Category: History

When a Jail speaks to you


“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.” – Nelson Mandela

Alipore Jail in Kolkata has recently been converted into a museum and we made a visit. I found the place refreshingly well laid out with directional signs to the various highlights.

Though not well known, there are actually two Alipore Jails. The first Alipore jail, later called the Presidency jail, was built more than two hundred years back. The newer one, which continued to be known as the Alipore Jail, was built close to the earlier one in the early twentieth century. Known as a ‘correctional home’, it was used by the British to hold political prisoners.

A few miles away from Alipore jail is Dalhousie Square. Named after Governor General Lord Dalhousie, who held office in the mid-nineteenth century, it was and continues to be the administrative and Business epicenter of Kolkata. Standing majestically at the center is the Writer’s Building with its French renaissance style architecture, Roman facade and rooftop statues.

Dalhousie Square is today known as Benoy Badal Dinesh (BBD in short) Bagh and therein hangs a tale of an interesting connect it has with Alipore Jail.

It was 1930. With the Indian freedom struggle at its peak, Alipore Jail was bursting at its seams with political prisoners. Colonel N. S. Simpson, the Inspector General of Police, had become the epitome of brutality when it came to dealing with political prisoners. Seeing himself as an able administrator, Simpson had devised an efficient and brutal system to force the prison inmates to reveal their political ideologies and ‘terrorism’ plans.  Merciless beatings while hung from a tree, putting chilli powder on the genitals etc. were commonplace.

Three Bengali revolutionaries Benoy, Dinesh and Badal, aged twenty-two, nineteen and eighteen, chanced to come together. Members of the Bengal Volunteers, a group set up by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose a couple of years earlier, they had found their life’s calling in revolutionary activities. The threesome, having heard horror stories about Colonel Simpson’s notoriety, decided to take the fight to the British administrator.

To gain access to the Writer’s building the three youngsters entered Writer’s building wearing immaculate western attire. Asking to meet Colonel Simpson, they shot him dead point blank. BBD Bagh today stands testimony to the courage of this threesome.

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As I stood looking at the Alipore jail gallows, I heard a sound and turned around to see an old tree standing forlornly in the courtyard. The rustling leaves seemed to be whispering to me about the killings and the merciless beatings it had been witness to. Did I hear Dinesh shout ‘Vande Mataram’ as he was being taken to the gallows?

Dusk fell and I watched the red-bricked Jail walls come alive and take on the colour of blood. The coloured lasers of the ongoing Light and Sound show pranced to and fro. A multitude of voices ebbed and flowed, from various directions.

Netaji Subhas Bose protesting against brutal assaults on other inmates, just before he was knocked unconscious from a head blow.

Subhas Bose inviting Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das to a frugal meal that he had painstakingly cooked himself.

Young Indira ‘Priyadarshini’ Gandhi meeting her father Jawaharlal Nehru ( first Prime Minister of independent India) when he was incarcerated in a cell for participating in the civil disobedience movement.

Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy ( a future Chief Minister of the state of West Bengal), himself serving a sentence, treating sick and injured prisoners in the jail hospital.

The whisperings of the guards on watch tower duty.

The tales that the jail was relating to me were of innumerable shades. Of sacrifice and suppression. Of idealism and brutality.

Night had fallen when I stepped out of the Alipore Jail complex to return home. 

As I got into the cab, I mused on the dichotomy of the Western civilizational ethos about freedom and bondage. Did that ethos emanate from a deep-down racial distrust of ‘non-western’ people and their purported non-adherence to western civility and norms which had justified Europe’s colonization ( it was never termed conquest!) of almost all of the planet?

 When it came to India, The British parliament and administration had gone to great pains to justify its ‘colonial intervention’ in the name of the rule of law, human rights and upliftment of the natives. An image of a benign Raj was fostered, a righteous mask was worn through setting up parliamentary commissions and inquiries every time there were reported cases of extortion and torture. The British would always take the moral high ground claiming ignorance of torture and beatings indulged in by the indigenous havildars and policemen a category which was illiterate, poorly paid and only too happy to curry favours with the British Sahebs.

In 1854, the Madras torture commission, which had been set up to investigate allegations of torture in the police department, had scathingly observed:

‘The police establishment has become the bane and pest of society, the terror of the community, and the origin of half the misery and discontent that exist among the subjects of Government. Corruption and bribery reign paramount throughout the whole establishment; violence, torture, and cruelty are their chief instruments for detecting crime, implicating innocence, or extorting money. Robberies are daily and nightly committed, and not unfrequently with their connivance; certain suspicious characters are taken up and conveyed to some secluded spot far out of reach of witnesses; every species of cruelty is exercised upon them; if guilty, the crime is invariably confessed, and stolen property discovered; but a tempting bribe soon release[s] them from custody….’

