All Of This Is Fleeting
The city began as Calcutta, cradled gently by the tempestuous Hooghly. The river wasn’t shallow then, nor as muddy. The global networks forged on these waters led to the creation of the Strand, and the city, found originally as a trading settlement, slowly took architectural shape.
It wasn’t built in a day, though the form it has taken in recent years might point towards it. From its very beginning, was an unplanned, chaotic, landscape. A pandemonium of gargantuan proportions, a mix of smells and fragrances, of noise and music, of syncopated rhythms that pulsed through the roads as horses galloped by. It was never planned, no care given to where the manors went, and where the bustees. There was a white part of town, with cobbled streets, and well maintained drainage. That is as far as planning could get you in the swamps of Calcutta. White town is still well maintained and a trip to Dalhousie Square is sure to impress upon you the fleeting grandeur of a stagnating city.
The Black part of town however paints a bitter picture.
These houses are all now crumbling. Calcutta has a problem. It spreads like a tumor. Malignant, malformed. The walls come down, brick by brick. Heritage is but a buzzword thrown around by hoteliers. It is difficult to blame the owners.
These houses were not just built for families but also for a bevy of servants and employees. This wasn’t just a house. It was the epicentre of a sprawling legacy, carefully curated by the patriarch. It is neither complicated, nor wrong, to point to the dissolution of the 'Joint Family' as one of the main reasons behind the decline of these grand mansions. How many people still live here, and how many will in ten years? What then should we do? Break them down and build huge apartments that challenge the skies? What then of our heritage, the last vestige of a floundering state?
As Calcutta grows, forming the Calcutta Metropolitan area, covering over 700 square miles, we forget more and more about its origins. The North still brings with it a certain charm that cannot be replicated in the modern satellite cities of Bidhannagar, with its four lane roadways that leave pedestrians hanging out to dry. The crumbling houses, quite literally, are the symbols of our history. Soon, the house in Joynagar where Bankimchandra wrote the premise to Anandamath, will be broken down and replaced by apartment buildings. A fragment of literary history will be lost forever to time, alive only in my memory as a friend’s house where we spent hours talking and laughing.
