Tag / #bhowanipore

by whatsonsidsmind

Walking Back to Bhowanipore: A Memoir – Part 3 (Concluding Part)

Written By: Siddhartha Krishnan | 9 Min Read

The last time I wandered through Bhowanipore with any real leisure was nine years ago. I had returned to Kolkata a few times since the summer of 2006, but those visits were fleeting, focused on my parents, who lived there until the end of 2017. There was no space then to slip back into the rhythm of my childhood, no time to retrace the streets that once mapped my world.

But in the winter of 2016, on one such visit, I made time for an early morning walk—something I used to do every day as a student at St. Xavier’s College. The bus could’ve taken me there in under ten minutes, but I preferred the half-hour walk through waking streets. I’d arrive just before six a.m.—yes, that’s when our BCom (Hons) classes began, when the city was still stretching its limbs.

As I stepped out of my building and onto Gokhale Road, something shifted. The morning light had a softness to it, as if filtered through memory. Shapes from the past shimmered into focus. To my left stood my old gang in front of Yaseen Da’s shop, ready to dash off to Chowringhee Terrace. The bat, I noticed, was suddenly in my hand. “Bhai, chale?” Guddu grinned at me.

Just then, a school bus rounded the corner at Gol Mandir, the shouts of children echoing down the street. It was unmistakably Jugal Da’s bus—old, filled to the brim and noisy as always. I watched my father help my younger brother and a nine-year-old me into the backseat. I caught my father’s eye, and he smiled. Our smiles met briefly, suspended between the years.

I kept that smile, as the bus dissolved into the morning haze.

The next thing I knew, I was sprinting toward Chowringhee Terrace. A game of cricket was underway under a thick canopy of rain trees. Vicky hurled the ball; I met it with a square cut. The plastic ball smacked hard against the metal gate of the kindergarten school beside us. A familiar voice exploded in protest—the guard, roused even on a holiday. Guddu stepped forward to calm him down, throwing me a mischievous wink.

Then the sun vanished behind clouds, and the trees blurred once more into silhouettes. The street was quiet again.

I kept walking, but I wasn’t alone.

As I reached the point where Gokhale Road met AJC Bose Road, I paused. An unassuming man stood nearby, eyes fixed skyward, mesmerized by a crane shifting massive blocks of concrete. The flyover connecting Park Circus to Rabindra Sadan was taking shape or so it seemed.

Then a bus screeched past, jolting me back. The construction was long finished. The flyover, I realized, stood complete, humming silently above.

I crossed the road toward Nandan Cinema.

There, just outside the gate, I felt a familiar tug. My father’s little finger, gently locked with mine. It was a winter night in ’93. We were wrapped in jackets and sweaters, heading into a children’s film festival screening of Ray’s “Sonar Kella”. In my left hand was a vanilla softy, already melting slightly at the edges as the projector whirred to life.

Then, like a ripple across the screen, another image floated in—me again, slightly older this time, holding my first cup of fountain Pepsi. That too was at Nandan. The fizz, the chill, the magic of bubbles, I felt it all.

As I entered the gates of Victoria Memorial, a distant memory came rushing in. The manicured lawns stretched before me, dotted with mats and chatter. The annual picnic of our Malayalee group was in full swing on an autumn afternoon, filled with laughter, steaming containers of food, and a warmth that came not from the sun, but from the closeness of our shared roots.

Overhead, an eagle swooped low, its wings slicing the air, as it chased something in the shallow waters nearby. I flinched slightly, and the moment shifted. Just beyond the pond, I spotted the old wooden bench where we’d sit after college, me and my friends from St. Xavier’s, talking films, politics, heartbreak, and dreams.

I wandered further, exiting through the main gate. And there they were again—my childhood gang from Gokhale Road, gathered around a pushcart, gulping down glasses of shikanji. Their faces were flushed from the sun, their T-shirts soaked in sweat from a match at the Maidan. I could almost hear the clink of ice against glass, feel the burst of lime and salt on my tongue.

I let out a smirk as I walked toward the Birla Planetarium crossing. With each step, a steady smile settled on my face, and again, a bouquet of images bloomed.

Park Street unfurled before me—my school, my college. The football field echoed with shouts. The sip-ups and samosas at Panditji’s school canteen came back with startling clarity, as did the chops, rolls, and chowmein at Arun Da’s college canteen. Somehow, the footpath along Jawaharlal Nehru Road began to feel like our old corridor at St. Xavier’s Collegiate School. I could almost see Fr. Santos twirling his cane—half menace, half theatre, ready to chase down any student loitering during class hours.

