MEMORY'S OASIS

REMEMBRANCES OF GROWING UP IN SEALDAH RAILWAY OFFICERS COLONY IN KOLKATA

- DR MADHURA BANDYOPADHYAY

IF YOU EVER VISIT THE concrete jungle around Sealdah station in Kolkata, you will see swarms of people packed into the roads moving in streams under a roaring monster of a flyover, a sea of heads making little eddies around stationery hawkers standing beside their tarpaulin-covered stalls, while street mongrels sleep in supreme nonchalance beside open dumpsters. You may sidestep a few slippery banana peels or small mounds of peanut shells until you make your way down A.J.C. Bose Road to the entrance of Kaiser Street. Once you pass the archway that signals the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) building and past the thin guy selling mixed chanachur, roasted in hot sand in an iron kadhai over a fire, you will enter the gates of the green oasis that is Sealdah Railway Officers Colony.

When we were growing up in the 1980s, this walled space presented a big contrast to the surrounding north and central Kolkata. The road inside was tree-lined with green spaces between five buildings. When afternoon kalbaishakhis (norwesters) cooled hot summer days, we kids rushed out onto the green grass to collect buds of fallen Krishnachura flowers. We sat underneath those shady trees, opened up green buds to reveal red, half-formed petals. We stuck them on our fingers, like long nails, before we were ever aware of manicures. Later, we would dig up some mud, make tiny bowls of clay, dry them in the sun and play rannabati, role-playing household chores until a strict mom would send the bungalow peon’s wife to call us back.