A hundred and seventy years on, does the above sound eerily familiar? As I sat thinking of all this in the cab, the irony of the situation did not escape me. The British have long gone, our tryst with destiny is now three-quarters of a century old. But our governance and law-enforcing structures seem to perpetuate those very aspects which our forefathers had fought against.  

Would the shifting of the jail facilities away from British structures like the Alipore Jail finally allow for fresh thoughts and mindsets to set in? I wondered.

The museum boasts an excellent coffee shop which we thoroughly enjoyed. A visit is recommended.

In Musing…….                                                                                 Shakti Ghosal

Acknowledgement : “Very wicked children”: “Indian torture” and the Madras Torture Commission report of 1855: by Anuj Bhuwaniam Replicated from Sur – Revista Internacional de Direitos Humanos, São Paulo, vol.6, n.10, pp. 6-27, 2009

Legends


I built me a castle
With dragons and kings
And I’d ride off with them
As I stood by my window
And looked out on those……

I walked leisurely on the pedestrian path.

Walkers and tourists milled around me, like me all moving at a leisurely pace. No one seemed to be in a hurry. A family led by Dad with the son on his shoulders passes me in the opposite direction. Just in front, a group of giggling young women were taking a barrage of selfies. It seemed one or the other was not satisfied with the result, be it one’s expression or the way the long cables and the end tower showed up in the photo. A quick joint review, some more giggles and someone in the group would volunteer to take a new selfie. I watched this microcosm of humanity flowing around me.

It was a beautiful sunny morning which had prompted us to venture out on a spot of sightseeing. I was on the pedestrian walkway of the legendary Brooklyn Bridge. Below me on both sides were the motorways with cars and SUVs moving in either direction between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

One had glorious views of the New York skyline as well as the leisurely flow of the East River below. To the right one could spot Governor’s Island and in the distance the Statue of Liberty. But as I stood looking around, my mind’s eye wandered off to another unforgettable vision involving the Brooklyn bridge. Powerful searchlights frantically flashing, sounds of helicopters, people jumping off the bridge into the waters below as a terrified News Reporter announces that all of us are going to die! One of the most emotional scenes from the blockbuster ‘I am Legend’ in which scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith) tries to evacuate his wife and daughter from pandemic ridden Manhattan, only to see them die as another helicopter crashes into theirs in the chaos. In the background, the Brooklyn Bridge is being blown up by military aircraft to contain the spread of the disease.

An iconic film showing visuals of an iconic bridge.

A hundred and forty years old structure, the Brooklyn Bridge was the world’s first and longest steel-wire suspension bridge at the time of its opening. What further distinguishes the bridge are the pair of gothic towers standing tall on either side, holding the steel wires in place. Legend has it that when the lead engineer and architect Washington Roebling, became sick and bedridden, his wife Emily, who knew nothing about engineering or architecture, took over the project. For the next ten years, till the project got done, she studied Engineering design and project management on her own and became the first person to cross the bridge upon completion. The following was said about Emily and the Brooklyn bridge:

“…an everlasting monument to the self-sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred.”

A sad reminder of the fact that during Emily’s time, women were not allowed into Engineering institutions in the US.

Having walked the mile long stretch of the Bridge, we stepped onto the roads of Brooklyn. The neighbourhood in which Neil Diamond had grown up six decades back. With his baritone voice and wonderful songwriting capabilities, Neil Diamond has been my favourite pop and country musician and singer since youth. The singer reminisces about his childhood in that wonderful number, ‘Brooklyn Roads’:

‘Two floors above the butcher
First door on the right
Life filled to the brim
As I stood by my window
And I looked out of those
Brooklyn Roads……’

Neil Diamond

The place we were walking through had the curious name of DUMBO. I was left wondering whether it had anything to do with Disney’s Dumbo the flying elephant. Or was it about some presumed dumb folks who might have resided there in the past?

‘And report cards I was always
Afraid to show

Mama’d come to school
And as I’d sit there softly crying
Teacher’d say, “He’s just not trying
He’s got a good head if he’d apply it”
But you know yourself
It’s always somewhere else’

 I learnt that DUMBO was really the short nomenclature for ‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass’. Ironically, the neighbourhood today is home to a large number of technology start-up companies with the earlier warehouses on the riverfront converted into quaint eating houses and pubs overlooking the waters.

