Calcutta was fashioned after london. But while the towering facades of Victorian buildings still stand tall and proud in the Empire’s First City, in Kolkata, the iconic New Market has been allowed to fall apart
Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg didn’t quite have native shoppers in mind when he built Kolkata’s New Market in 1874. The Gothic red brick structure, which could have sat comfortably in the Empire’s First City had it been built there instead of next to the Corporation Building on lindsay Street off Esplanade in the Empire’s Second City, housed shops stocked with everything that could tickle the fancy of the sahibs and memsahibs and their babalog.
The finest tableware, the best linen, fashionable dresses and dress material, fresh meat, fish and vegetables, confectionery and bread baked to suit the British palate, could all be purchased under one roof. There were jewellery shops to indulge the fancies ofmemsahibs and tobacconists that sold British cigarettes and Burmese cheroots, briar pipes and hand-rubbed tobacco — smoking was a fine art and not a criminal offence as it is today. There were bookshops that sold The Times (shipped from london) and had shelves crammed with illustrated books, often on gardening and other such distractions to relax over-worked minds that kept the wheels of the Raj moving. All that was fit for consumption by Kolkata’s British elite was available at New Market.
Much later, New Market was renamed SS Hogg Market in memory of the visionary city planner whose concerns were, of course, guided by the interests of the burra log — the natives lived in squalid slums and the upwardly mobile Bangalibhadralok in palatial houses in north Kolkata which was a world apart from central Kolkata. A plaque still exists recalling the official name, but everybody calls it New Market; it’s doubtful if Kolkata remembers Hogg sahib. But then, Kolkata has forgotten much of its past, not all of it glorious but a lot of it that made the Empire’s Second City the envy of those who lived in what passed for cities in the rest of India, including Mumbai.
The sahib log left more than six decades ago when the Tricolour replaced the Union Jack. Their place was taken by brown sahibs and saree-cladmemsahibs. Theboxwallahs who were hired to manage Kolkata’s once famous trading and manufacturing firms became the new clientele of New Market. But this phase did not last long. The turbulent 1960s and 1970s marked Kolkata’s rapid decline and fall: The boxwallahs moved on to Mumbai; those who couldn’t migrate in time were left to wallow in self-pity. living the high life became a badge of dishonour as Kolkata lost its sheen and lustre.
Kolkata may have survived the ravages of the failed revolution which destroyed much of all that was good about West Bengal and its capital city, but it has not quite regained the glitter and glamour that once set it apart. Till 1962, Kolkata was way ahead of Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi; Chennai and Hyderabad were not even in the reckoning for a slot in the list of metropolitan cities. That was also the time when Bengalis could say with justifiable pride, ‘What Bengal thinks today, the rest of India thinks tomorrow.’ A half century later, it’s the other way around: What the rest of India thinks today, Bengal thinks tomorrow — that is, if it thinks at all.
New Market encapsulates this decline and decay of the city Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg tried to fashion after london. The Christmas decorations that once made New Market look pretty now seem tacky. New Market never quite recovered from a devastating fire in the mid-1980s when nearly half the market was gutted. The new New Market is a PWD-built monstrosity with shanty shops that sell plastic table covers.
It could be argued that Kolkata can do without the relics of its past, that a modern city must be rid of old buildings that cost a lot to maintain and serve little purpose other than pandering to nostalgia. But that is taking the lazy way out. Kolkata is synonymous with not-so-genteel shabbiness — urban decay is writ large on the city’s increasingly ungainly face. Calcutta was synonymous with a certain style that had little to do with money and was more about class. New Market was symbolic of Calcutta, as were Flury’s and Firpo.
A modern city does not rid itself of its past, especially its architectural majesty. look as london where the towering facades of Victorian buildings stand tall and proud, prim and proper. New Market could have been preserved, refurbished and made into a landmark. Instead, it was allowed to fall apart. There is a sneaking suspicion this was not without design — just as the grand old buildings of Park Street do not catch fire on their own.
The blaze spared the front portion of the market which still stands. The old New Market is now crowded in by cinemas converted into shabby shopping complexes and eateries catering to the lowest common denominator. To reach the narrow entry gate, made narrower by pavement stalls selling tacky handbags, you have to jostle with street hawkers, hustlers and milling crowds, mostly from the suburbs looking for city excitement.
Around New Market, once famous cinemas — New Empire, Elite and Globe — where watching a film was a unique experience, are now part of Kolkata’s folklore. The cinemas were shut down with the arrival of multiplexes; new investment was impossible to find in a dying city starved of business funds. Somewhere along the line ownership changed hands and the new owners have thought it fit to convert them into shopping ‘plazas’. But they are no more than cut-price bazaars.
Mamata Banerjee spoke of converting Kolkata into london soon after she took charge as Chief Minister of West Bengal. Then she got busy doing what Chief Ministers of this benighted, unfortunate and disinherited State have excelled in doing: Not doing anything. Nobody quite expected Kolkata to transmogrify into london, but surely a clean-up was in order, as was restoration work on heritage buildings.
Sadly, that has not happened. Faux gas lamps for street lights and Rabindrasangeet at street corners are not quite what london is about. New Market stands testimony to this fact.
(The writer is commissioning editor and commentator at ABP News TV)