Like many things in Calcutta at the turn of the 20th century, Park Mansions was built by Armenian merchant Thaddeus Mesrope Thaddeus

Can you love a beautiful thing without understanding what beauty is? I was eight years and something when I first saw Charulata, considered to be Satyajit Ray’s finest film and sometimes listed among the greatest films ever made. Ray had died that Calcutta summer, and Doordarshan was showing a retrospective of his films late at night, in remembrance. Those were the pre-DVD days, and even in VHS, Ray’s films were hard to come by. My parents would wake me late at night so I could watch with them, the only late-night activity I was allowed to participate in.

“Just watch a bit,” my mother would say, “it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it.” At eight, even for the precocious, full-of-themselves Bengalis, I was a bit young for Tagore’s story of a young bored housewife falling for her brother-in-law, and recognising the loneliness of her marriage to an older, professorial man. (It was the typically uneven marriage of high-caste Hindus of the day — a young woman, a man at least a decade-and-a-half older.)

But I liked the film. I liked it from the start, because I liked Charu’s windows — the slatted windows through which she watched a man with a black umbrella on a Calcutta street, one of Bengali cinema’s most beloved scenes (and one of international cinema’s most recognisable scenes). My grandfather’s house had the same windows; windows operated with a spine to pry them open. The kharkhari, as we call it in Bengali, lets you glimpse the outside without letting the inside out. It is said to be designed specifically for tropical heat, and is typical of old, statuesque Calcutta homes from the turn of the 20th century.

Of stillness

I felt at home in Charulata’s world, though her emotional dilemma was several years of understanding away from me. I felt like I was in my grandfather’s house, 25 Park Mansions, with its books, and long corridors and curvaceous, dark wood furniture. (Today’s furniture is a lot more angular, a lot more straight lines, no?) More than anything else, the house has the same air of stillness and non-fidgetiness that you sense in the film. Despite Charulata’s emotional turmoil, you see her sewing or writing or playing cards, rarely fidgeting.

My grandfather’s house has that same quality — even now, it makes me forget my phone and the notifications on my post. It keeps the outside out, and holds me inside. I had little idea then that the building would one day be classified as “heritage” property, that I had grown up in something that deserves to be preserved for the public and the future. I had loved it without understanding it, much like I did with the film.

The foundation stone of Park Mansions was laid in 1910, one year before the British announced that the imperial capital would be shifted to Delhi. Like many things in Calcutta at the turn of the century, it was built by an Armenian, a merchant and philanthropist called Thaddeus Mesrope Thaddeus. Park Street, Calcutta’s iconic restaurant and bar street, has at least three other buildings credited to Armenians. Stephen Court, which stands diagonally opposite to Park Mansions, was built by Arathoon Stephen, who also built the adjacent complex, Queen’s Mansion. These three majestic mansions were conceived as residential quarters.

A little further down the street, close to the beloved Olympia Pub, is the Masonic (Freemasons’) Lodge and Hall, built by Johannes Carapiet Galstaun. Many of the city’s most loved and recognised hotels have also been built by Armenians — the Grand Hotel, the Kenilworth, the Astoria and the late Shashi Kapoor’s favourite hotel, the Fairlawn.

What is most interesting about this building spree is the timing — the turn of the 20th century was the zenith of the Raj in India. Calcutta is widely considered to be built by the British, and little credit is given to the Armenians. The early 20th century was also the time of the genocide of Armenians by the Turkish state — in her book A Problem from Hell, the American academic Samantha Powers describes this as the first genocide of the modern period.

The Armenian touch

But the presence of Armenians in Calcutta predates the 20th century. The oldest church in Calcutta is the Armenian church on Armenian Street. The earliest grave in the churchyard adjoining it dates to 1630, says Iftekhar Ahsan, who runs one of the most popular walking tour companies in the city. The Armenian college near Park Street still admits and educates children of Armenian origin only. Geographically, Armenia is a land-locked country, and the Armenians have been subject to invasions over the centuries. Waves of Armenians have left and settled across the world. They are among the most resourceful and successful immigrant communities worldwide.

According to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), “a heritage building means any building… which requires preservation and conservation for historical, architectural, environmental and ecological purpose…” This definition suggests that a heritage building is a public good meant to be sustained for the city as a whole.

When the heritage status came in for Park Mansions, a plaque was put in in memory of the company managing the estate. In the four years since, nothing has been put up about Thaddeus, about the Armenians of Calcutta, the style of Armenian buildings, or even the distinct architectural features of Park Mansions.

However, a whole lot of signage has come up on the façade of the building itself — advertising for commercial and institutional tenants. The KMC website on heritage specifically mentions that no display of signage or hoardings is allowed on heritage buildings unless it is approved, and in harmony with the building.

Gleaming new commercial tenants have arrived — the country’s largest car company has a showroom in Park Mansions, a store for a global computer giant whose favourite colour is white, the tech gadgets branch of India’s largest industrial conglomerate, a hip global café franchise known for live music performances. There are new institutional tenants too — the cultural wings of two prominent Western governments have set up office. In the course of these arrivals, the interiors of the mansion complex have been almost completely stripped. The hip café is set to its global décor template, and could well have been in a mall for all that it has retained of its 107-year-old setting. One of the cultural institutes has stripped the original floors and replaced them with a polished wood material. The arrangement of rooms and spaces has been wholly reimagined.

Crumbling edifice

My grandparents, refugees from Bangladesh who came to Calcutta with nothing, have kept it exactly the way they received it. Not a thing has been taken out. The laal mejhe (red floor) — red oxide mixed with cement — typical of old Calcutta homes is intact, still deliciously cold and creamy on bare feet. Our ceilings are still ages away, held up by criss-crossing beams and joists. They make the unreasonable Calcutta summers reasonable and the embarrassing winters a bit more draughty and respectable. His house is, perhaps, the only unit to have retained the space as it was originally conceived.

But the innards of the apartment are falling apart. The sewage pipes, after more than a century of use, often spill out waste in the bathrooms. They leak faecal matter into the walls and ceilings. The estate managers, puffed with the heritage tag, swat us residents away.

What is happening to Park Mansions is known as ‘adaptive reuse’ in urban planning language. A building conceived primarily for residential use is being refashioned for commercial and institutional use. In the process, the character of the building is changing. The interiors are being stripped away. The identity of Park Mansions is eroding.

I see this unfolding before me. When I walk down Park Street in the evenings, there is invariably a knot of people in front of the hip new café at Park Mansions. They wait to take selfies below the name of the café. Where they knock their heads close and ready their faces for the camera, they stand in front of the foundation plaque of the complex: “Park Mansions: The foundation stone of this building was laid by Lizzie, wife of T.M. Thaddeus, on the 1st May 1910.” Their photographs have no space for Thaddeus’ Park Mansions. It’s only the building housing the global café chain.

Park Mansions Adda: On a semi-regular basis on Sundays, my family welcomes people via a public post on Facebook to walk through our apartment, feel the red oxide floor, look out of our slatted windows, run hands along the spines of my grandfather’s library. And then we sit in the living room and talk, just like people still do in any apartment in the world.

The Kolkata-based writer and independent journalist writes on public health, politics and film. Her hobby is writing about herself in the third person.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Rubric> Society / by Sohini Chattopadhyay / March 03rd, 2018