A bridge, a musician and a neighbourhood came together as legends for me that morning. They came with tales that were anecdotal, possibly unverifiable but nonetheless remain ingrained in my mind.

In musing…………                                                       Shakti Ghosal

Acknowledgement: ‘Brooklyn Roads’ by Neil Diamond

The Peacock Throne and today’s date….


Did you know that close to four centuries ago, on 22nd March 1635 AD, the Peacock Throne was inaugurated by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and unveiled to the world?

Did you know that the Peacock Throne took seven years to build and cost twice as much as the world-famous Taj Mahal, made as it was of solid gold, diamonds and pearls? Kohinoor, one of the largest cut diamonds in the world weighing more than one hundred and five carats, today takes pride of place in the British crown jewels but was originally part of the Peacock Throne. In some ways, the inauguration of the Peacock Throne represented the zenith of the Mughal empire.

The Peacock Throne remains a masterpiece of Moghul creation, unsurpassed in opulence and extravagance before or after. The throne creator and master goldsmith Said Gilani wrote this couplet on the occasion of the throne’s inauguration.

“Towards India he turned his reins quickly and went in all glory,

Driving like the blowing wind, dapple-grey steed swift as lightning.
With bounty and liberality, he returned to the capital;
Round his stirrups were the heavens and angels round his reins.
A thousand thanks! The beauty of the world has revived

With the early glory of the throne of multi-coloured gems“

A century later in 1739, the Mughal Empire’s decline was precipitated by its defeat at the hands of the Iranian ruler Nader Shah. What had attracted Nader Shah were stories of the Peacock Throne and the wealth of the Mughal empire. Interestingly, it was again on 22nd March 1739 AD that the Mughal capital of Delhi witnessed one of its worst mass killings and slaughter. As the invader Nader Shah ordered Qatl-e-Aam, an estimated twenty thousand men, women and children were butchered in a spell of six hours- the single bloodiest massacre in the shortest time in recorded history. In many ways this sacking of the much-venerated capital city represented the demise of the Mughal empire.

And what happened to the magnificent Peacock Throne? Well, it along with other treasures was taken away by Nader Shah and his army as they went back to Iran. The total wealth carried in today’s value terms was a stupendous eleven billion dollars.

The throne then disappeared! It is rumoured of being dismantled and literally destroyed after Nader Shah’s assassination in 1747, most of the gold and precious stones looted. It is also said that parts of the Peacock throne were used in the construction of the Persian emperor’s Sun throne.

Fascinating is it not that the zenith and the demise of the Mughal Empire in India are linked to the Peacock Throne and the date 22nd March.

In Learning………Shakti Ghosal

An encounter with the witnessing tree


The Witnessing tree…..

I saw this tree standing forlornly in one corner of the Red fort complex in Delhi a couple of days back.

I asked, ‘ So, what have you been witness to?’

The tree replied, ‘ I was born to witness the stars above Shahjahanabad.

Diwan-i-Am (Hall of Audience) at the Red Fort in New Delhi, India.

But what I witnessed was the ebb and flow of the history of this land.

Of the ebbing of the Mughals as the blinded emperor Shah Alam II sat forlornly in his ravaged palace……

Of the ebbing of the Marathas after the defeat in the third battle of Panipat…..

The third battle of Panipat…..

Of the ebbing of the Jats in the late eighteenth-century……

Of the ebbing of the British empire with their departure from India in the twentieth century……

Indian Flag on the ramparts of Red Fort….

And with each such ebb, the plunder of this fort’s riches and the conscience of Man.’

India’s 75th year of Independence


‘Came the partition of the country and the independence speech of the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in which he proclaimed, “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”.

What followed was something quite the contrary.

Rather than awakening to life, people were awakening to bloodshed, killings, rape and pillage. Rather than awakening to freedom to live where they chose to, people were being forced to leave behind everything they possessed and cross a newly created artificial border, homeless and penniless.‘

The above is an excerpt from Ashtami, one of the stories in ‘The Chronicler of the Hooghly and other stories’ which recently received the Nazm-e-Sahitya award for 2021.

On this day, as we mark the 75th year of India’s independence, the following excerpt from the section ‘Hebrews’ in the New Testament comes to mind.

“So since we stand surrounded by all those who have gone before, an enormous cloud of witnesses, let us drop every extra weight, every sin that clings to us and slackens our pace, and let us run with endurance the long race set before us.

