Sahibpara

Anindita Mazumder

Job Charnock had landed at Sutanuti but the British over the next two centuries gradually moved south, first around the ‘white town’ near the old fort and then to further south around Chowringhee and Park Street, once the new fort came up along with the Maidan.

The area between Chowringhee Road, Park Street, Theatre Road and Wood Street with its preponderance of well-off Europeans residences was known as Sahibpara. Even in late 18th Century the area around Chowringhee was considered to be out of town though well-off Britishers had begun building their garden houses in the area. Park Street, still the “Road to the Burial Ground” had Asiatic Society, the house of Elijah Impey and a sprawling deer park and the road owed its name to the last.

According to old maps of Calcutta, Chowringhee was a locality. Later the thoroughfare which Holwell described as “the road to Colleghot” lying south of Dhurramtolla and running till Circular Road, came to be called Chowringhee Road.  A “noble road”, according to Henry Cotton, nearly two miles long and eighty feet broad with “the eastern side lined by handsome houses, facing the fine grassy Maidan which lies between them and the river. They are generally ornamented with spacious verandahs to the south, that being the quarter from which, in hot weather, the cool evening breeze blows.” Park Street and the districts south to it were almost entirely inhabited by Europeans containing some of the best residences in the city. After 1850s particularly, the area saw clearing away of slums like Bamun Bustee to make way for roads and tree line avenues, boulevards and salubrious squares.

Judges of Supreme Court, Bishop Heber and other company officials resided in and around Park Street and Chowringhee. Wood Street was home to ’Hindoo’ Stuart, looked down with contempt for his pagan ways by his neighbours in Sahibpara.

Fanny Parkes who visited between 1822 and 1828 found beautiful, detached houses with surrounding gardens in the Chowringhee area lying on the left of Governor House. The houses with pillars on the façade and long verandahs gave an appearance of pleasant sombreness. The architecture made the indoors cooler in summer. To Parkes the exterior appeared to be made of stone. Much of the lottery money went into beautifying the area and its distinction from the rest of the city can be surmised from Mayor Subhas Chandra Bose’s comment that they did not intend to turn Chowringhee to Ahiritolla but extend civic amenities elsewhere.

Obviously, the rent was quite high and even unfurnished ones would cost between Rs 300 and Rs 325 and for larger houses it would go up to Rs 400 and Rs 500. Fanny Parkes had to shell out Rs 325 as rent for a house at Chowringhee.

Inside, there would be a huge retinue of servants and even a modest advocate would have no less than 63 in his family. They would shave him, cut his finger nails, wash him, arrange his clothes, serve him breakfast or chota hajira, provide a wash bowl and run before his palanquin or carriage when he left for work. Sometimes two or three would be doing the same work though wages were quite cheap.

Fifty years later, young William Hunter, a new recruit in civil service wrote “Imagine everything that is glorious in nature combined with all that is beautiful in architecture and you can faintly picture what Calcutta is”. Settling down at a boarding house in Middleton Row his description allows us to get a glimpse of the social life of sahibs. Writing to his fiancée back home, Hunter said social visits would take place between 11.30 am and one since no one would receive a visitor after two – the time for tiffin followed by a nap – only to reappear on the Course between five and six. “All my friends live in and around Chowringhee and my house is in the very centre of that fashionable quarter so that with the aid of my quick paced mare I can make six or eight visits in one and a half hours”.

And what would tiffin entail?  “Soup, two or three kinds of meat with an immense heap of curry, no end of fruit, with beer and sherry ad lib” and dinner which lasted from 7.30 till nearly midnight would include rice pudding with champagne. Young bachelors would play cricket for hours in the burning sun and ‘a wild game of loo’ till two in the night. When Mohun Bagan won the shield in 1911 Sahibpara was only part of Calcutta that remained in dark that night.

Christmas was definitely the most important and colourful celebrations in Sahibpara. On that day servants would decorate the house with flowers and lanterns and the tradition of putting up Christmas decorations on Park Street dates back to these days.

Servants would bring in cakes, sweets and other gifts, expecting a hefty bakshis in return. Well off natives would bring in presents in “dollies” or baskets and leave them outside their homes filled with fruits, chicken, ducks and drinks, such as sherry and brandy. Fanny Parkes had once received gifts which included a sketch of William Bentinck, a bag of walnuts, diamond ring, shawls from Kashmir and bottles of quality honey. On Baradin there was also a badakhana or dinner followed by ball dance or fancy dress at the Governor’s house. Surprisingly, despite a number of churches and the Cathedral hardly anything has been written about religious services. Instead the visitors recorded their experience at balls, fancy dress party for which dresses were procured from Paris, London and Madrid, races at Barrackpore and boat trips.

Playhouses were another key element of entertainment and at the corner of the Chowringhee Road and Theatre Road was the Theatre of Calcutta where the noted actress, Mrs Leach performed before it was burnt down.

Initially, there were Mutton Clubs, Cheese or Beefsteak Clubs and then came the social clubs, among which Bengal Club was the elitist of all. With the shifting of the white town to Chowringhee-Park Street, Free Mason’s Lodge and Bengal Club shifted base. In 1918, Firpo’s Restaurant was opened with jazz band, Louis Quinze styled furniture and well lit indoors and even conservatives in the British Society succumbed to its lure and entertained guests there instead of their huge Georgian houses. Cocktail parties became fashionable.

After war, the huge houses were difficult to run as wages of servants went up and flats with electric fans and running water became fashionable, so different from the dignified seclusion of the dwellings of past era. Armenian tycoons, like Arratoon Stephen and JC Galstaun responded to the need with beautiful edifices such as Galstaun Mansions and Stephen Court.

In the first half of the 20th Century, Calcutta lost its status of capital city, followed by Partition and onslaught of refugees; the Sahibs returned home and Anglo-Indians, Armenian population also migrated and the economic capital shifted to Bombay. Still Firpo’s, Grand Hotel’s Prince,  Trinca’s, Blue Fox, Sky Room, Moulin Rouge and Mocambo held on to Eurasian master chefs left behind by the Sahibs who served delightful gourmet along with jazz bands and crooners belting out foot tapping music and danseurs executing graceful twirls. But the political uncertainties, unionism made many of them down their shutters leaving the Sahibpara derelict forever.