Khalasitola

Anindita Mazumder

Britannia once ruled the waves, not by her own sons only but also those from Indian sands. Apart from voyages to the English shores opium and cotton pieces were shipped to Canton via Calcutta on ‘country ships’ officered by Europeans and manned by Indian lascars. Though the navigation laws of 1660 stipulated that the Company must recruit ethnically British crew at least two third in number during trips from Britain but number of Indian lascars increased as they either fell sick or died during return journeys to England. Ships from Britain and other parts of the world came to Outram Ghat or Babughat and unloaded passengers and goods.

Khalasis are a group of people employed at ports and dockyards. Originally, an Arabic word it refers to dockyard worker, lascar or sailor. Since Hindus lost their caste if they went to the sea most of the lot were drawn from Bengali Muslims from Chittagong and Noakhali. In Calcutta, Khalasitola was once the quarters occupied by the khalasis or native lascars. A.K. Ray’s “A Short History of Calcutta Town and Suburbs” mentioned Khalasitola as an area inhabited by khalasis or lascars after the Company ordered segregation of the quarters of its workforce.  Ramanath Das, a pioneer who drew a map of Calcutta (Kolkata r manchhitra) with places marked in Bengali, publishing it in 1884, clearly indicated Khalasitola as an area lying between Janbazar and Taltala. Even neighbouring Taltala, writes the chronicler of Calcutta, HEA Cotton, was chiefly peopled by “Mohmedan khalassies and lascars.”

Once the docks shifted to Khidderpore, the red light areas and country liquor dens too shifted to that area. Hence Khalasitola Road is found in Khidderpore area near King George’s Terrace. Though Khalasitola disappeared with the ravages of time it has been immortalised in the history of Bengali literature by a country liquor shop located at the crossing of S.N. Banerjee and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road.

Old timers say there was a huge quarters for khalasis right at the place where the Telephone Exchange Building stands today. The watering hole apparently derived its name from the locality. However, Khalasitola earned its name as a “Bangla mod er thek” since it was frequented by noted litterateur, Kamal Kumar Majumdar known for his distinctive prose-style. Known to prefer only country liquor he would be “profound and profane” only after a spree. In late fifties, sixties and seventies the new breed of poets and intellectuals questioned the existing norms of being bhadralok and frequented this den where there was hardly any distinction between the more cerebral and the so called ‘chotolok’- the daily wage earners who would be rubbing shoulders with the budding poets and litterateurs on wobbly benches and stained roughly hewn floor. Little magazines like Krittibas were the outcome of this cerebral exercise which included noted litterateurs and poets, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Shakti Chattopadhyay. Sandipan Chattopadhyay once wrote that Khalasitola was baptised by them as ‘Katie’. Anti-establishment and avant garde writers frequenting the place referred to themselves as khalasis.