End of the Little Road

The fencing was probably the first to go, soon after the residents. The wooden slatted windows followed. Some of the tiles from the roof disappeared next; earlier this year, part of it collapsed entirely. A six-lever lock on the front door notwithstanding, the house allows easy access to all comers.

Bandopadhyay—and, most certainly, Ray—would have appreciated the irony. The Apu trilogy, after all, makes magic of these moments of conflict and contrast: Durga revelling in the guilty pleasure of a stolen mango, only to be rebuked severely; Harihar coming home after months, only to be greeted by death; Apu becoming a father, only to lose his beloved Aparna.

Tragedy, in fact, is intertwined with Gourikunj, named by the writer in memory of his first wife Gouri Debi. It was to this house that Bibhutibhushan returned after a dinner party at the Dholbhumgarh Rajbari; three days later he died, an apparent victim of food poisoning.

Bibhutibhushan’s brother, medical practitioner Notobehari, committed suicide soon afterwards on the banks of the nearby Subarnarekha, unable to bear his brother’s demise and the viciousness of a section of Kolkata’s literary circuit, which held him responsible for Bibhutibhushan’s death.

The brothers’ widows, along with three-year-old Taradas, Bibhutibhushan’s son, thereafter decided to shift base to Kolkata. Thus began the decline of Gourikunj, and the finger pointing at Taradas.

‘‘The house still stands because our family maintained it,’’ says Bharati Chatterjee, daughter-in-law of neighbour Felugopal Chatterjee, who was reportedly authorised to live in the house. Following pressure from the administration and an alleged slander campaign by Taradas, the Chatterjees vacated Gourikunj in 1997—Felugopal passed away the year before—and now live at a nearby address.

‘‘Taradas promised a lot, but delivered nothing,’’ says Ranjit Bose, general secretary of the Ghatsila Bibhuti Smriti Samsad, an organisation built around the writer’s memory. ‘‘Though the house was being maintained well, the Chatterjees attracted the ire of Bibhutibhushan’s followers because they were not family. But Taradas has done nothing with a monetary grant he got from the Jharkhand government to turn the house into a heritage tourism spot. All he had to do was give a no-objection certificate and some repair work could have been done.’’

In his defence, the Kolkata-based Taradas Bandyopadhyay, 59, denies receiving any grant at all. But he admits the house needs immediate attention.

‘‘I hear Gourikunj has become a drinking den and a gambling joint. I have already sent a letter to Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda, now I will try to speed up the process. I’m the saddest person since my father’s memory is involved, but I’m a heart patient and dealing with government agencies is a complicated job, the repairs may take some time,’’ says Bandopadhyay.

But time is a luxury that Gourikunj might not have at its disposal. Much like the snake sheltering in the house vacated by Harihar in Pather Panchali’s final shot, the destiny of Gourikunj may well be written by the elements.