I turned right at the planetarium to begin my walk back home. As I passed the Nehru Children’s Museum, another image flickered to life—miniature clay figures, narrating the tales of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. I remembered standing before them, hand in hand with my father, as he carefully explained the parts of the epics I found too complex.

When I reached the Elgin Road signal, I could almost feel a breeze drift in from Jadu Babur Bajar, thick with the smells of the morning market—fried spices, damp jute sacks, vegetables, meat and fish.

A memory rose, unannounced.

A hole-in-the-wall shop beside a mutton stall near Ganja Park—barely visible, easy to miss and still crowded. There, a man would serve mutton meatballs on a sal leaf, sprinkled with a magic masala that lingered on the tongue. If we happened to be shopping in the bazaar at night, my father would pause there without fail. One plate to snack on as we walked, and another carefully packed for my mother and brother back home.

It wasn’t indulgence—it was ritual. In Kolkata, walking and snacking are inseparable, like breath and talk. The mouth must never be idle, the stomach never left wanting. It was just the way of things.

At the signal, I glanced toward Gift Centre on Elgin Road, less than a hundred metres away. Back in school, it had been our go-to place, for birthday presents, school stationery, and last-minute greeting cards for friends in class and from the para. It was also where I carefully built my collection of Hot Wheels cars, G.I. Joe and He-Man figurines. Sachets of Hajmola and Fatafat were impulse buys at the end, tucked into our pockets before we ran off.

Two years later, I would return to the same shop, this time looking for a toy for my four-year-old son. He was with me. The man at the counter looked up and smiled instantly. He recognised me, even with my beard. Some connections, it seems, don’t fade with time.

I turned right from the signal toward Shambhunath Pandit Street and stopped at Shitala Mandir, bowing my head to the goddess.

Just beyond, Ganguram was already open. It was 8 a.m., and the familiar pot-bellied uncle behind the counter was offering his morning prayers to the gods and goddesses lining the wall. The shop hadn’t changed. The paint was coming off the walls but the glass shelves still gleamed. The scent of chhena and sugar hung in the air like something sacred.

I packed a box of sandesh for my family in Bangalore and stepped out.

Sharma Tea House was only a short walk away. I stopped in for a cup of tea, and picked up two plates of their club kachoris to take home.

On my way back to Gokhale Road, I passed Nimki House. The warm, familiar aroma of fried savouries wafted out, tugging at me like an old friend. For a moment, I slowed down. But then I smiled and whispered to myself, “Next time.”

At Gol Mandir, I offered my prayers. A steady crowd had begun to gather. But that morning, by some quiet grace, I received prasad from Panditji without a wait.

And then, I turned the final corner.

Re-entering Gokhale Road felt like stepping through a portal. The air was the same, yet not. Familiar windows blinked open. In that moment, I became a shape-shifter, man to child, and child to man again, moving between selves, across time, as if none of it had ever truly gone.

A familiar scent drifted through the morning air—the unmistakable aroma of bhoger khichuri, just as it was served on Dashami at the Gokhale Sporting Club Durga Puja. It flooded my senses, stirring something deep and wordless. As I neared my building, I spotted Guddu. “Morning walk?” he asked, reading the contentment on my face. “Yes,” I replied. We smiled. No words were needed.

Before stepping into the pathway of 7A Gokhale Road, I turned once more.

There they were—my father in his safari suit, my grandfather in his crisp whites, both smiling, standing at the edge of memory. It struck me then: these streets and alleys weren’t just theirs, they are mine too. This place has shaped me, just as it had shaped them.

But if a young boy from Palakkad, who once walked barefoot across rivers to reach his school in the 1930s, hadn’t dreamt of a better life in a distant city, none of this would have been possible. Kolkata didn’t just hold our history—it became us. That is the true hallmark of a great city: its ability to absorb everything, hold fast to its values, and through that quiet, constant churning, shape a culture uniquely its own. An identity born not from erasure, but from embrace.

In the 1970s, if my grandfather, my father, Dr. Mathur, the barefoot historian of Kolkata P.T. Nair, and their like, none of whom are alive today, had met in our tiny Gokhale Road flat, I wonder what they might have dreamt for the city’s future, fifty years ahead.

***

About the author:

Siddhartha Krishnan is the author of ‘Two and a Half Rainbows – A Collection of Short Stories’. An enthusiastic blogger he shares his essays, travelogues, book and movie reviews on his blog (www.whatsonsidsmind.com).

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by whatsonsidsmind

Walking Back to Bhowanipore: A Memoir – Part 2

Written by: Siddhartha Krishnan | 5 Min Read

My grandfather migrated to Calcutta from a small village in Palakkad, Kerala, two years before Independence. I’m not sure when exactly he made Gokhale Road his home. My father was born in the autumn of 1949. With quiet determination, my grandfather set up a small business and soon brought over relatives from Palakkad—young men with dreams of education, growth, and a better life.

