Subir Roy: Kolkata's street people

OFFBEAT

Several people live on the pavement beneath the front verandah of our crumbling, 70-year-old ancestral house in Kolkata. When it rains and our front door is open, they come into the ground floor passageway, with the smell of their poverty.

Early into my annual homecoming holiday, I take a trip to nearby Konnagar to visit the ashram of my parents' guruji, to keep a promise I have made to my mother. The ashram is a little confusion of trees, plants and defiant weeds, totally overwhelmed by the massive Ganga flowing next to it. The river is brimming with monsoon rain "" slow, majestic and so wide the temples and mills on the other bank look little more than specs.

Not just the ashram but the devotees who come by have changed little over the years. I meet a 94-year-old gentleman who is all praise for the sarkar. It gives him a monthly freedom fighter's pension of Rs 10,000 (can you imagine, says his tone) and that's what keeps him going, he says.

The ashram has stood still in time but there is change galore. Earlier we went to Konnagar via filthy Howrah and not down BT Road as that meant having to use the ever congested Bally Bridge. This time we go that way, down the elegant massive new bridge L&T has built right next to the old one, with miles of six-lane access roads. We turn off this newness at the other end of the bridge reluctantly, saying no to the sign that beckons us to Delhi, down the six-lane new India that NHAI is creating.

Several families seem well-settled on the pavement in front of Mahajati Sadan which we pass while going down Central Avenue, much restored after the dig-up trauma that laying the Metro Rail created. The hall is a monument to the cultural renaissance of India where god knows how many classical music concerts I have attended in my early life. Mahajati Sadan lives, as do the street people.

The landmark near our house is a gurudwara but more famous is the tea shop next to it where every morning and evening come walkers from the nearby Victoria Memorial to quench their thirst after a vigorous workout. The row of parked cars of the walkers gets longer every year, bearing testimony to the growing prosperity. The walkers take over the pavement, smash the khullars on it after finishing their tea. They too are street people, twice a day. Nearby Jagubabur bazaar, where I go to buy fish, has not changed in four decades. But the big new presence nearby is a huge new shopping mall, selling personal electronics stuff and all the things you need to set up home. The tussle between the past and present is dramatically on display in a front corner of the mall. There still stands a precarious half room from the old structure. Obviously, the owner of the paan shop in it has managed to get a court stay on the demolition.

The Maidan nearby is green with overgrown grass after the rains. But the big change in recent years is the formal park around Victoria Memorial, next to Cathedral Road. The place used to earlier host the book fair once a year and remain filthy thereafter. The new park is incredibly well maintained, walkers stream through it in the evenings, couples snuggle in the shadows away from the lights by the walkways and the watch and ward staff periodically blow a whistle when they find a couple getting a bit carried away.

Kolkata today is full of shopping malls, flyovers, high-rise developments and unbearable traffic jams. But change has also been reversed, leftists have returned to the town hall and garbage is slowly re-emerging on the streets. Unchanged throughout are the street people. When night rain wets their meagre bedrolls, they put the dirty smelly rags out to dry on the kerbside railings in the morning. They and the shopping malls form a unique tapestry.

subir.roy@bsmail.in