MY earliest memories of the world are filled with the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of Calcutta. My parents tell me I was born in the Turret suite of the Eden Hospital. They joke that it must be the grand colonial architecture of the hospital building that inspired me to become a conservation architect, though our home in Ballygunge is what I remember most.

The city of Calcutta formed the backdrop to most of my childhood memories in the 1970s – the sight of yellow ambassador taxis; traffic jams on Howrah bridge and policemen in white; the trundle of hand-pulled rickshaws through busy lanes; the clatter of trams winding their way through congested streets; Rabindra sangeet wafting through our neighbour’s windows in the early morning hours and all the cacophony and celebration of Durga Puja. The slogans of ‘cholbe na, cholbe na’ became part of my early Bangla vocabulary in the heydays of strikes and the Naxalite movement of the ’70s, watching street processions from our balcony.

My first initiation towards becoming an inveterate foodie was being fed hilsa and rice by Auntie Bose, who would patiently handpick all the fine bones of the delicious fish and make balls of fish and rice to feed me fondly... her children all grown up and living abroad; visits to New Market to buy imported cheese so precious in an era before India’s economic liberalization and, of course, the cakes at Flury’s which my father’s sister would continue to fly with on my birthday to which ever city we were posted, long after my father was transferred out of Calcutta.

I remember the excitement and exhilaration of my first visit to the Victoria Memorial as a five year old. With its cavernous interior capped with a bulbous dome and its gleaming white marble, I mistook it for a queen’s palace and it became the benchmark to my childhood idea of monumentality, forming the setting in my mind’s eye for all the fairy tales of princes and queens. To me, all of Calcutta was like Victoria Memorial – grand, white and gleaming – and I treasured this mental image of the city like a keepsake flower pressed between the pages of a beloved book.

For all the fondness and nostalgia my parents shared for the city, we never managed to plan a family holiday to return to the city and I only returned to Calcutta (now Kolkata) after a gap of 30 years. To say that to reconcile my childhood memories with what the adult eye saw took a bit of a readjustment would be an understatement. The yellow ambassador taxis were still there, as if the automobile revolution that had hit the rest of India had somehow escaped the city and so were the policemen dressed in white. But, the images of the buildings that I had captured in my child’s mind were far from the pristine glory of my imagination. These were faded, jaded and dilapidated and it seemed that the city had aged so much in those three decades between my own vision of childhood and middle age – the mental pictures of gleaming white buildings was replaced by aging edifices, decrepit and neglected, with decaying plaster and broken cornices.

And yet these grand buildings, a bit tottering with age, with rickety balconies and peepul trees growing out of masonry cracks still stood with dignity and pride, silent sentinels to an age of elegance. Their silence was like that of a dowager empress, wrinkled and unsteady on her feet but every inch as regal. That is when I fell in love with Calcutta all over again.

 

With its Hellenic pediments supported on lofty classical columns, louvred windows, wrought iron balconies and brick covered in lime stucco, Calcutta’s architecture is regal and timeless. Its grand edifices are a study in classical proportions, a carefully articulated composition of mass and void. Unlike the fantastical Victorian Gothic of Bombay with its visual language of gargoyles and spires, a busy medley of pointed arches, cinquefoils, trefoils, quatrefoils, floral and animal imagery composed of sturdy basalt juxtaposed with delicate limestone, Calcutta’s architecture is elegant and understated.

Without the abundance of stone seen in Bombay Presidency, the Bengal landscape offered only terracotta and brick which forms much of its construction material. The classical proportions of its buildings, however, relieved the monotony of brick masonry. Corinthian, Ionic and Doric – the classical orders ruled. Lime stucco gave the buildings a gleaming whiteness and a purity of colour while the quintessential green wooden louvred window shutters filtered light into the handsome buildings and added colour to the facades.

 

Calcutta was the imperial city, an 18th and 19th century ode to the European Classicism of the colonial rulers. As the capital of British India, it became the site for most of the principal institutions of British India. The Asiatic Society was established in 1784 by Sir William Jones and by 1814, the Indian Museum had been established – the earliest and largest multipurpose museum in the entire Asia Pacific region and second in the world. With its gleaming white chunam plaster and colonnades of Tuscan columns, the magnificent building inspired awe and curiosity. The Government House, with its monumentality built to match that of Kedleston in Derbyshire, became the seat of all Governor Generals and then Viceroys until the shifting of capital to New Delhi in 1912.

Raja Binaya Krishna Deb wrote in The Early History and Growth of Calcutta, published in 1905: ‘With the exception of London, no city in the great British Empire can be compared to Calcutta in point of size, beauty and commercial and political importance. It is not only the recognized capital of British India, and hence the seat of the Supreme Government, as well as the headquarters of the Provincial Governor of Bengal, but it may be regarded as the second capital of the Empire.’¹ This confidence in its superior status endowed Calcutta’s architecture with a supreme confidence and pride. The City of Palaces, its handsome edifices retained an understated elegance, a self-assured confidence that did not bother to blindly copy and replicate other presidencies or colonial towns. Calcutta set the tone for others to follow.

