Kolkata Clicks #1

It's World Photography Day today and Kolkata Curry is celebrating it through a curated photo post as part of a new photo series with select clicks of the city by the shutterbugs.

The first one is a street click by international award-winning photographer Soumya Shankar Ghosal who is a self-proclaimed street photographer and has championed street photography in the city through his Facebook group Streets of Calcutta. I have seen few viewing the streets like Soumya does. He has an eye for the extraordinary in the mundane street life.

The next is a click from the folk festival 'Gajan Utsab' by passionate Kolkata explorer Arpita Chanda. As she says, Gajan is one of the oldest festivals of Kolkata and it is much older than Durga Puja. 

Victoria Memorial is synonymous with Kolkata. Everybody loves to shoot it. And then some shoot it like a dream. Here is one such by Arindam Patra.

Now, one more from the life on street. A capture of a moment of joy in the dreary life of private bus drivers, by Rupam Sen.

Signing off with a dreamy capture of an afternoon in a new township of Kolkata by Dushyant Chhetri.

#WorldPhotographyDay #WorldPhotographyDay2018 #PhotoSeries #KolkataPhotos

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A police library with a difference

Today being National Librarian’s Day, I wish to talk about a new library that charmed me.

I came to know of it from a Facebook post of Kolkata Police. Known as Kolkata Police Museum on Google Maps, its full name is Kolkata Police Museum, Library and Cafeteria. It’s located at 112 Ripon Street (on the left approaching Wellington).

I visited it with three friends who got interested hearing of it (two of them read the Facebook post too). The museum is small and spread over two floors. Its main attraction is arms seized by police from various periods of history dating back to pre-independence era.

Photograph by Arnab Banerjee

It shows the evolution of the police uniform since the colonial times. The winners of various awards/ honours of police are listed. It states that Natha Singh was the first Indian to win a traffic roll of honour and he won honours in two consecutive years, 1938 and 1939. A section familiarizes with various badges of the ranks of police which is an important civil information.

The history of the house is interesting too. The second prince (Mejokumar) of the erstwhile Bhawal Estate, who is popularly known as 'Sanyasi Raja' (The monk king), thanks to the popular Bengali movie of the same name made on him, fought the famous Bhawal Monk case from this house. It is regarded as one of the most extraordinary cases ever fought in Indian judicial history which took place in 1933-1936. As it happened, a monk came to the estate and claimed himself to be the Mejokumar who was known to have died eleven years back, and demanded his share of the estate.

Available documents show that it was the residence of Calcutta High Court Barrister RS Tweedle in 1874. After changing hands it landed with lawyer SN Matilal (in 1912) whose daughter Sarajubala Devi was married to the first prince of the Bhawal estate. It went to be part of the estate thereafter.

The house was decided to be demolished given its pathetic condition at a point of time. Kolkata Police took it as a challenge to restore it, and I must say they have done an exemplary job! Post the painstaking restoration, it was declared a 'Restored Heritage Building of the City' by INTACH. 

Coming to the library. It took me by surprise by the kinds of books in its collection as it completely beats the perception of a police library. I later realised it was by design, thanks to the Commissioner of Police Mr Rajiv Kumar, as it has been envisioned as a centre for police-citizen connect. The CP is so attached to it that it is said to be his second home and he is often seen there. The surprise element is that it has a wide collection of books for all the members of a family, from the junior to the seniormost. The fiction section is amazingly robust with admirable collection of classic literature, juvenile literature and classic thrillers.  The non-fiction range is pretty good too, including study books in various disciplines like finance and management. There are many Bengali titles too, both in fiction and non-fiction. Noticed the now popular book on fascinating cases of Kolkata Police written by senior police officer Supratim Sarkar, titled Goendapith Lalbazar (The English translation named ‘Murder in the City’ is available too). Before it became a book, the stories were being published in the Rohoshyo Robbar series on Kolkata Police Facebook page and they gradually whipped up a huge following.  

The library has over ten thousand books.

At the end of our tour of the library, what blew my mind was the extensive collection of comic books in English to hook the youngest readers. Imagine a police library keeping a huge collection of Tintin and Asterix, Marvel and DC!!

As Sub-Inspector S Sharma, the friendly gentleman who acquainted us through the library, told us, it is open seven days a week, 11 am to 7 pm. However, the best time is weekend as visitors are much less. They encourage one to come with the whole family and spend a good number of hours there. To help the purpose, there’s a cool cafe, interestingly named Off Duty Delights, which serves (non-alcoholic) beverages and a good range of snacks. We liked the iced tea. For the overall feel, one of the friends compared it to the British Council Library.

Iced tea

The membership fee is Rs 800 per annum plus Rs 100 as a one-time cost of membership card. You can take books or DVD or both and keep upto two books for a maximum of four weeks.

