I happen to visit a small town only two hours away from Kolkata called Burdwan, last weekend. I was staying with a friend and her mother in their family home. This town seemed like it was barely out of the 1940’s. There were small stores, workshops repairing cycles, selling items made of clay, cobblers, sweet shops, libraries in small rooms. The merchandise seemed old. Not used, but as if the latest in Burdwan is what was sold in Delhi 50 years ago. The imprints of the past are so prominent and alive. The architecture is unique. Delhi is full of buildings built by the British, yet Bengal displays a very different kind of influence. Perhaps I am too uneducated to know why or how. But it is not the same.
There was a huge gothic dilapidated, deserted structure with obviously what had been a long drive way and gardens, now filed with wild growth. I am told the family moved to England after independence and never came back. Guess not many like to time travel!
You can see how Bengal was the cultivating field of the British clergy and western education. The town is full of old colleges, with huge campuses churning out doctors, nurses, lawyers and engineers even today. The name plates reflect this trend across Burdwan.
A lawyers chamber, used by multiple generations of the Mukherjee family is located right opposite my friends residence. It looks like it’s from the freedom fighter movies. Stone steps and flooring, old law journals in wall to wall racks, huge wooden desk and a cycle parked outside!!
The town was obviously active & alive in pre-independence India. Perhaps something important happened here once, for the Curzon Gate stands at the entrance of the main market, in the same style that the British liked to welcome their dignitaries to the colonies. GRAND-and now out of place among the busy, dirty, crowded marketplace filled with “natives.”
I am compelled to mention the only Krishna temple (female deities rule the bong spiritual spectrum, just like their homes!) in the area. So, we were walking down the narrow winding streets lined with shops and houses and my friend stopped to cross the road to go into what looked like a British godown. I followed clueless. As we entered I noticed the heavy carved wooden doors and the wood panelling on the sides and the ceiling. The 5 metre corridor led to a courtyard surrounded by rooms on left and right, with a very wide (covering almost the entire breadth of the compound) staircase leading up to a mandir (temple) where the deities of Lord Krishna and his beloved/ muse Radha stood happily beside each other. There was calm and peace and an astoundingly different environment from what we had left only 5 metres behind. We only spent 10 minutes there, but they were beautiful!
This little town gets as Bong as it can get! I cannot conclude without appreciating the hospitality of my hosts, the Mitra family, who fed me delicious authentic Bengali meals, always accompanied by deserts and their warmthJ.
