- Jhilam Roy
Why do they need the fingertips naked?
They may dip it in any stranger’s blood.
This city which was a banquet of beautiful
people—
This city which was the foundation of many a
fresh sapling.
This city which was a gathering of the
moon-like beauties,
This city which was a quarter of the
possessors of charm.
This is the very ground that would throw up
gold.
This is the very dust where from we find elixir.
[Zahir Dehlvi, Daastan-e-Ghadar]
It’s oft said that no city is a mere space but a cornucopia of
wordless and priceless emotions. It speaks, it jubilates, it hurts, it heals.
Yet, as John Updike says, ‘Cities aren’t like people. They live on and on, even
though their reason for being where they are has gone down-river and out to
sea’. Indeed, cities are synonymous with infinity, an ever-shifting, endless
battle-ground of raging human expressions. The sanctimonious manifestation of a
thousand myriad imaginations, faiths, convictions. More so if there is a
tireless chronology of hundreds of years attached to it. Calcutta is one such
city. The Black Hole tragedy, the Bargis attacking the ‘infant’ British
settlement, the thrice-sacking of Calcutta … the tales go on. Of late, I have been researching on these
stories, and have been fortunate to come across some deliciously appealing
ones. I have included them below (bereft of any critical notes for the reader
to judge by herself/himself), primary and secondary sources included, and it is
hoped that you will find them worth your while.
 |
| Job Charnock's epitaph |
[1]
A tomb in the corner, with Octagon dome,
Hath of marble a slab in the wall deep
imbedded,
Which tells how in hope of redemption to come,
Two pilgrims of this world found here their
last home,
Calcutta’s brave founder — the Suttee he wedded.
[Anonymous, Job Charnock]
Any essay on Calcutta remains incomplete without the mention of
its valiant founding father, a being forever shrouded in mystery. This fact was contested by the Shobhabazar zamindars and the Armenians; nonetheless, the fiction and non-fiction
involving Charnock qualify for entertaining reads. Charnock was the more
fortunate counterpart of John Lang’s Francis Gay, credited with the foundation
of a city that considers him with reverence and enigma even today. Like his
adopted country, his life in India was more colourful and adventurous than his
English gentry life. Of note are his legendary Indianization and his weakness
for Indian women.
 |
| A caricature of the Hastings-duel |
Charnock’s encounter with a half-breed named Mary Ann has seeded
into oblivion. The ten-year-old a ‘native’ slave of John Elliot, a proprietor
at Kasimbazar, was serving Charnock at an inn and in gratitude for his
acknowledgement of her English heritage, she had kissed him and became his
lover for one night. This would instil in Charnock a yearning for Indian women
and it would materialize in 1680 when he would rescue a suttee from a pyre,
re-baptise her as ‘Angela’, and marry her. Her memory would be cherished long
after her death by an anniversary sacrifice of a rooster on her tomb. She gave
birth to two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Following Emperor Aurangzeb’s
decree against prostitutes in Patna, Charnock would take as his concubine a
dark-complexioned harlot named Motia who had pasted abir on his forehead in a Holicelebration. Charnock reportedly had a
blissful marital life, but his associations haunted him politically and
socially. He was accused of nearly discarding his religion and proud heritage
for their sakes. Such is the power of love! [Taken from P. T. Nair, Job Charnock, The Founder Of
Calcutta: An Anthology]
 |
| A second caricature of the Hastings-duel |
[2]
If any report different from what I have related should circulate,
and you should think them worthy of contradiction, I hope you will not scruple
to use this letter for that purpose. – Colonel Pearce in his letter to Lawrence Sullivan
On the morning of August 17, 1780, Calcutta stood witness to a
remarkable duel between the then Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and his
political rival in the Governing Council, Philip Francis. The latter had
questioned Hastings’ administrative and financial dealings, and the former had
written a scathing minute in an official meeting wherein Francis’ scandalous
liaison with Catherine Grand (one of the celebrated beauties of 18th century
Bengal) and his being fined 50,000 sicca rupees for adultery were mentioned. An
infumed Francis challenged Hastings to a duel, and the pair selected what is at
present called Duel Avenue at Alipore in Kolkata as the battle-field.
