
******
2015 was also the year of the beef ban. We had heard about a beef place in Calcutta, which happened to be in Tollygunge. Again, the search was easy. ‘Beef World’ was right opposite Prince Anwar Shah Road, which apparently was named after one of Tipu Sultan’s 12 sons. All of them were thrown into the Vellore prison after being captured by the British during the Battle of Mysore. To quell the rebellion in the Vellore prison, they were moved to a prison in Calcutta. How and when the street was named I couldn’t find out.
‘Beef World’ was one of the three restaurants serving beef in this street, as the man running this one told me.
“But, we deal exclusively in beef. I know how it is in Kerala. Every hotel has beef and parotta,” said the Beef world owner, whose name I can’t recollect and which is missing in my notes too. (Do comment, if any of you reading this know his name)
His knowledge of the hotels in Kerala came from visiting here for film shootings. Yes, he is an actor.
“I have acted in a few Tamil and Malayalam film. All of them as villainous side characters, like extras. One was with Ajith.”
His grandfather had migrated to India from Iran, years before our independence. His father set up the beef shop here, four decades back. “Our family used to stay far away from here, in another part of the city. But then, riots happened in 1946 and we had to flee. Finally, we settled here.”
Home and migration, forced and otherwise, seemed to be the motif for this day.
*************
Photo time
