Humanities Underground

Adda at Barda’s Shop

Amitranjan Basu [1] When I stood at the main gate of National Library and looked ahead, I got a jolt! Where did Barda[2]’s shop go? I crossed the road and came near the gate of the Zoo and discovered that really Barda’s shop is gone! A high footpath has gone toward the Zeerut Bridge and along the footpath bus stands have come up with small tea kiosks for the bus workers but Barda’s shop has simply vanished! Just can’t remember who among us had discovered this shop first. When we were finishing our schools in 1970-71, our adda brewed up in and around this inn. Barda’s shop was rather large and longish. In two rows there were about fourteen or fifteen tables with white marble tops. These tables rocked with this heavy marble tops on decade old weak legs with four darkish chairs that bore several marks of repair. Some of the chairs  sheltered bugs. The road side wall was half-open and the shop was roofed with corrugated tin sheets. A paan-cigarette shop was evolved on the road side wall and the bridge-facing wall had the kitchen, in front of which the manager’s chair was placed. The manager– Barda– sat on this chair behind a shabby showcase with an Anandabazar Patrika in his hand. We used to sit on a table that faced the gate of the zoo where the shop had a small door and adjacent to that was a small banyan tree. The shop did not have any fans. Yellowish bulbs hung from the ceiling. As a whole the shop had such a characteristic look that most of the zoo visitors – who were from a humble background– liked to come and take their seats. Initially, it was Sudhansu, Nirmal and me who started the adda and Sanju joined us soon followed by Sunil, Bijay, Hiren, Kirshnaswamy and Swapan. Barring Sudhansu and Hiren, the rest of us stayed within the boundaries of National Library. The colonial name of the place is Belvedere Estate. Sudhansu was a childhood friend who stayed in the staff quarters of Birla House and Hiren stayed in the staff quarters for zoo employees, who joined us during the first year of my college. Another group from Belvedere, slightly elder to us, used to come to this shop. From this other group , few would join this adda regularly. But none other than Kanuda and Sudhansu’s elder brother Bishtu were actively engaged with the life at Belvedere. Raju-da, Nepu-da and Kamal-da – came to Belvedere after finishing their college. To me they were the first educated unemployed youth seen from close quarters. In spite of being ‘dadas’, they were liberal enough to allow us to smoke in front them and we could discuss anything under the sun with them. At times we used to join both the tables and carry on chatting over endless cups of tea. Sometimes they used to include us in their drinking party. Another group, elder than this one, had their adda in the Ureyer Dokaan (Oriya guy’s Shop) near Anderson House (now Bhabani Bhaban). For a long time, we dared not smoke in front of them. Life at Belvedere seems a time travel to me! Sirajuddoula, after capturing Calcutta from the British, named this area Alinagar. During the time of Mirzafar it was renamed as Alipore. I have read that the grandson of Aurangzeb built the first phase of the buildings. After fourteen years, Surman, a diplomat from England bought this house with the gardens from Mughal Emperor Farrukhshayar (1713-1719) and transformed into his summer palace and named it “Belvedere House.” However, Surman’s house was also put into auction and the revenue minister of Bengal Nawab, Suza Khan bought it in one lakh twenty thousand rupees. Next buyer was Warren Hastings, who bought it in sixty thousand sikkas, and after becoming the Governor General of Bengal he made it into his pleasure palace. Browsing the map of Calcutta of 1794 one can see that, a long stretch from today’s race course to Judges’ Court there is only one house engulfed by trees and the Adiganga. The Belvedere House with a huge garden full of various kinds of trees and a crescent-shaped lake formed the Belvedere Estate. In postcolonial times this house became the National Library and quarters and government employees started arriving in ones and twos. By the end of fifties of the last century a new community started emerging. People from different states settled in their temporary houses at Belvedere Estate. This Belvedere of our childhood was a space of immense curiosity and excitement. In those days gas-lights illuminated Alipore and Baker Road. The house itself had such lights in beautiful decorated stands over the railings of the wide and long staircases, both in front and on the rear side. There were also wonderful marble sculptures of European kinds that decorated the staircase. If you were standing on the top of the frontal staircase it would seem that you were standing in front of a huge water coloured landscape of a plush green, sprawling field with a gigantic Sundari tree at the corner with the crescent shaped lake embracing it from the back. What kind of tree was not there in the garden? While playing over the branches of the big banyan tree we felt that this must be bigger than the famous banyan tree at the Botanical Garden! When dusky evenings would come down by the gas-lights over the Belvedere House – it took us instantly to colonial times. In this ghostly mystic environment the stories of the spirits of sahibs and memsahibs told by the elderly guards and staff seemed all too real! Playground, Children’s Library, aimlessly loitering in the garden in a holiday afternoon, visiting the zoo whenever some new animals or birds came, or scaling the boundary walls of Agri-Horticultural Society garden to see different kinds of beautiful flowers around – all these had made our community life special. It was neither a typical