#NationalLibrariansDay #Library #Museum #Heritage #History

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Kolkata in art

I came across these beautiful painted pictures of my city of love on Facebook and couldn't resist sharing them with you after the artist happily permitted. They are done by painter Dibyendu Ukil, based in Chinsurah ,who has studied the art in Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata (popularly known as Art College).

All the pictures are of north Kolkata and the detailing deftly brings out the quintessential life in that part of the city and its fascinating British era architecture, which is one of the reasons why I am charmed by Kolkata forever.

About the pictures, their finesse reminds me of master artist Subrata Gangopadhyay whose impeccable, lifelike painting works I've grown up with seeing in Anandamela (children's magazine).

The old world charm exuded by the pictures is very much a reality. It is a delight to many travellers across the globe.

#Painting #Kolkata #Architecture #Heritage #KolkataArchitecture #KolkataHeritage #LifeInKolkata

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Balconies and terraces of Kolkata - 2

Kolkata is home to some fascinating old architecture in balconies and terraces. I find many of them head-turners!

It has been a constant wish to present some of this heritage beauty on this blog, which started with this post- Balconies and terraces of Kolkata - 1. But the wish didn't get justice thereafter. And the second edition comes now, thanks to Arpita Chanda.

I met Arpita in a Facebook food group and knowing my Kolkataholism, she added me to another Facebook group on old Kolkata which has proven to be a relish! Our discussion on Kolkata has been going on since then. When this fellow Kolkataholic is not at home looking after family (including her very young son), or not practising French, she may well be spotted in the lanes and alleys of Kolkata with her camera to shoot anything she fancies, which can even be old doors and windows. To my pleasure, the range includes old balconies. So, here comes the second edition of 'Balconies and terraces of Kolkata' from her collection .

All the beauties are from north Kolkata. The first three have an aristocratic touch while the fourth to sixth are rather common. The last one is an inside balcony overlooking the 'uthon' (courtyard).

Madhab Kutir, Pathuriaghata 

Madan Mitra Lane

Madan Mitra Lane

Bechu Chatterjee lane

Parshibagan Lane

Garpar Road

The well-known residence of Mahendra Srimani at Sukeas Street

#Balcony #Terrace #Heritage #OldKolkata #KolkataHeritage


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The Christmas treats from The Lalit Great Eastern Kolkata

The goodiebox from the cake shop of The Lalit Great Eastern Kolkata that arrived in my office was red, so was the man – dressed in a red t-shirt and cap. It felt for a moment that Santa had taken a disguise and appeared ahead of schedule.

The name ‘Great Eastern Hotel cake shop’ takes me back to my childhood. My father’s office was across the road, opposite the hotel’s erstwhile entrance on Old Court House Street. The aroma wafting out of the 19^th century bakery (founded by English baker David Wilson) of The Great Eastern Hotel (The previous name) was irresistible and he was among many to queue up at the cake shop for their tempting Christmas cakes. Those wonderful cakes make one of the sweetest memories from that age of mine.

Coming back to the goodiebox. It had a card with handwritten Christmas wish from the General Manager of the hotel. I found a one pound Christmas fruit cake, a pack of Christmas cookies, a vanilla muffin, an orange muffin and a loaf of Masala Bread inside.

 Inside of the Christmas goodiebox

The vanilla muffin tasted good. It had a mild vanilla flavour, had nuts and was not intensely sweet which is how I like my cakes.

The Masala Bread topped with cumin seeds had a mild spicy flavour which was nice. To enjoy a slice of it better, toast it lightly and give it a pat of butter.

 The Masala Bread

The Christmas cake was also delicately sweet and good in taste. The taste is distinctly different from other cakes as they use clarified butter instead of butter. It is not loaded with dry fruits and candied orange peel, so you can have it any time of the year as a tea cake.

 The Christmas cake

 

I liked the Christmas cookies a lot. I crave for good cookies and the hard, crunchy, sticky, coconutty cookies were delicious. They had dried plums for the added goodness and again, were not intensely sweet. The children should love it.

 The Christmas cookies

If you wish to buy your Christmas cake from the hotel's cake shop, it's on Waterloo Street. They've opened well-decorated extended counters outside to cater to the long queue, so once you reach near the hotel at the end of the street, you shall not need further direction. The counters are opening around 9 o' clock. They also have an outlet of the cake shop in New Market where you may visit if you want to avoid a long queue. But try not to go there late afternoon as you may end up being too early for the next day.

My heartiest thanks to The Lalit Great Eastern Kolkata for the gesture! Wish it a great Christmas season!

Wish you a Merry Christmas too! Soak in the chilly weather with good food.