We may feel alone, but we aren’t. We are surrounded by an army of witnesses. They have run the race of faith and finished well. It is now our turn.“

Let us not forget all those who have gone before. Indeed, now it is our turn.

www.shaktighosal.com

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Like a beast awakening…..


Like a beast awakening, the British Howitzers and cannons roared to life. The searing flame moved from right to left as the guns fired in sequence. Ram Prasad saw the charging infantry getting mowed down as he saw the General himself getting hit and toppling from the horse.

“Charge!” Ram Prasad heard his own voice calling. He saw his men as they rose from behind the embankment and moved forward. The unforgiving howl of the British guns erupted again and he saw his brave men falling all around him.

But why was a large part of the Bengal army not moving? He felt a searing pain in the left shoulder and then in the abdomen. Blood erupted from his body, he had been hit. But still, the main flank of the army remained stationary. Indeed, they seemed to be mute spectators of the massacre.

The Battle of Plassey was a decisive victory of the British East India Company over Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah of Bengal on 23 June 1757.The battle took place at Palashi on the banks of the Hooghly River, about 150 kilometres north of Calcutta and south of Murshidabad, then capital of Bengal.The outcome of the battle was to change the history and shape of things to come for ever not only for India, but as some say, for the world, in terms of ascendancy of the British Empire.

The battle of Plassey features in the story ‘The Chronicler of the Hooghly’, part of my forthcoming book of the same name.

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The Black Hole of Calcutta


Fort William on the Hooghly 1757 Artistic depiction

“Jim with a few of his soldiers stood surrounded by a large contingent of the Nawab’s forces. Soon Jemmaatdaars shepherded the Captain Commandant with soldiers and civilians into a small room. This is when the horror began.

Packed like sardines in the room, delirious from lack of air and acrid smoke from the burning godowns filling their lungs, the prisoners started feeling suffocated and begged the guards for water. In their despair, they started offering whatever money they had to the Nawab’s guards outside. “One thousand rupees! Two thousand rupees!”

Though finding it difficult to breathe himself, Jim passed the little water that was brought in to others using his hat. But in the frenzy that ensued with the prisoners struggling to get to the window, most of the water was spilled. Worse, people were getting trampled.

Jim shouted over the ravings and rantings, “Gentlemen, we need to help each other, we need to keep our heads if we are to survive this night”.

He could dimly see a Captain frothing at the mouth and collapsing. Jim himself was losing consciousness from the heat and exhaustion. As he slowly crumpled in a heap on the ground, strangely enough the last image which fluttered across his mind’s eye was the suffused glow of the pearl and emerald necklace he had glimpsed briefly the previous night.”

Snippet: After the fall of East India Company’s Fort William to Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah’s forces on 20th June 1756, the surviving English soldiers, Indian sepoys along with some civilians were rounded and locked up in a small room for the night. Next morning only twenty odd prisoners had survived, the remaining around forty to sixty having perished from exhaustion, suffocation and stampede. The incident came to be known as the Black Hole tragedy of Calcutta and directly led to the British seeking revenge by overthrowing Siraj Ud Daulah as the Nawab of Bengal by defeating him at the Battle of Plassey the following year.

The fall of Fort William and the Black Hole Tragedy feature in the story ‘The Chronicler of the Hooghly’, part of my forthcoming book of the same name.

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Nizwa Fort


Savio gestured onto the countryside, “Did you know that till a century back, the Sultan’s writ ran only in and around Muscat? The hinterland was really under the control of the Imam and his capital was Nizwa”.

“Would you believe me if I were to say that this fort and its design is based on deception? Right from its turrets, secret shafts, false doors to camouflaged wells. There are hidden wooden doors with metal spikes as also murder holes and shafts above each of the real doors through which boiling oil or date syrup could be poured on intruders. There were pitfalls in dark passageways as also removable wooden stairs with deep gaping holes to put an end to those unfortunate enough to fall into them”.

Savio stopped for a moment and glanced sideways at Anjan.

Nizwa Fort, built in the 1650s, features in the story, ‘Fault Lines’, part of my forthcoming book ‘The Chronicler of the Hooghly and other stories’. Should you wish to receive exclusive previews and the chance of winning a free copy of the book, do write to me @ author.esgee@gmail.com

Nizwa Fort, Oman
Nizwa Fort inside
Nizwa Fort library room
Nizwa Fort plan

Fort William Calcutta


Did you know that there were two Fort Williams?

