Kolkata, as it has been known for a while, has been much written about, covering its diverse aspects. Most of the books are chiefly on colonial Calcutta. This one, too, charts from Sripantha’s perspective the history of the city from Job Charnock’s arrival (1690) to the moving of the capital to Delhi (1907).
Sripantha (Nikhil Sarkar) was a social historian and journalist who specialized in the Bengali culture and the subaltern history of Kolkata. He wrote for a series called ‘Kalikatar Karcha’ or ‘Calcutta Notebook’ in the Anandabazar Patrika. Writings from this Monday column of the editorial page were later compiled into this book, published in 1999, which Anita Kar has translated almost three decades later with a passion for what she calls ‘my city’, reproducing with competence and fervour an account that holds the reader’s interest all the way.
The recent translation of Sripantha’s book begins with Job Charnock, the trailblazer who merged the unknown villages of Sutanati, Gobindapur and Kalikata. The subject of this book is ubiquitous and inexhaustible. But an interesting detail from Charnock’s personal life is that he had four children by a woman he rescued from being burnt at her husband’s funeral pyre. Sati or anumarana, including its abolition by later social reformers, comes up repeatedly in specific illustrations.
Sripantha distinctively selects unconventional and undiscussed subjects within the larger frame of the city. Many chapters are centred around newcomers from Portugal, Denmark, Holland, France, Armenia, China and England who came and settled here, viewing their lives in the social-cultural-political context of their times. They revive lesser known, diverse and colourful trajectories that fashioned the city as a whole.
Sripantha picks up relatively unfamiliar snippets from the past like the life of the Begum of Fairlie Place, now Lal Dighi. He recalls how Tangra, the Chinese neighbourhood, came into being. People of Chinese ethnicity like Tom Fatt initiated the use of the pump and Tong Achu taught us how to run sugar mills. The Chinese also introduced the two-wheeled, hand-pulled rickshaw.
Likewise, Lebedenev, the first Russian settler, pioneered the proscenium theatre in 1795, anticipating the popular Jatra form.
The chapter on the emergence of the Bengal Renaissance offers a discussion of words like babuana, sahebiana and nababiana.
There are two fine chapters on the scarcely known literature of the Raj and art during the Company years, ranging from portraits on woodcut to satirical portrayals in patachitras. All the data is selectively culled from memoirs, notebooks, diaries and letters.
The first person, however, has no place in Sripantha’s storytelling about Kolkata. He narrates objectively and knowledgably. In contrast, the personal reminiscences of the authors’ relationship with the city are revived in books like Ashok Mitra’s Calcutta Diary (1977), Amartya Sen’s Calcutta after Independence (2019), Amit Chaudhuri’s Calcutta: Two Years in the City (2013) and Suresh Kohli and KA Abbas’s Evening in Calcutta (2015).
Whether they are objective histories or singular accounts with their particular focus and personal flavour, writers who have written about cities, or specifically Kolkata, have always tried to draw the reader’s attention to the less talked and written about places and people. In Sripantha’s narrative too, the streets, churches, temples, markets, neighbourhoods and individuals he describes express his unique focus and their special flavour. There are similar compilations of anecdotes, essays, paintings and photos in books, apart from the ever-burgeoning fiction and portrayals in celluloid, including those by Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen.
Sripantha recalls a street, a church, a ghat and a college in the name of the Armenians, whom he calls the great-grandfathers of Kolkata. The Armenians were already here from the early seventeenth century. He vividly traces the past of the South Park Street Graveyard that houses the graves of famous and infamous persons, adjacent to the dazzling market on Park Street in our times. More specifically, he recalls the growth and decline of the Asiatic Society there.
Contemporary Kolkata, its bustling streets and markets, with a cultural heritage that goes back to its colonial past, is a favourite topic in several books. The time range is between The Living City (1990), edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, in two volumes, to Walking Calcutta (2009) by Keith Humphrey, Grand Delusions: A Short Biography of Kolkata (2013) by Indrajit Hazra, The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta (2017) by Kushanava Choudhury, Chronicling Calcutta (2019) by Sukhamaya Swain to Calcutta Jhal Muri (2024) by Probal J Bhattacharyya.
There is a riveting last chapter on the roads, lanes and congested/unknown neighbourhoods of Kolkata. For instance, a road called Fancy Lane was actually a distortion of Phansi (hanging) Lane, where convicts were regularly hung. The seyal or jackals lived in Sealdah when it was still forested land. Beliaghata was named after bali (sand) and Hedua after hrada lake.
Neighbourhoods were also named after professions that their people engaged in, like Kumortuli for artisans who worked with clay (kumors), Darjipara for tailors (darjis), and Lovers’ Lane was a haunt of illicit lovers. The book ends with the shifting of the capital from Kolkata to Delhi, with a suggestion of the volatile years of the Raj thereafter.
Nivedita Sen taught English in Hansraj College, University of Delhi, Delhi. She has worked on Bangla and translated some Bangla texts into English.