Reminiscing about some early experiences of my residence in a colony where I spent nearly half my life, may not be an easy task. Memories with age get effaced, but in my case I have another deficiency about which my mother often remarked, “god has given you brains, but with a limited storage capacity”. So my experiences are packed and kept in a cluttered box.
I can't remember the exact year we as a family moved to Chittaranjan Park, but it must have been sometime around early seventies. The colony was still officially called EPDP, but to the rest of the world it was known as the “Bangali colony'. We had been allotted a piece of land on the front most side of this colony. This stretch of land on which houses were supposed to come up in a row, had its own peculiarity. It was on the lower end of a raised road known as the Chirag Dilli Road. On the straight path lay the Chirag Dilli Village. Lot of construction work was going on, on both sides of the road which made our own piece of land appear dusty and unattractive.
My father had rented a floor of a friend's two story house close to what now stands the august cluster of temples. Then the temple site existed only in the master plan of the colony and instead what stood before us was a patch of undulated land with few shrubs grown here and there. It was called the “maath” but gazing at this wilderness my private imagination took a different turn. I had renamed it as the “tepantorer maath” (the ghoulish land in our folktales). A few ghosts here and there might have also rented an accommodation. The maath began with the road in front of our house, but ended probably a mile beyond. There was a substantial mound at the horizon point and looking below we could see a thin pathway and beyond that some more wilderness could be sited. That portion had soon developed and became the GKII area.
At one corner of that maath stood a tin shed and a covered veranda attached to it. A few bells were fixed on the roof of the veranda and a 'Shiblinga' resided inside the room. It was respectfully referred as the 'Shibmandir' and soon that tiny spot of a house, became our landmark. Every evening we heard the sandhya aroti being offered with fanfare. The bells would chime, the conch shells would blow and patches of smoke would billow from the incense pots. Some men and women would gather with folded hands. It could well be a scene from their erstwhile villages from where they had once migrated and now considered EPDP their permanent residence. The sandhya aroti would also remind the residents that it was time to blow their own conch shells too in their private puja rooms. Though the houses were scattered here and there, these reverberating sounds made the distance grow near. On some special days of the month, we heard local enthusiasts sing in the Shibmandir premises kirtan of the 'Hare Krishna Hare Rama' variety.
Durgapuja is for the Bengalis the most important religious and cultural festival. During our initial years of residence in this colony, the Goddess on the sixth day of the Devipaksha made a ceremonial entrance to the pandal and occupied the empty spot on the left hand corner of the Shibmandir. It was a simple 'ekchala thakur' (Goddess and her family fitted within one roof) The puja was done with propriety and devotion. In the morning people gathered for anjali, afternoon for the khichuri bhog. In the evenings, the Goddess was greeted with 'shondha aroti' and then came the acrobatic feat of 'dhunuchi nach', where dancers would hold one or more lighted incense pots and while dancing, they precariously balanced them on their heads and shoulders, or placed them between their teeth! What attracted us most was the evening cultural show. Local people for months rehearsed and organised the three day events. A temporary stage was put up with tables joined together. The floor was though carpeted, the structure continued to be rickety. The microphones often squeaked mindlessly. These odds disturbed the artists but songs dances and even late night 'natoks', (plays) put up by local enthusiasts or by outside clubs, enthralled the audience for three days.
This Puja of Shibmandir was one major source of cultural transformation for us who being government servant's children, were nurtured in a more cosmopolitan environment. For the first time we could relate to this 'Puja' as our very own. Women whom we called mashima took care to arrange all the requirements for the puja. They spent half their nights cutting fruits and vegetables while chatting incessantly. From early morning we saw men and women arrange the puja items, shred flowers for the offering as well as for the anjali. And then cook bhog for the Goddess and her family. There was the sandhi puja, or the crucial juncture when Devi slayed the demon Mahishasur, which had to be organised at breath neck speed. Dexterity lay in lighting one hundred and eight earthen lamps within a few minutes after the commencement of this puja.
The younger group served the morning prasad after anjali, and the afternoon bhog of simple khichuri was served by strong middle-aged men. Bangal lingua flowed unabashedly and with that the decibels often rose beyond the permissible limits. It was fun and frolic for three days. On the last day the journey for the bhashan (immersion) of the Goddess began by placing her on the back of a truck. There was sadness and yet excitement all round. The microphones blared and also squeaked intermittently. The organisers despite the electronic misdeeds, in a croaking voice kept instructing the public. These events were interspersed with fervent cries of “Durga Mayee ki Jay”
On ordinary days too pervasion of our cultural bonding happened through the free flow of Rabindrasangeet and other Bangla Gaan from our neighbours' windows. And teasers to our gastronomy happened when strong scent escaped from their kitchen while frying the ilish maach or cooking their Sunday delight, 'mangsher jhol'. Bengaliness seemed all pervading. I remember one Sunday morning an aged couple came to our doorstep and begged in Bangla. They continued to visit us subsequent Sundays too. Often wayside 'bhikhiris' (beggars) would cross our paths singing some Bengali devotional songs while seeking alms. On special occasions, like Nababarsha or Rabindrajayanti a large group of residents would engage themselves in a probhaat pheri (encircle the colony while singing songs). For the occasion of Janmashtami and Rathayatra, some Vaishnava devotees would go round the colony singing kirtans.