 The original fort was built in the year 1696 by the British East India Company under the orders of Sir John Goldsborough which took a decade to complete. The permission was granted by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. Sir Charles Eyre started construction near the bank of the Hooghly River with the South-East Bastion and the adjacent walls. It was named after King William III in 1700. 

The original building had two stories and projecting wings. In 1756, the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah, attacked the Fort and temporarily conquered the city. This led the British to build a new and a more defensive Fort in the Maidan. based on Robert Clive’s directive. The new Fort William was built with open spaces on all sides to allow 360 degree visibility of any approaching enemy.

Fort William features in the story ‘The Chronicler of the Hooghly’ part of my forthcoming book of the same name. Should you wish to receive exclusive previews and free copy of the book, do write to me @ author.esgee@gmail.com

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The Chronicler of Hoogly


We booked the sunset cruise on the Hoogly recently. With winter on its way, the sun was setting early leaving behind a long balmy evening. Good time to observe the river and the city as it transitioned from day into the night.

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Boarding the boat from the Millennium Park jetty, we soon chugged out in the company of other sight-seekers like us. The itinerary was to cruise up the Hoogly to Belur Math, the much revered global headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission founded by Swami Vivekananda. We were scheduled to reach in time for the evening Aarati before we returned. Travelling with us was a Study tour group from Germany.

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As I sat on the deck, I was engulfed by a kaleidoscope of sights………….

 Of the looming floating bridge of Howrah, still considered a cantilever feat of engineering seventy-five years after it was built. Of decrepit ghats and jetties. Of derelict and abandoned warehouses, shanties and slums. Of colonial architectures separated by grimy and slushy by lanes. Of how Man’s creativity and resolve has sunk under the grime of his daily struggle and existence………….

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Of temples and riverside religious rituals coexisting with stinking garbage and defecation grounds. Of the riverside walled up   along long stretches as if to hide its shame from the very people who have sullied it thus. Of how Spirituality jostles with poverty…….

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My thoughts and emotions get stopped by a flurry of activity on the deck. Probably sensing the approaching sunset, the service staff had got busy offering beverages and ‘muri and aloor chop’ snacks while the German tourists were busy with their telephoto lenses and cameras. I look at the setting sun, the morphing shades of the flowing waters and could not but marvel at how nature yet manages to shine its beauty on an environment gone increasingly awry…………

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With the falling dusk, I notice a lone figure sitting at the rear side of the deck. Somewhat taken aback for not having noticed this person earlier, I walk across and introduce myself. “You may call me the Chronicler”, he tells me. Intrigued I plonk into a deck chair beside him. “Would you like to hear a tale about all that we are witness to today?”, comes the soft voice. Even before I can respond, the voice continues.

“Great metropolises, they say, grow out of a river. London…. Paris….. Rome…… Moscow…….. Cairo….. Istanbul. In each of these cases, the mighty rivers that flowed, the Thames, the Siene, the Tiber, the Moskva, the Nile and the Bosphorus, provided sustenance and remain the heart and soul of the cities….”

“And so was the symbiotic relationship between Hoogly and what we know as Kolkata. While today we are wont to see the river as some kind of an appendage to the city, what if I told you that it is really the other way around? That Kolkata is really an offshoot of all that the Hoogly has been witness to over the centuries.”

“When we started our cruise, we saw Fairlie Place and its jetty to the right with the Strand running beside it. So what would you say are its important landmarks?”, the Chronicler asks.

“Well I suppose it is the Customs House and the Eastern Railway headquarters. Apart from a few more important office blocks”, I respond.

“But what if I told you that about three hundred years back most of that place including what we know as Dalhousie Square was a large water body called Lal Dighi ? This was the time when the British East India Company was busy consolidating its position and Fort William stood on the banks of Hoogly. That is when the attack happened”

“Attack!”, I exclaim, “By whom and why?”

“The then Nawab of Bengal Siraj-Ud-Daulah attacked, captured Fort William and incarcerated British prisoners in a dungeon which came to be known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. An incident which directly led to the battle of Plassey and the subsequent two hundred years British Rule of the subcontinent.”

“Hang on!”, I interject. “Is not Fort William more in the hinterland, near the Maidan?”

“Indeed”, the Chronicler continues, “but what is less known is that there were two Fort Williams. The present one near Maidan was built by Robert Clive after the attack on the first one.”

“The battle of Plassey, which was to change the history and the shape of things to come for ever for the subcontinent, was also fought on the banks of Hoogly but to the north of where we are. But that is another story.”