Duelling is a waging of war by gunfire to preserve the masculine honour, a
European ‘sport’ that has its origin in the Dark Ages. Each combatant is placed
at 14 paces from each other, accompanied by a Second, and they are instructed
to fire at each other on the count of three. Hastings’ Second was Colonel
Pearce, the Commandant of Artillery and Francis’ Second was Colonel Watson, the Chief Engineer at Fort
William. The duel commenced as planned; fortunately, none of the competitors
were no marksmen. Though Hastings managed to shoot Francis, he survived the
attempt and returned to England hereafter. The strains of the duel remained,
and haunted Hastings during his impeachment trial.
 |
| Hastings House [From Kathleen Blechynden, Calcutta: Past & Present] |
If you wander through the streets of Alipore and find yourself in
an antiquarian store, you would unconditionally and endearingly hear of Lord
Warren Hastings. Even today, the shots from
Hastings’ and Philip Francis’ pistols echo through the air, inspiring stories
of all hues. People there know, with filial certainty, the haloed ground where
the legendary duel took place over two-hundred years ago. The events are recounted
with utmost precision, to the extent of passing as contemporary gossip. The
imagination stops not there but extends to the palatial Hastings House where it
is said, late at night, Hastings drives up to the house in his carriage,
scampers through the front door, and frantically searches for something in the
room that was once his study. Myths say that his spectre returns to secure the
lost papers that would have deemed him innocent at his trial of impeachment.
Typical British! Worried about his reputation from beyond the grave! [Taken
from Kathleen Blechynden, Calcutta: Past And Present]
 |
| Pattle's epitaph |
[3]
Oh, the old Pattles! They’re always bursting
out of their casks. – Virginia Woolf
James and Adeline Pattle’s graves are one of the many forgotten
graves at St. John’s Church in Calcutta, but little does one know that the
elaborate tombstones stand over empty graves. More elusive is the sensational
circumstances in which ‘the biggest liar in India’ and his wife met their
deaths in that distant 1845. Hear it from Virginia Woolf herself, one of the
descendants of this infamous judge:
Julia Margaret Cameron, the third daughter of Janies Pattle of the
Bengal Civil Service, was born on June 11, 1815. Her father was a gentleman of
marked, but doubtful, reputation, who after living a riotous life and earning
the title of ‘the biggest liar in India’, finally drank himself to death and
was consigned to a cask of rum to await shipment to England. The cask was stood
outside the widow’s bedroom door. In the middle of the night, she heard a
violent explosion, rushed out, and found her husband, having burst the lid off
the coffin, bolt upright, menancing her life in death as he had menanced her in
life. ‘The shock sent her off her head then and there, poor thing, and she died
raving.’ It is the father of Miss Ethel Smyth who tells the story (Impressions That Remained), and he goes on to say that, after ‘Jim Blazes’
had been nailed down again and shipped off, the soldiers drank the liquor in
which the body was preserved, ‘and, by Jove, the rum ran out and got alight and
set the ship on fire! And while they were trying to extinguish the flames, she
ran on a rock, blew up, and drifted ashore just below Hooghly. And what do you
think the sailors said? ‘Pattle had been such a scamp that the devil wouldn’t
let him go out of India. – Virginia Woolf, Julia Margaret Cameron
Woolf’s colonial roots have spilt from her pen and many of her
works speak of her lesser-known legacy. Even the guides at the churches don’t
deem these two worthies of mention. But their great-great-great-grandchildren,
one of them William Dalrymple still visit them. It counts once in a while to
remember a notorious ancestor who made for good bedtime stories! [Taken from
Virginia Woolf, The Complete Works]
 |
| The dissent of the natives of Calcutta [From Bidisha Chakraborty and Sarmistha De, Calcutta In The Nineteenth Century: An Archival Exploration] |
[4]
Quit the city O Mother dear
Don’t ever again come back here.
The woes of Calcutta grow day by day,
So it’s better Ma, that you keep away.
Here learned Justices pass judgements prime,
While city roads lie steeped in grime.
For fear of all the roadway dust
Our mouths and eyes we all keep shut.
Crapping and piddling in public places
Are now treated as grievous offences.
[Kaliprasanna Sinha, Hootum Penchar Naksha]
Kaliprasanna Sinha’s Hootum Penchar Naksha is unparalleled in its social portrayal of the Bengali festivities
and sensibilities. The satirical accounts of the Autumn festival and the Churuck Puja (celebrations indigenous to the city) are particularly lavish
and whelming, boasting of a lengthy history of continuity. But, did you know that the colonial Government
sought to interfere in these time-tested traditions only to meet with fierce
resistance from the legendary likes of Rani Rashmoni and the aristocrats of
Calcutta? Or that the Churuck festival, celebrated with so much aplomb even
today, almost bought a ticket to oblivion?
The Autumn festival was not only the time for the worship of
Goddess Durga, but also one of emblazoning culture in the form of nautch
performances, kobigaan, and British bhakti. Indeed, the denizens of the
city worshipped their Bengali Mother and their British Master. Nonetheless, the
authorities did not think dearly of the noisy ‘raptures’ caused by these
festivities. ‘On June 27, 1849, a notice was published in the Calcutta Exchange And Gazette, imposing certain restrictions on the routes of
the Bijoya Dashami procession in the main thoroughfares of
Calcutta, especially in the European quarters of the town’. The first voice of
protest was that of Rani Rashmoni of Janbazar, and she was joined by a large
number of native residents. Mathura Mohan Biswas spearheaded the signing of a
collective memorial, and it was forwarded to the government on August 28, 1849.