#Christmas #Christmascake #TheLalitGreatEastern #TheBakery #TheLalitKolkata #TheLalitexperience #Heritage #KolkataHeritage

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Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsob- a heritage bus tour

I love to explore the heritage of Kolkata. So when this invitation came from the Apeejay group for a literary heritage tour as a curtain-raiser to their Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsob (a Bengali literature festival) organized by Oxford Bookstore, the heritage book den and Patra Bharati, an old publication house, I agreed to it. It was a tour of the houses of some of the most illustrious names in Bengal’s literary history.

A Sunday afternoon saw a bunch of bloggers and social media enthusiasts hop on a small AC bus from Apeejay House, Park Street. It started for the tour around 2.30 pm. Another bus carried mediapersons. It was fun to be in the company of fellow bloggers, chatting away the time in the bus amid our usual banter. RJ Roy, who I know since long before he became popular on radio (the Orkut days), was also with us.

Our first stop was the residence of Raja Rammohan Roy which was later converted to Calcutta Police Museum. It is located at 113 Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road (APC Road) before Manicktala crossing when approached from Sealdah.

Calcutta Police Museum. Photograph by Subhadip Mukherjee.

Eminent journalist, author and scholar Ranjan Bandopadhyay introduced us to the history of this place. Tridib Kumar Chattopadhyay, MD, Patra Bharati also spoke briefly and Swagat Sengupta, CEO, Oxford Bookstore and Director, Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsob spoke about the literary festival.

(Left to right) Swagat Sengupta, Ranjan Bandopadhyay, Tridib Kumar Chattopadhyay

The house was built around 1814 on a five acre plot with three ponds. Rammohan used this house to entertain his European friends and hold meetings with his associates and collaborators. The house was built and furnished in European style as described by Fanny Parkes, a well-known travel writer of nineteenth century.

Rammohan auctioned this house to organize funds for his departure for England in 1830. The government of West Bengal rented this house to re-locate Sukia Street police station in 1874. The government acquired this property in 1918 and till 1990s, various offices and senior officers’ quarters have been accommodated in the premises after the police station was shifted again. In 1996, Calcutta Police Museum was inaugurated in the house.

It has been a long time wish for me to visit the museum. It is a place to know the rich history of the city police right from pre-independence era. It depicts many well-known incidents from the history pages as well as the last few decades with preserved material belonging to the said incidents (including a large variety of arms recovered down the decades). There are dedicated officers of Kolkata Police who take the visitors through the exhibits.

The museum is open Monday-Saturday, from morning till about 5.30 pm and closed on public holidays. Entry is free. It is an ideal place to visit for children who have studied the freedom movement of Bengal in history books.

Unfortunately, photography is prohibited inside the museum and special permission is required to shoot. Hence I couldn’t take pictures to post here.

Among the interesting exhibits are the book bomb sent to chief presidency magistrate of Kolkata DH Kingsford in 1908, made by freedom-fighter Hemchandra Das, and Mauser pistol which fired both in short as well as long range (fitted in the body of a rifle, it used to fire like one) and could be easily concealed as a toy in a wooden case.

It also displays the hierarchy of the police and displays the badges which are worn on the uniform indicating different positions. The commissioner’s badge has a sword and a baton crossed along with stars. Every single badge is noticeably different for concerned and knowledgeable people to make out which position it is for. There is a list of all the city police commissioners right from the first till the previous one along with photographs. The first ever Indian commissioner was Surendra Nath Chatterjee (1947-1951).

An interesting bit of information to note was that the women’s section in Kolkata Police was started as long back as 1949 with nine sub-inspectors and thirty four assistant sub-inspectors.

The house also has the quarters of a senior police officer. I couldn’t resist the temptation to shoot this statue of a fairy in the middle of this manicured garden on the right hand side of the museum where the quarters are located, before I was told that photography was prohibited there too.

 

 The entrance seen from inside

We couldn’t stay for long. It would take at least two hours to explore the entire collection of the museum. I have to come back here.

We walked to our next destination Rammohan Library which was almost a stone’s throw. It was closed that day, so we couldn’t step inside. It’s located at 267 APC Road. Noted travel blogger and friend Rangan Dutta shared the history of the place briefly to the participants but I completely missed it.  It was founded in 1904 in memory of Raja Rammohan Roy to support and develop reading habit and create a cultural milieu. The library has a collection of rare books and magazines along with arrangement for research, a dedicated section for children and adolescents, does literary meets and has a permanent exhibition on Rammohan.

Rammohan Library

We hopped on to the bus and went down near Rajabazar Science College. The destination was noted author and publisher Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’s house. It’s on Garpar Road adjacent to Calcutta Deaf & Dumb School which is a few metres away from the science college on the opposite side of the road. It’s a white-coloured building at 100A Garpar road which has been declared a heritage building by The Kolkata Municipal Corporation. The house is not open for public visit.