Among them was Dr. P.R.G. Mathur, a relative of ours, who would go on to become a renowned anthropologist. He completed his PhD from Calcutta University, and in the 1990s, would often visit us during his tours. He’d bring along his close friend, P. Thankappan Nair, now fondly remembered as the ‘barefoot historian of Kolkata.’ Nair lived just a stone’s throw from our home, on Kansaripara Lane. My father, Dr. Mathur, and Nair would slip into long, meandering conversations on books, politics, and the city itself. I would sit nearby, a silent bystander. The topics were far too heavy for me, but the rhythm of those conversations stays with me still.

In the 50s and 60s, as old-timers tell it, my grandmother would cook for a gathering on humid afternoons. Our small flat never felt small back then. “When it got too crowded, we’d sleep out in the balcony,” my father used to say. Years later, I accompanied him to visit Dr. Mathur in Palakkad, not long before his death. Both men were frail and quiet, but the moment was heavy with feeling. Dr. Mathur kept recalling just one thing—how lovingly my grandmother used to feed him. Her begun bhajas were his favourite. In the end, perhaps it’s always the small things that matter.

Three generations of our family owe a quiet debt to this city, and to this locality in particular. We lived in Krishnapriya Mansion, a hundred-year-old building just across from the police barracks on Gokhale Road. Modest, weathered and slowly crumbling, but always full of life. We had rented two flats in the building. My father spent his entire active life there, anchored not just by familiarity, but also by the flavours of the city.

He was a true foodie—perhaps the most Bengali of all his traits. Nimki House with its crisp savouries, Sharma Tea House with its heritage chai and club kachoris, Tibetan Delight’s momos, the doodh cola and parathas from Balwant Singh Eating House, pastries and sandwiches at Sugarr & Spice, and of course, the mishti doi and sandesh from Ganguram. These weren’t just food joints. They were rituals. Each one just a few hundred steps from our door.

However, one of the strongest memories I carry from the 90s is of my father heading to Jadu Babur Bajar on Ashutosh Mukherjee Road. It was a daily ritual, folded neatly into his morning walk. But on weekends, it took on a certain flamboyance. He’d step out with a spring in his step and his trusted jhola in hand. I was usually forced to tag along.

Someone on the road would shout, “Sachi da kothai?”, and without missing a beat, he’d reply, “Bajar korte jacchi.” That reply, so casual, feels oddly alien now, meaningless almost, for a generation that shops with a swipe on Blinkit or Big Basket. But the way he said it, with a twinkle in his eye and a hint of anticipation, made it sound like he was off on a holiday.

I couldn’t understand it then. Jadu Babur Bajar or Jaggu Bazaar as we kids mockingly called it—was no picnic spot. It was chaos. A sensory overload. A maze, a tangle of stalls and sounds where the sense of direction went to die. Yet my father moved through it with the grace of someone who belonged.

To me, it was a noisy, crowded hellscape where we spent hours negotiating with fish sellers or chasing the “right” watermelon—never the ones conveniently on the way, but the one seller tucked away at the very end. He had a shop for everything, a logic for every detour, and zero patience for my protests. It was all deeply irritating then.

But memories are strange shape-shifters. What once felt unbearable now returns with warmth. The sight of his content face after a good day at the bajar, the pride in his choices, the quiet joy he took in the ritual—that image refuses to leave me.

Growing up, I had always seen my father as deeply spiritual. He’d often say he was a rebel in his younger days, but I never saw that version of him. What I did see was a man who was well-read, an All India CA rank holder, and a devoted book lover who never missed a single day of the boi mela. Years of recurring illness had slowly made him god-fearing. The first of these came early—a brain tumour diagnosis when I was just seven. He survived, but more such episodes followed.

On his way back from office, he would often stop by Gol Mandir for a quiet moment of prayer. Tuesdays, though, were more elaborate. He’d visit both Gol Mandir and Shitala Mandir, where the crowds swelled and the rituals took longer. For my brother and me, the devotion meant little at the time—our focus was mostly on securing the prasad from Panditji before it ran out.

My father could hardly speak Malayalam before he married a pukka Malayalee from Palakkad. His love for Calcutta echoed in all his choices, and in every conversation. I remember watching my mother struggle in those days—everything from the language to the culture and food felt unfamiliar to her. Yet, over the years, she quietly adapted and found her rhythm in the city. With a man so completely in love with Calcutta, I don’t think she ever really had a choice.

