I clearly remember the day in the mid-1990s when the mansion at No. 42 Chowringhee Road, Kolkata, was pulled down. It was one of two buildings in what was the Darbhanga maharaja’s estate. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation had tried its best to save this charming building with twin turrets, but failed. It has now been replaced by a 65-floor apartment block that towers above the Kolkata skyline.
The Darbhanga maharaja’s enthroned marble figure still holds pride of place in Dalhousie Square, adjacent to the unsightly Telephone Bhavan, in central Kolkata. The latter came up in the 1960s after Dr B.C. Roy, then Chief Minister of West Bengal, ordered the demolition of the Dalhousie Institute, described by H.E.A. Cotton “as a monumental edifice... available for Lectures, Concerts, and other Entertainments”. Roy, the second Premier of West Bengal after Independence, had also ordered the erasure of the grand colonnaded Senate Hall of the University of Calcutta on College Street.
Kolkata was the capital of British India until 1911, when Delhi usurped its prime position. It still has some of the grandest colonial buildings anywhere, many located in Dalhousie Square (or B.B.D. Bagh), which forms the centre of the city. Dalhousie Square is dotted with structures listed by the National Monuments Authority under the Archaeological Survey of India. North Kolkata is also a veritable museum of ornate palaces constructed in the 19th century by Bengali merchant princes. They are what gave this not-so-old city a character that was different from Mumbai and Delhi.
Erasing the past
As a feature writer for a Kolkata daily, I had tracked the fortunes of heritage buildings for several decades. I still do. The noted architect Charles Correa once said that Kolkata should treasure its heritage buildings and turn them into valuable property. His advice fell on deaf ears.
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Even in the past, the building lobby spared no effort to wipe out built heritage. But the process has been hastened over the past two decades. At the same time, a movement is afoot to preserve Kolkata’s old mansions. This was actually triggered by the demolition of No. 42 Chowringhee Road. While it has had some success, old buildings are still dropping like ninepins.
Recently, Kolkata lost a piece of its history following the disappearance of the almost 200-year-old Bengal Bonded Warehouse, which was directly linked with Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, the first Indian industrialist to partner on equal terms with the British. He was Rabindranath’s grandfather.
Chowringhee Road of yore, with Firpo Restaurant and Grand Hotel. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
Hemmed in by colonial buildings of various grandiloquent architectural styles, the façade of the Bengal Bonded Warehouse at 25 Netaji Subhas Road (N.S. Road, earlier Clive Street) in B.B.D. Bagh looked understated in comparison. The structure stretched from N.S. Road to Strand Road opposite the old Kolkata Port Trust (now Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port) offices and covered 12 to 13 bighas.
Its fragmentation was hastened by a fire in December 2006, following another one in 1995. Such mysterious fires—like the one that reduced the magnificent Strand warehouse to cinder in 2010—are common occurrences in ancient and vulnerable properties in prime locations. In August 2007, a part of the three-storeyed Bengal Bonded Warehouse (it had 10 buildings of mammoth proportions within) collapsed, killing a barber who had taken shelter inside.
One day, about a year or two ago, I noticed that both the Strand Road and the N.S. Road boundaries of the plot were barricaded. The façade was gone and the plot was a void without any trace of the warren of blocks, passages, and entrances that once made up the Bengal Bonded Warehouse. Of late, the earlier blue-and-white candy stripe barricades at the building have been replaced by giant placards emblazoned with the legend “Keventer One”.
Those born in the 1950s and earlier associate Keventers with milk products. That still holds true. But Keventer One—“an established player in the real estate market”—is different. It is developing the space once occupied by the Warehouse. The planned new building covers 2.77 acres and offers 12,00,000 square feet of office and retail space. Its twin towers shoot up to 39 floors—soaring way above the Strand Road skyline—and boast a helipad and a double-glazed façade overlooking the Hooghly river. It is vastu-friendly. The Singapore-based Stephen Coates, the darling of Kolkata’s real estate lobby, is its Vishwakarma.
Coates’ ginormous folly is out of sync with Dalhousie Square’s architectural legacy. Keventer One is as out of context as its neighbour Diamond Heritage, a tower shooting out of what used to be the austere, stone-clad Mackinnon Mackenzie building, one of the finest colonial structures constructed in 1927.
The Abanindranath Tagore connection
The Warehouse meant nothing to me before I met the natty P.N. Roy, who was its chairman almost two decades ago. The Bengal Bonded Warehouse Association was established by Act V of 1838 and 1854. Prince Dwarkanath’s Carr, Tagore & Co., a firm engaged in shipping and trade, was one of the original proprietors of this estate, Roy said.
Dwarkanath Tagore’s grandson, Abanindranath Tagore, had doffed his hat to his illustrious ancestor and Carr Tagore & Co in his painting, Hunchback of the Fishbone (c.1930). | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Roy’s grandfather Jatindra Nath, one of the founders of the Calcutta Stock Exchange, had bought majority shares in the Bengal Bonded Company, earlier controlled by Europeans. The company did not do well and changed hands later. Interestingly, Dwarkanath’s grandson Abanindranath Tagore had doffed his hat to his illustrious ancestor and Carr, Tagore & Co. in his painting Hunchback of the Fishbone (c.1930), which is part of the famous Arabian Nights series. Abanindranath had chosen to spell the name of Dwarkanath’s company in a rather eccentric fashion, as “Kerr Tagore & co.”, which appears on a signboard in the painting.
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Although the painting belongs to the Arabian Nights series, it is located in Chitpur, adjacent to the Tagore ancestral seat. Several activities seem to be taking place in the space of one frame. On the top right, a European couple is having dinner hosted by the bespectacled artist himself wearing a topi. They are being served by a liveried factotum. An interesting detail is an oil painting of Dwarkanath that is partially hidden by the hand-pulled punkha (fan) hanging from the ceiling.
The tale from which the painting gets its title happens at the centre, where a hunchbacked Muslim man is being thwacked on the back by a woman, presumably in an effort to make him spit out the fishbone on which he is choking.
In The Arabian Nights story, the man—Bac Bac, the king’s jester—dies of asphyxiation, but in Abanindranath’s painting, he is evidently alive and literally kicking the man who holds his leg. The fishbone lies on the floor.
Much more happens in the painting, including the appearance of a cat on an adjacent rooftop (if there is fish, can a cat be far behind) and of a (probably) Marwari tradesman in what looks like a warehouse. Taken together, the different scenes in the frame capture the thrum of cosmopolitan life in early 20th century Calcutta. That Calcutta, along with its buildings, is almost gone now.
Soumitra Das is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.
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