On a Sunday with barely half a day left for him to bid adieu to the city he had called home for the past three years, French consul-general Fabrice Etienne criss-crossed north Calcutta with t2
Jorasanko Thakurbari: The house of Tagore made it to Etienne’s list of favourite spots as a mark of tribute to Rabindranath. “You have no idea of the influence that he has unless you reach Bengal. He is here on the streets, (our car had stopped at a traffic light and sure enough, there was Rabindrasangeet playing on the speaker), there is the university named after him, there is Santiniketan… there is so much respect. Everyone knows his work, not just the songs. This is unique. Of course, Calcutta is having trouble thinking beyond Tagore but that is a different issue. Only a small part of his work is available in French, like Andre Gide’s translation of Gitanjali and some novels like La Maison et Le Monde (Ghare Baire) and Charulata. But few in the West know that Tagore is more than a novelist. In French literature, we may compare him to Victor Hugo who was an educationist, a poet and a novelist. But his legacy is not as alive as Tagore’s is.”
The riverside: Tip-toeing through the monsoon slush at the Mullickbazar flower market and pausing at a few stalls to negotiate prices for marigold strands, we reached Jagannath Ghat. “This is my favourite ghat as this is where you get the best view of the Howrah bridge and the rail station.” The gigantic warehouses on the Strand made him wistful. “How I wish I could live in a building like this, overlooking the river! Living in Calcutta you forget about the existence of the river which is largely hidden from view unlike in Paris which is split by the Seine. There, the city expanded on both sides of the river across which there are about 20 bridges connecting the northern and the southern sides. All the attractions are along the Seine — Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay…. The Hooghly is much wider and the city has grown on its eastern side.”
Street-side tea shop: “I have put on 10 kilos in these three years! A paunch is accepted in Calcutta but in Paris it is frowned upon. I have to start cycling and walking like a Parisian once I am back,” Etienne had confessed after getting off the weighing scale at Calcutta Club from where our trip had started. A couple of hours later, he was happily digging into club kachauri and alur torkari, followed by a handsome helping of rabri at Sharma Sweets on Kalikrishna Tagore Street, run by his friend Shyam Barua. “Nothing breathes the Orient more than the streets of north Calcutta. Wherever you look, there is something happening. These small tea shops remind me of our street-side cafes, which are integral to the French way of life. Here you can get away from the chaos on the street while keeping a watch on a slice of outdoor life. They are cheap and no one asks you to leave even if you spend hours with a cup of coffee.”
College Street: Etienne could not find a single book in French on College Street but was startled to find some lesser-known titles of Alexandre Dumas in translation at several stalls. “This is the intellectual street of Calcutta with all the universities and bookstores. The Indian Coffee House here was a place for adda of Bengali intellectuals. It reminds me of the quartier Latin on the left bank of Paris which has bookstores of all sizes. This is for me one of the bridges between Paris and Calcutta…. For a kilometre on the promenade along the Seine, there are hundreds of small stores — some are just a box full of books. I used to go look for first editions of French or world literature titles as the area was close to our office.” On his last trip to College Street (“I used to come here often”), he picked up a Sunil Gangopadhyay translation.
Marble Palace: A last-minute call to Sourendro Mullick secured an entry into Marble Palace, the palatial Mullick residence on Muktaram Babu Street. Photography being prohibited in the rest of the property, we settled down on the verandah adjoining Sourendro’s piano room, where a marble statue of Pluto, the lord of the Underworld, stood reclining against his staff around which a snake was coiled. “Calcutta is in many ways a baroque city and nowhere else does it express that trait more lavishly. This place is a Calcutta of one man’s fantasy. Rajendro Mullick had found so many things that caught his fancy from across the world. It reminds me of the Palace of Versailles where too the idea was to add chandeliers and marble works to express wealth. It is a unique mix of kitsch but it is kitsch with a soul. This place also has the first private zoo of India. The building has been extremely well-preserved,” Etienne remarked.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, online edition / Home> Entertainment / Text by: Sudeshna Banerjee , Pictures by: Sanytan Ghosh / September 17th, 2015