For my father, leaving Gokhale Road would have been like leaving a part of himself. He stayed on until 2017. After that, my parents split their time between my brother’s house in Rajarhat and mine in Bangalore, before eventually finding a house in Palakkad. But all through those years, the flat at Gokhale Road remained. We let it go only in 2023—after he was gone.

(Concluding part … in a few days)

***

About the author –

Siddhartha Krishnan is the author of ‘Two and a Half Rainbows – A Collection of Short Stories’. An enthusiastic blogger he shares his essays, travelogues, book and movie reviews on his blog (www.whatsonsidsmind.com).

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by whatsonsidsmind

Walking Back to Bhowanipore: A Memoir – Part 1

Written by: Siddhartha Krishnan | 4 Min Read

The year was 1999. I was fifteen. Calcutta was still called that, though its rechristening was already on the horizon. That September, a single bout of torrential rain brought the city to its knees. From our third-floor flat, I watched nervously as the water on Gokhale Road rose inch by inch, swallowing the street below. Schools were shut, and office-goers hitched rides on hand-pulled rickshaws just to reach dry land, where a bus, a taxi, or the metro might rescue them. The spitting rain continued for two more days, and we rejoiced at the unexpected school holidays.

Floods were common back then, but school closures weren’t. This was as close to a bandh as we could get, which, in those days, wasn’t all that rare either. Unlike that brief celebration, most of my monsoon memories of Kolkata are murky: waterlogged streets, a constant stench, clouds of mosquitoes, and a sky that never cleared. I don’t think many liked the rains back then, except on weekends, when the smell of khichuri in the afternoons or telebhaja in the evenings drifted from one house to another, bringing momentary comfort.

Now, as I sit on my balcony in Bangalore with a cup of tea, watching a gentle drizzle fall, memories of Calcutta’s torrential monsoons and my childhood in Bhowanipore come rushing back. Unlike the rains, those memories remain warm and dear.

I grew up in Bhowanipore, largely unaware of the historical weight the neighbourhood carried. That awareness came much later. Back then, life revolved around casual addas with friends and weekend rituals: cricket matches at the Maidan in the morning, and evening strolls through the neighbourhood. These walks took us past some of the city’s iconic landmarks such as Nandan Cinema, Rabindra Sadan, Victoria Memorial, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Nehru Planetarium, and were often punctuated by street food stops—Kolkata-style chowmein, Kathi rolls, puchkas, bhel puri, and, on better days, momos from Tibetan Delight.

Tucked between the bustling arteries of Shambhunath Pandit Street on one end and Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road on the other, Gokhale Road offered a rare pocket of calm. Even as the neighbourhood around it pulsed with commerce and traffic, this narrow street remained something of an oasis: shielded and remarkably quiet.

But perhaps the most defining space of that time was a rectangular stretch called Chowringhee Terrace, a lane branching off Gokhale Road, opposite the Institution of Engineers, and tapering off near the police barracks. That quiet end hosted the Gokhale Sporting Club Durga Puja—familiar to locals but never crowded enough to descend into the chaos that marked the city’s more prominent pujas in South-Central Kolkata. At the other end, near the post office and Institution of Engineers, was where we spent most evenings in adda and gully cricket, using a heavy plastic ball that could travel the distance, and could wake the locality up if it hit a metal gate.

In many ways, though, Gokhale Road always felt dwarfed by the commercial and cultural landmarks that surrounded it. When returning from other parts of town, we often struggled to explain its exact location to taxi drivers. It was usually nearby landmarks such as Ganguram, Gol Mandir—that came to our rescue.

Yet Gokhale Road quietly held its own. It was home to several important institutions: the Institution of Engineers, the Army’s Recruitment Centre, Calcutta Club, the Police Housing Estate, and the Mahavir Digambar Jain Temple tucked into Chowringhee Terrace. And despite its proximity to the city’s beating heart namely Park Street, Esplanade, and Elgin—it somehow retained a hush, a kind of quiet that the grander, more restless parts of Kolkata could never quite manage.

My father never left Gokhale Road. Though we lived in a small apartment and could well afford a larger one elsewhere, he’d brush off the suggestion, saying, “This is where everyone wants to live. Why should we leave?”

Part of it, I think, was his deep resistance to change—he was never much of an adventurer. Although, as a chartered accountant working in a private firm in Old Court House Street, he had traveled extensively auditing banks. I believe it was memory that anchored him. His entire childhood was woven into the fabric of this neighbourhood.

(To be continued. Part 2 … this weekend)

***

About the author –

Siddhartha Krishnan is the author of ‘Two and a Half Rainbows – A Collection of Short Stories’. An enthusiastic blogger he shares his essays, travelogues, book and movie reviews on his blog (www.whatsonsidsmind.com).