“The Fairlie Ghat holds another interesting tale”, the Chronicler continues.” In the mid nineteenth century, Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, while travelling on a train in England, got the brain wave of setting up a rail link to carry coal from his Raniganj colliery to the Calcutta port at Fairlie. On return he invested into setting up the ‘The Great Western Bengal Railway Company’. Unfortunately, his proposal got turned down by the British East India Company bosses on the grounds that ‘it would not be possible to allow a company using such strategic technology under native management….’ His efforts and thoughts however did push the British to set up rail services though the East India Railway Company with its Headquarters at Fairlie Place.”

“Hmm! That name Dwarkanath Tagore sounds familiar. Was he in some way related to Rabindranath Tagore?” I muse.

“Indeed he was!”, the Chronicler quips back, “He was in fact the grandfather of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, that venerable Bard of Bengal and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature more than a century back”.

“The Hoogly ghats then were a far cry from the crumbling cesspools that we are seeing today. With magnificent facades and European classical architectures, the ghats were witness to impressive steam ships and tall masted  boats sailing out to faraway places in England, Australia and New Zealand as also upstream to ports on the Ganga.”, the Chronicler continues.

“Did you know that there were thriving French, Dutch and Armenian settlements on the Hoogly in the early years of colonisation?” I am asked.

Well I had read about the French settlement and I say so.

“Fascinating is it not that events and rivalries five thousand miles away in Europe would show up in the waxing and waning of the Hoogly ghats! And so it was that as the British colonialism went into ascendancy after winning the Napoleonic Wars in early nineteenth century, the settlements of other nationalities on the Hoogly faded into oblivion.”

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“Which brings us to the Shova bazaar Ghat and its fascinating history. The Ghat and the Shova Bazaar Rajbari ( Palace), was built with great pomp and grandeur by Raja ( King) Nabakrishna Deb.The latter famed for organizing the Shovabazaar Rajbari Durga Pujo about two hundred and  fifty years ago ( which continues till today!). What is seldom spoken of is that all of the Raja’s wealth came from the huge bribe money of Rupees eighty million paid to him, Mir Jaffar and a couple of others by the British administration for betraying Nawab Siraj–ud-Daulah on the battlefield of Plassey. A betrayal which led to a small British force of 3000 soldiers winning a decisive victory over a twenty times larger opponent. A betrayal which led to the British becoming the dominant colonial power in the subcontinent for over two centuries. Is it not ironic that one of the greatest betrayals in Indian history is so inexorably linked to one of the biggest religious festivals in the country?”

So engrossed had I become in listening to the Chronicler’s tales that I had scarcely noticed the darkness enveloping the Hoogly and the boat engine slowing down.

My companion on the deck points to a brightly lit temple and ghat complex to the right. “That is the Dhakshineswar Kali temple built in the mid nineteenth century by Rani (Queen) Rashmoni based on a dream in which Goddess Kali exhorted her, ‘There is no need to go to Banaras. Install my statue in a beautiful temple on the banks of the Ganges river and arrange for my worship there. Then I shall manifest myself in the image and accept worship at that place.’ The temple attained fame because of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, the famous mystic and the spiritual guru of Swami Vivekanand.”

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The boat docks on the Belur Math Ghat. I notice the Chronicler making no attempt to get up even as other guests disembark and start walking up the Ghat steps. The tour supervisor advises us on the way to reach the temple premises for the evening Aarati. As we hurry, some of the German tourists stop to look at souvenirs in the roadside shops.The Belur Math design incorporates the different Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance as well as Hindu and Islamic styles that Swami Vivekanand had observed during his travels in India and abroad.

I return back to our moored boat with the intoxicating chants of the Aarati still resonating in my ears. As the boat starts on its return journey downstream, I look around for the Chronicler but he is nowhere to be seen. Dinner is announced and we go down to the dining room in the lower deck. The fascinating vision of the Hoogly  created by the Chronicler’s tales in sharp contrast to the hugely run-down and depressing sights I had been witness to, continues to wrestle in my mind.

What is it that has made the Hoogly hold onto its rusting warehouses, its hideous shanties and walls which no longer serve any purpose? What is it that has made Kolkata turn its back on the river that brought it into existence? What is that which leads us to abuse and neglect that very water that we consider holy and religious? What is that in our societal psyche that fuels such dichotomy?

As we reach back and walk off our cruise, these questions continue to haunt…..

 

……… In Learning.

Shakti Ghosal

 

 

 

 

 

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