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Places
Calcutta
has a grave meaning for India .. not just a city. India without Calcutta will be India without its National
Anthem – Jan gana mana adhinayak jay he Bharat bhagya vidhata.
This beautiful and all-embracing poetry was written by
Rabindranath Tagore, India’s first Nobel Prize winner in the field
of literature. India
without Calcutta will even be India without its National Song – Vande
Matram by Bankim Chandra.
Vande Matram is not merely a serene patriotic song with
beautiful Sanskrit words depicting Mother India, it was the “mantra”
of revolution which inspired thousands of brave sons of India who
stood against the British and fought with exemplary courage.
Those days this song was banned and anyone even uttering
‘Vande Matram’ was whipped by the British police.
India without Calcutta will be India without Mother Teresa,
another Nobel Prize winner of India whose Missionaries of Charity are
still promoting the message of love and mercy in the nooks and corners
of the world. India
without Calcutta will be India without Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen and
dozens of the glitterati of Indian Cinema whose contributions are
immense and unforgettable. India
without Calcutta will be India without ‘Rosugullas’, the king of
the Indian sweets. If
‘Vande Matram’ became the vexing point of the British,
‘Rosugullas’ always allured them.
India without Calcutta will
Situated in the far east of India, the metropolitan city of Calcutta has seen the history of this country being written. For the native Bengalies, it is Kolikata or Kalikata and there are many myths surrounding its magical name. There is, however, perhaps no authentic explanation. My elder sister has another story which she told me when I was a child. Once a man was passing through a jungle near the Hooghly river when he was attacked by robbers who cut his throat. People flocked in crowd next morning and sighed over the sad death of the wayfarer. A royal band was en route and as the king stopped near the crowd, he saw the tragedy and asked “kab kata?” (when beheaded?) and he was informed that “Kal Kata” (beheaded yesterday). So it became ‘Kalkata’ or Calcutta as pronounced by the British. I am sure my sister was relating a hearsay but we would together talk about Calcutta with much wonderment. We were in Bihar (an Indian state) and Calcutta was the nearest city we could think of or know about. I grew as a child depicted by an English poet. The child was a poor village boy and had never seen London but people talked about London – its theatres, its dazzling culture, its polished people, its sexy tints of life, its art and literature, its landmarks and panorama and everything. In the child’s mind, London imprinted an image that he lovingly cherished. He thought there the roads are like silver and buildings are of gold. Then he grew up and once he visited his dream city London. There was nothing like that, his dreams collapsed, his hopes shattered.
When I first
visited Calcutta, I was only 10 years old and I still have some faint
memories of the beauty of Victoria Memorial, the Kalighat temple, the
Zoo and the Museum and I remember how excited I was to ride the Tram
rails. They never stopped or just stopped not to stop and people had
to jump inside and quickly get down when the destination came.
Since then Calcutta has changed though I have never visited and
I don’t want to visit lest my dreams collapse, my hopes shatter.
So,
I was talking about this magical name of Calcutta. In my opinion, the name ‘Kalikata’ is due to Kali, the
goddess incarnation. Bengal
has been one of the leading centers of the devotees of ‘Shakti’
(female embodiment of Supreme Power) and ‘Kali’ is the most adored
divinity in this part of the world.
Whatever it may be, it is sufficient to say that this name
existed even in the Mughal time in India but in early 17th
Century it became famous as the East India Company was first
established on the banks of the Hooghly.
The city became even more famous in 1756 A.D. when
Siraj-Ud-Dawlah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, captured the
city and was soon defeated by Robert Clive.
Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General of British India
and he was charmed by Calcutta. He
decided to make it the administrative headquarter of East India
Company. By this time, a
new leaf was turned in the Indian history.
Clive and Hastings had already sown the seeds which sprang
forth and turned into an unshakable tree overshadowing its branches
all over India, devouring a number of kings and rulers and paving the
underground way for expansion of the roots of British empire.
So, if Bombay is the Gateway of India, Calcutta proved to be
the Entrance. Soon it
developed as the capital of British empire and became the political
and economical ‘nerve-centre’ of India. |
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12
minus 4 is equal to 8 and between you and me even the damn foolish
will say it is so but when Baadshah Akbar asked this question,
Birbal, the wisest of his “nine gems”, replied that when 4
is taken out of 12, the result will be zero.
be India without Howrah Bridge –
a marvel of bridge technology for ever and an object of such appeal,
not unlike the bridge on Thames in London, that a number of Indian
films have been inspired by this.