The other novelty was the markets of this colony. Unlike the fully developed Khan Market or Connaught Place or even Queen's Way later known as Janpath, our haats of EPDP had squatters selling fish and vegetables in a roofless place around late evening. One such group of sellers sat in a row out in the open in a low lying area and soon this place was identified as Market One. The other group initially sat on the wayside near an open ground which was later called the Mela Maath. Soon they relocated themselves to another empty space behind the row of upcoming H Block houses. A turn to the left from our house and a furlong's walk straight ahead would take us to a spot where few temporary shacks existed and one out of these was managed by a Barua family hailing from Sylhet. They were the suppliers of our daily needs but they had no perishable goods. To the delight of our Sylhet and Chittagong residents, Barua supplied their favourite 'shutki maach too (sun dried fish).
Never have I seen so many Bengali sellers all in a row. Many lungi clads peered mysteriously at us through the light of a dim lantern trying to decipher I think our level of purchasing power. They easily recognised a new face and was very keen to befriend us by entering into a conversation quite aside from buying and selling. I often surmised that the price of fish and vegetables went up and down via the empathy lane. Fishes on one side and vegetables were laid on the opposite, we had a walking gap between them. But what they sold often intrigued me. I did not know Bengali fish range went beyond rui katla ilish and chingri. Here the chhoto maach (small to medium size fish variety) range was quite substantial. The novelty extended to some variety of vegetables too. Some leafy greens I could not identify nor had I seen green figs before. There were a few sellers who sold dry items like puffed and beaten rice, and some hardy sweetmeats and of course, notun gur in the winter season.
These markets provided us mainly with the perishable items, for our grocery we were dependent on the Consumer Cooperative store in the vicinity. I can never forget our meat seller, a fair fat gentleman. He occupied one of the shacks close to the Barua shop. Our purchase was followed by an oral instructions we received about the cuts and joints of the meat and our seller added a recipe to each portion we bought. The other person I feel need a mention was a young thinnish looking chap called Swapan. He tied a small tin trunk at the back of his cycle. In which he carried tasty shingara (Bengali style samosa), which were most likely half the size of samosa that were available in Khan Market. And also not too big rosogolla. These were home delivered by the cook himself
The novelty of residing in a colony that was still growing in size and quality had its own excitement. The grapevine was the local DMS milk booth known as the 'dudher diary' for us Bengalis. Here aged gentlemen at a very early hour would put a stone next to the one in front to legitimise his place in the queue. Gossip flowed freely and sometimes rumours spread faster than the movement of the stone. Often they discussed politics. The topic that excited all and sundry at that point of time happened to be Indira Gandhi's great action of freeing 'Bangla', their 'desh'! The freedom and the birth of Bangladesh was for some of our resident friends a rekindling of hope of a possible retrieving of their erstwhile zamindari. Every other refugee seems to have left behind a substantial piece of land and a mansion in their 'desh'. Many argued the possibility of re-union of the two 'Bangas'. The other topics varied from the rising prices of fishes and vegetables and the inconveniences that residents faced due to lack of facilities.
The colony was developing well within the boundaries of its predefined characterisitcs. And yet it progressed not too well when it came to providing infrastructure facilities. Roads then were narrow, gullies were slim and these were invaded by trucks that were constantly supplying building materials to one or the other house builders. The lamp posts were far and few between. Most evenings they flickered dimly and some even forgot to light up. These made the evenings rather depressing. My tepantorer maath had no light points at all and the beacon light came from the temple spot. On a full moon night a strange glow filled this wilderness but on a new moon night children surely never crossed that path.
The second problem was water scarcity. EPDP/Chittaranjan Park is on the foothills of the Aravalli range. Its terrain is quite undulated. The buildings that were on the higher edge was more troubled for water than those which were at the sloping side. Some pumps were fixed to give a boost to water supply from the low level to the higher level. Often nature did not permit this violation and so punished us with not even a trickle for a day or two at a stretch. The empty buckets stared at the dry taps in vain. We had never learnt to ration water while living in government quarters, but now lessons in this direction we received from our neighbours.
The equally unmanageable problem was the power cuts. On a hot summer afternoon, it was agonising when the fans stopped rotating. Sometimes it would go off in the evenings for hours. Residents from different corners stepped out into the street and walked about aimlessly while chatting with their neighbours. My tepantorer maath looked ghoulishly dark. Sometimes a flicker of light would show up from a passing vehicle leaving a silvery streak behind. Children extended their playtime while adults missed their favourite television programmes. When the lights reappeared the resounding cries,'eshe gecche' could be heard from far and near.
My own problem as a resident related in particular to the lack of transport facility. Traveling to the university side, which was some 25kms away form this place was an arduous task. The buses that plied from Kalkaji skirted this colony and so every day I had to take the treeless path to reach Kalkaji or return via that route on a hot summer afternoon. There were very few three wheelers plying. Besides even fewer out of them would venture to bring me back to the colony on summer afternoons. This was one major deterring factor for continuing my stay in this colony and so leaving my parents behind to face their hopes and despairs of the new lifestyle, I shifted to a hostel in the vicinity of the university. Soon after I became for sometime only a temporary resident.
(This concludes Part 1 of Ms. Majumdar's narration. Keep a watch on this space for Part 2 of her narration at a later date.)
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