A Labour of Love Parameswaran Thankappan Nair – Calcutta’s Best Known Historian & Chronicler

Joydip Sur

PT Nair’s fascination for Calcutta began in the early 1950s, right from the day he arrived in the city after traversing a great distance from Manjapra village in Kerala. He travelled ticket less and came to this big, unknown, city all alone, having only an address of a person he knew from his village. And there he was at Howrah station, penniless and without a roof over his head; but Calcutta, nevertheless, gave him shelter and provided sustenance.

Initially, Nair’s typewriting skills helped him eke out a living as a stenotypist and he worked in almost half–a-dozen commercial firms. Nair’s earnings jumped from Rs 125 to a princely sum of Rs 300 when he joined the Anthropological Survey of India in 1957 and was posted at Shillong. Later he studied history at St Anthony’s College at Shillong, a training which helped him to pursue his passion.

The city beckons…
A few years later, however, Nair returned to Calcutta (in 1965) and took up a job as a journalist in a little known journal called Engineering Times. But he quit his job altogether in 1981 to pursue his first love—Calcutta. By this time the city had cast its spell on him. Despite being a stranger Calcutta sustained him and he too, wanted to give something back to the city. It is this commitment that has fuelled his zeal to unearth the deep secrets close to its heart, its rich and glorious past and kept him going till his very ripe age.

A Passion to rake up the past…
It had not been an easy task; for almost four decades he has walked through each and every street, the lanes and bylanes of Calcutta scouting for materials and then going over scores of documents, journals, books and other sources to glean the past and unravel the mysteries. And the list of interests is endless; it includes everything associated with the city between 17 and 19 centuries – its streets, hotels and taverns, nomenclature, municipality, courts, heritage buildings and even the fourth estate.

Nair has been really meticulous in his research and have written on subjects that no one even dared to contemplate upon.  He intended to share his findings with those who love the city the way he did. He hoped that Calcuttans will benefit from the work he has done over the years, dedicating his entire life to the task.

For the love of Calcutta…
Nair’s painstaking research on Calcutta has been compiled into more than 50 books. But despite researching on the city for so many years, Calcutta has remained an enigma to Nair and of course, his first love, till his very last days.