Some extracts from the memorial are provided below:
… the several Hindoo religious Ceremonies, which are performed at
these periods and that this liberal concession to their (British) creed and
their feeling is directly opposed to the present interference with their most
sacred Ceremonials.
… to conclude each Poojah by taking the images of their Deities in
solemn procession from the Takor Barees to the Banks of the River and cast them
into waters, and that without their last sacred act the whole rite would be
imperfect.
That from the 18th of July 1749 to the present time a century has
elapsed, and during that period the Capital of India has been under the rule of
ten Governors and eighteen Governors-Generals. Your memorialists might go back
to an era “to which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary”, but a usage
prevailing for a century to years and sanctioned by so many Rulers, needs no
further support.
 |
| The Rashmoni Memorial [ From Bidisha Chakraborty and Sarmistha De, Calcutta In The Nineteenth Century: An Archival Exploration] |
It
is on these general grounds that your memorialists respectfully remonstrate
against a Regulation which interferes with so many of their body in the
exercise of Religious Rites, held so sacred and so long enjoyed.
The Under-Secretary of the Government of Bengal, I.W. Dalrymple,
promptly responded to the memorial, and the regulations were swept aside with
an assurance of ‘preventing any material inconvenience in the quarters through
which the Processions may pass’. Yet, not always did the indigenous crowd
harbour a penchant for all things traditional.
The city was filled with the sound of drums. The swingers were
itching to have their backs pierced with hooks … They had ghungroos around their ankles, gaudy chains around their waists, dyed gamchas of Tarakeshwar in their hands, garlands of bel leaves around their
necks, and topis laced with gold thread on their heads. – Kaliprasanna Sinha, Hootum Penchar Naksha
The Churuck festival almost lapsed to the abhorrence of
the upper classes. Largely deemed a carnival of the lower orders residing in ‘Calcutta’s
black town neighbourhoods of Kansaripara, Jelepara, Ahiritola’, it was when
they ‘came out on the streets to lampoon’ the ‘upstart Bengali babus, the
hypocrite Brahmins, the arrogant English sahibs, and the municipal commissioners
for failing to solve the civic problems of the citizens’. The educated elite
apparently found the swinging from the hooks and banphora (piercing hooks through flesh)
barbaric, unethical, and unsuited for an emerging Imperial city as Calcutta.
The applications came from the affluent ‘targets of the festival’ and were
backed by the Government. In earlier instances, Calcutta proved to be a soft
ground where laws could be easily enacted; in this case, not so much. One
‘Juggernauth Dutt of Badool Bagaun’ and one ‘Rampersaud Koondoo of Beltullah’
swung from hooks at the Churuck posts in the suburbs, defying authority. It
was said, much to the elitist disappointment, the celebration occurred unabated
and undiluted by the hypocritic elite’s reformist compulsions and wrathful dispositions.
[Taken from Kaliprasanna Sinha, Hootum Penchar Naksha; Bidisha Chakraborty and
Sarmistha De, Calcutta In The
Nineteenth Century: An Archival Exploration]
 |
| .The Churuck Festival [From Bidisha Chakraborty and Sarmistha De, Calcutta In The Nineteenth Century: An Archival Exploration] |
[5]
… ‘Be warned’ says the author to his male
readers
The women of inferior households invariably
ignore their husbands;
Indulged beyond repair, their confidence is
increased.
[As we have seen in the case of the
fisherwoman insulting her husband…]
It is not a good idea to pamper your woman;
Irrespective of high and low families
[J. Shil, Machher Basante Jele Mechhonir Khed]
Judging from 19th-century popular songs and tracts in pamphlets,
it seems that the recent meat scandal is another of those frothy food scandals
that Calcutta is no stranger to! In 1875, the city was afflicted with worm-ridden
fish and the pamphleteers ‘relied on similar tropes of cosmic intervention to
right a reversed world order’. Though wiser reportings pointed at the scanty
rainfall over the past few years in causing the fishes to pick up diseases from
the dried-up, unclean river beds, the readership ‘firmly believed that the
catastrophe had been brought upon the city people by their own wrong-doing.’
‘Cast variously as a curse resulting from the insult by a group of fishermen to
the smallpox goddess, Sitala, and the challenging of Kali by the river Ganga,
the virulent spread of disease amongst fish in the riverine tracts of western
Bengal and Hooghly was seen as causing untold misery amongst the fish-loving
Bengali.’