The residence of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury

This was also the house where Upendrakishore’s son, famous children’s author Sukumar Ray lived all his life and his son, globally acclaimed director Satyajit Ray spent the early years of his childhood. Leela Majumdar, Upendrakishore’s niece and a famous author of children’s literarture also lived here. So, it is a rare address associated with three generations of literary and cultural legends who are widely known for laying the foundation of children’s literature in Bengali. Upendrakishore ran his publishing house U Ray & Sons which published the legendary Bengali children’s magazine Sandesh from this address. It also houses a school, Atheneum Institution which was started in 1931.

The busts of (left to right) Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, Sukumar Ray and Satyajit Ray

The bus then took us to Hrishikesh Park through Sukia Street. The residence of legendary educationist, author, reformer and philanthropist Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar is located behind the park. It’s a nicely-built two-storied house with a long balcony along two sides of the building with an adjacent lawn having an open-air stage at one side. Though this is an IGNOU centre now, it wasn’t open that day.

The residence of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

Rangan Dutta (centre) with the participants

Our last stop was Bangiya Sahitya Parishad at 243/1 APC Road. Unfortunately this was closed on that day too. Founded in 1893 for promoting Bengali literature (including translating literary work in other languages to Bengali), it was situated in the house of Binoy Krishna Deb, the first president, at Raja Nabakrishna Street. After several shifts, it came to the present address on a land donated by Maharaja Manindra Chandra Nandi of the royal family of Cossimbazar. It was first named The Bengal Academy of Literature which was changed to the present name in 1894. Rabindranath Tagore was one of the first vice presidents of this academy.

 Bangiya Sahitya Parishad

I wasn’t aware that the homes of several luminaries of Bengali education and literature were located such close to one another in north Kolkata. My sincere thanks to Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsob for the experience, especially for the police museum.

Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsob was held at Oxford Bookstore on 21^st and 22^nd October 2016.

#ABSU2016 #Heritage #History #BengaliLiterature #KolkataPolice

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A visit to Botanical Garden

The only time I visited Botanical Garden was in my childhood. It was my father’s office picnic. So, a visit to this place so near Kolkata was long due.

The garden, commonly known as Indian Botanic Garden and formally known as Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, located in Shibpur in the city of Howrah, is one of its kind in India. Spread over 109 hectres, it has a collection of 12,000 specimens of plants and trees from all over India.

After I stepped into this heritage garden with my family last month, it didn’t take me long to connect with nature. Maybe because we entered from the second and relatively new gate, I didn’t spot too many people around. This urban forest offers complete tranquility and the only sound that breaks the silence is chirp of birds. Such a welcome break from the daily grind!

The main gate, adjacent to the bus stand

The second gate

If you like nature, and the stress at work becomes too much to for your nerves, a day trip to this place is what the doctor ordered. Nothing soothes the frayed nerves as much as nature and you shall come back rejuvenated. If you have some creative work to do, a place like this can aid the thinking process by a great deal. You can just be with yourself at the lap of nature with nothing to distract your mind (other than your mobile phone, of course).

I came across various types of trees and creepers as well as blooming flowers and fruits I have never seen in my life.

One of the many species of bamboo tree

The garden was set up by Colonel Robert Kyd in 1787. It was known as ‘Company Bagan’ then (after the name of East India Company). Kyd also served as the Honorary Superintendent of the garden from the beginning till 1793. The primary objective of the garden was identifying new plants of commercial value, such as teak, and growing spices for trade. According to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19^th century, the introduction of the tea plant from China may be considered one of the greatest accomplishments of this botanic garden. This led to another significant contribution- according to Sir Hooker, the establishment of the tea trade in the Himalaya and Assam is almost entirely the work of the superintendents of the botanic garden of Kolkata and Saharanpur.

The garden has a rare variety of water lily (Scientific name Victoria amazonica). Its leaves are so large and robust that it is said that a leaf can hold an infant.

Came across a palm house but unfortunately it was closed. Here’s a peek from the gate.

There are battery-operated cars of various sizes that can take visitors to a paid guided tour of the garden. They can be booked at the main gate.

  

Despite housing a mammoth collection of plants and trees, including countless rare species, the garden is pretty ill-maintained. Many of the trees are not labelled with name, scientific name and other details and road directions to visitors like which sections are located where are poorly maintained. The roads are kept clean but.

The faulty tap that throws water in all directions

The garden is by the river Hooghly (also known as Ganga or The Ganges).  There is a promenade by the river and sitting there can add to the experience.

 

The garden is a no-plastic zone. So, don't carry plastic bags. Also, bring your own food if you wish to eat, as, unfortunately, there is no food kiosk/ eatery inside. Even outside the main gate there is a sole low-end restaurant which is the only decent place to have a meal.  

#BotanicalGarden #NaturePark #KolkataTravel #TouristAttraction #StressBuster

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