The shifting of the capital to Delhi, however, dealt a blow to Calcutta’s ambitions. For a few decades after independence, it remained among the nation’s most cosmopolitan cities and economic centre. With its Bengali intelligentsia, Anglo-Indian community, Chinese entrepreneurs and Marwari businessmen, the city lived through the 1960s living life and tapping its feet to Usha Iyer (now Uthup’s) songs at Trinca’s and cabarets at Moulin Rouge and Firpos. However, the Naxalite movement led to an exodus of the businesses in the early ’70s, many of the Marwari families shifting base to Hyderabad, Delhi and Bombay.

 

The grand buildings of Dalhousie Square positioned between St. John’s Church and St. Andrew’s Church (Scottish Kirk) once created a spectacular urban design statement. The Writers’ Building, the General Post Office with its rotunda and the HSBC Bank were part of an unparalleled urban scheme, a dynamic civic centre of political and business institutions. Over the decades, much of the historic fabric was lost. The Mackinnon Mackenzie building was gutted in a fire, the Currency Building suffered a fate of dilapidation and neglect and the harmonious skyline was jarringly punctured by the concrete addition of the Telephone Bhawan.

In a state of economic dormancy, a self-inflicted recession, the effects of India’s economic liberalization did not hit Kolkata for nearly two decades after the rest of the country. While the economic boom resulted in the rapid transformation of other cities, Kolkata remained frozen in time. This has been a blessing in disguise. While other cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore had a spiralling real estate growth, resulting in the demolition of most of their historic buildings and construction of concrete high rises, Kolkata remained immune to the pressures of the economic boom. While historic colonial buildings in Bangalore and Chennai were rapidly bulldozed to make way for glass and alucobond facades, the old city centre of Kolkata remained largely unchanged, a bit run down and weathered but still retaining its old historic fabric, much like a bhadrapurush from a grand zamindar family, with financial strains showing through the frayed shawl, but still standing with immense dignity that speaks of generations of aristocracy and an innate gentility.

 

Kolkata today has therefore been spared the rapid transformation of other Indian cities seen in the last three decades. Its historic buildings still stand, unlike other cities where they were bulldozed to make way for modern high rises with glass and alucobond facades. Communist rule and economic hibernation saved its historic stock by default. So, while its historic buildings may look old and decrepit, they at least survived the bulldozers.

Today, Kolkata’s architecture – both old and new face a new future. While the drive from the swanky new airport is lined with the flashy new buildings of glass facades in Rajarhat, the centre of the city still retains its old world charm. The buildings of Chowringhee encapsulate the architecture of the old city. The lofty columns and elegant arcades of the Geological Survey of India, Indian Museum and Government College of Art and Craft faced the grand open swath of urban maidan, creating an unparalleled urban vista, now rudely truncated by the concrete flyover. In time to celebrate its bicentennial in 2014, the Indian Museum is currently poised towards a major restoration, a makeover of its visitor facilities and a long awaited revival for India’s oldest museum. The old Whiteway Laidlaw building, once the premier departmental store and destination for shoppers looking for the finest imported goods, would hopefully one day be restored to its former glory. Victoria Memorial too has initiated a landmark museum revival project under the watchful eye of the Governor of West Bengal and the historic Government House, Raj Bhavan is gearing up for the conservation of its historic estate.

 

While individual models of conservation have shown promise, it is time to join the dots. These initiatives are positive steps, but if the city is truly to revive its architectural legacy and reposition itself as India’s cultural capital, it needs a major political vision, coupled with a substantial financial investment. Like its finely woven saris, the city’s urban fabric is held together by the tenuous warp and weft of historic architecture and modern in fills, strained with the needs and aspirations of its millions. This dichotomy of the past and present is an unavoidable reality and yet, it is this interface between the past and the present, the historic and the modern, that makes for the intriguing dynamics within the city. For any cultural policy to be effective, it is imperative to create a balance between issues of architectural concern and those of urban infrastructure through the coordination of various involved agencies, planning and legislative bodies and government organizations. This also needs to have an amply broad public base to ensure its implementation at the grassroots level, supported by sound economic policies.

 

At a point in time, every great city wakes up from its slumber to revive its glory. It is a global phenomenon that a city’s financial revival is accompanied by an urban facelift with huge capital investment in public infrastructure and restoration of city landmarks. This becomes the launch pad for the city’s entry into the big league, packaging its wares to the international community and highlighting its architectural monuments as the icons of the city. Paris got a makeover with Hausmann a few hundred years ago, swapping its medieval rat infested alleys for grand neoclassical avenues, and again in the times of President Mitterand and the revitalization of the Louvre. New York too embarked on an ambitious journey from inner city decay to Soho chic, reviving its run down historic districts into fashionable uptown areas in the tenure of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

It takes immense leadership and political vision to successfully embark on a city’s revival. In order to maintain this critical balance between modernity and heritage, ensuring that one realm does not completely obviate the other, a regulatory framework is necessary, but more importantly the political will to back that framework. This needs to be then ably supported by comprehensive planning, sound architectural and economic policies, zoning laws and clear regulations supported at the ground level by good governance, transparency and vigilance to ensure the urban and architectural revival of a city’s heritage.

 

Footnote:

1. Raja Binaya Krishna Deb, The Early History and Growth of Calcutta, Romesh Chandra Ghose/Harvard University, 1905.