Suddenly, a fisherman came along with a big carp weighing about
ten to twelve seers. Thebabu was elated to see the fish. He
decided that he’d buy it, whatever the price. He asked the fisherman, ‘How much
will you sell the fish for?’ The fisherman replied, ‘Huzoor, the price is
twenty hard slipper-strokes.’ The babu was hell-bent on buying the
fish, so he agreed to beat the fisherman with a slipper. – Kaliprasanna Sinha, Hootum Penchar Naksha
What was greater than the scandal was its consequences. The
calamity affected all, the rich and the poor. The media readily drew a touching
image of ‘a beleaguered Bengali population’ sharing in the misfortune and
‘trying to cope with the absence of fish, that vital ingredient in Bengali
cuisine and celebrated by poets and litterateurs ad infinitum’. ‘The weakening
of constitution and vitality resulting from a long-term deficiency of fish in
household diets, it was thought, would have a disastrous effect on Bengalis as
a race. Reduced to a meal of rice, lentils, and vegetables, Machher Basante Jele Mechhonir Khed feared, Bengalis would turn into Hindustanis or khottas, both offensive terms describing the supposedly
inferior Hindi-speaking up-country migrants in the city. Not surprisingly, the
widows rejoiced, for they had been barred from consuming fish by religion and
now, others by the sheer force of circumstances were forced to share their
dietary deprivation. ‘Buried in the narratives was also a veiled dislike for
the usually East Bengali migrant fisherfolk, who were depicted as involved in
malpractices and artificially inflating the price of fish even in the best of
times’. Evidently, women bore the brunt of ‘sin, guilt, and atonement’ in the
event. ‘Bengalis could be delivered from the disaster if their married women in
every household could fast for a day, chant from the current tract, worship
Sitala, and forego fish for a period of three months’. It was thought that the
insatiable demands of the aggressive fisherwomen concocted the undergoing
debacle, for, without their aggressive demands, the fishermen would not have
indulged in malpractices and brought the reprisal upon themselves. Contemporary
literature like Bishom Dhokha, Macchhe Poka and Macchher Basanta endorsed the convictions. [Taken from Anindita Ghosh, Claiming The City: Protest, Crime, And Scandal
In Colonial Calcutta]
 |
| The cat and the fish ['Bhijhe Beral' or the Bengali babu] |
[6]
If they wish to they (the British) can even
build a staircase to the heavens,
We have already seen how they can make men fly
in balloons in the sky.
Now only if they could bring back the dead to
life
(I am sure) all would accept them as Gods on
earth.
[Nandalal Ray, Nutan Poler Tappa]
Indeed, only Gods could build something so spectacular as the
‘hanging’ old Howrah Bridge. It was something unheard of and unseen in so
‘primitive’ a city, and songs sprung up in the honour of ‘the floating iron on
water’. Besides the building of the wooden
bridge, what is of significance is its presence in the cultural imagination and
subsequently, in the popular memory:
Oh, what a pole has been built by the sahib
company!
How could a bridge be built over the Ganges?
Even Vishwakarma has admitted defeat …
Such intelligence and skill … there is no
problem anymore
All can easily cross the river now
The bridge has brought happiness upon this
earth
[Nandalal Ray, Nutan Poler Tappa]
Here
is another:
Wrapped in copper sheets and shaped as a boat
The bridge is afloat on the river
Iron chains running below secure it onto
anchors
Arranged diagonally on a series of boats are a
collection of mighty supports
Resembling the mythical moonbeam-drinking
bird.
The actual bridge rests on the structure
Itself a fine weave of beams and rafters.
There are attractive footpaths on both sides
Lined with charming railings.
[Aminchandra Datta, Howrah Ghater Poler Kobi]
[Taken from Anindita Ghosh, Claiming The City: Protest, Crime, And Scandal In Colonial
Calcutta]
The above tales may be extremely simple, lacking the appeal of
epic mysteries. I have had the need to present them in their raw forms for the
readers to be familiar with the minutest sensibilities that Calcutta is made
of. We encounter blatant ‘Oriental’ sexuality in Charnock, malicious rivalry in
Hastings, divine vengeance in Pattle, unconditional piety for traditions in
Rani Rashmoni’s memorial, cultural conflicts in the Fish Scandal, and racial
worship in the Howrah Bridge. The tales are fundamental in understanding where
we, Bengalis, stand as an ethnic race. And yes, we are forever hinged between
the East and the West, thanks to our ancestors. Calcutta, in a way, smoothens
this understanding of acceptability and rejection. The city is perfectly
unfinished, beautifully Plebian. It is so the city of the common man, and this
is what makes it special. We have no qualms in relating to it. We lose nothing
when we seek to interpret it. Maybe, after all, truth is not as strange as
fiction!
 |
| The old, wooden Howrah Bridge |
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