Calcutta Chromosome

At any given weekday morning,Dalhousie Square can give you the impression of being the centre of everything. It has a spin of its own a wilder orbit inside the earths calm blue whirl.

At any given weekday morning,Dalhousie Square can give you the impression of being the centre of everything. It has a spin of its own a wilder orbit inside the earths calm blue whirl. Office goers drive through red-lights,cursing each other as they negotiate their way across a sea of humanity. There is no time to loiter around,not when you are on everybodys way. By afternoon,calm descends,and a sense of hopelessness drifts across its weathered bylanes. Its then when you notice things around you. The dilapidated Currency Building for instance,its battered exterior gives way to an even more ravaged interior,the gigantic arches of which are mute testimony to better times.

Its the shock of such ravaged beauty that wakes you up to the ground realities of our city. We forget that in this city post-Independence architecture resembles habitats for human roaches. The older specimen of architecture is still the best things that the city can offer, writes Soumitra Das,whose book White & Black: Journey to the centre of Imperial Calcutta (Niyogi Books) is a clear-eyed view of the changing face of Kolkatas power centre from the tumultuous days of its establishment to our sad times. The book threads its way through several recurrent journalistic obsessions,the ebb and flow of the citys fortune,its fascinating social structure,but White & Black manages to give immediate context to the story.

Das is partnered by photographer Christopher Taylor in this project whose keen,poetic eye for detail brings a sense of forlorn to the frames. His sense of the subject is beyond the perfunctory,Taylor in tandem with Dass flowing narrative invests a small fortune of visual eloquence in the book,and they get more than the fashionable bare minimum of literary return out of them.

For someone familiar with this part of the city,there are little surprises on each page an ornamental pump that went dry ages ago adorns the pavement opposite Accountant Generals office,an awe-inspiring arch connecting two buildings,which has probably gone hitherto unnoticed I have lived in this area all my life (Bentinck Street) and still there were some buildings like the Dalhousie Boys Association,a place which has photographs of Marx and Lenin alongside gods and goddesses,have escaped my notice. Christopher pointed them out to me, says Das.

Das and Taylor take the pains of adding a sub-narrative to the book too the story of people who throng the office para. So White & Black tells us about Kapilcharan Das,a former employee of Writers Buildings who started working there in 1943 when most of his bosses were white. He remembers the days when natives like him had good interpersonal relationship with their British overlords. Taylor,on the other hand,manages to humanise a simple cup of tea in a street-side eatery,which in most cases happens to be the first and only meal of the day for many.

Taylor and Das also manage to re-discover a forgotten society of the city the Calcutta Pinjrapole Society. Tucked away at the Burrabazar side of Dalhousie Sqaure is the house which is the societys headqaurters . Pinjrapole is a home for ill,dying or pregnant cows,where they are looked after. This was again a Taylor discovery. I didnt know it existed, says Das.

Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram

Tags:
Kolkata
talk

Calcutta Chromosome

At any given weekday morning,Dalhousie Square can give you the impression of being the centre of everything. It has a spin of its own a wilder orbit inside the earths calm blue whirl.

At any given weekday morning,Dalhousie Square can give you the impression of being the centre of everything. It has a spin of its own a wilder orbit inside the earths calm blue whirl.