Intimate Impressions of the People and the Place: Bengal/Burdwan

When I was a child, books were my window to the world outside. Books take you to places you have never been and show them in different perspectives through the eyes of the writer. The same happened to me about Bengal. I was always fond of reading and soon I took liking for the novels of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. I devoured his books fast, albeit their Hindi translated versions. I found his stories intriguing, most of which were about love and loss, and I was deeply moved with human emotions woven around. His portrayal of relationships was unmatched and his characters, especially women in the plot stood out that you found in any other novels. They were selfless and often deeply in love, and yet they had a strong sense of independence and self-respect. All these stories were set up in villages and towns of Bengal which provided a perfect background setting to the plot.

            This was my first impression of Bengal, the Bengal of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when it was still a pioneer in India and Kolkata was still the capital of the British Raj. I was born and brought up in Uttar Pradesh and stayed there during initial years but I was always fascinated by the mystic land of Bengal.As I grew up, I learned about other icons of Bengal, about the freedom fighters and revolutionaries, about Tagore and his influence on overall culture of this land and many other great things about this land.

            Of places in Bengal, I knew only about Kolkata. The image of Howrah Bridge, Victoria Memorial and Maidan represented this metropolitan. A good number of Bengalis stayed in our town and I often went to visit Durga Puja in Bengali habitations which were celebrated with full enthusiasm. Despite these impressions, I did not get an opportunity to see this place with my own eyes.

            A dream is a dream and when I entered IIT Kanpur from where I did my engineering, the image of this place was not so perfect in my mind. I had started following national affairs with keen interest and the outside world was not very kind toWest Bengal. The place had earned a bad name due to bandhs/strikes when all life came to standstill. There were horror stories of how trains were kept standing at the same place for hours and hours and there were kids playing cricket on otherwise busy Howrah Bridge and Kolkata by lanes. The globalisation was taking States of India on road to development and it appeared that West Bengal was not moving with the same pace as rest of India was. It was known as a place where development had come to a grinding halt. Kolkata had long lost its place to Bombay in being the economical capital of India. As a person who was in a way infatuated with the past image of Bengal, I felt sad.

            After passing out from IIT Kanpur I started working at a multinational firm. The pay package was fine but soon I got disenchanted with lack of motivation to excel in private sector. I wanted to create a difference, howsoever small and soon it was clear that private sector is not a place for that. I decided to take Indian Administrative Service (IAS) exam.    I worked very hard and finally got selected in this exam.Officers in IAS are allocated states (cadres) where they are supposed towork for rest of their lives. In a way, the cadres allocated become their actual homeswhere most of the officers end up spending rest of their lives. As fate would have it, I was allocated West Bengal cadre!

            West Bengal had a pretty bad name as a cadre and our colleagues made fun of us for being allocated to West Bengal. There were hundreds of stories of gloom and West Bengal was a place where officers were not allowed to do any work. It also had a name for having the worst work culture, where drivers threw key on your face at 5’o clock in the evening and no one listened to you or worked. There was fear of impending gloom in our lives.

            I started my training at Administrative Training Institute Kolkata. Infrastructure here needed improvement, Ambassador Taxis gave an impression of an era gone by but, somehow, I did not feel bad. All this had a kind of old world charm, a world where many things other than money also mattered in life. This place had a flavour of its own and I went along. Of the various things told about West Bengal, I still remember what was told to us about the uniqueness of Bengal. India is primarily a landmass that stretch from Himalayas range in North till the sea in South and only West Bengal had distinction of having both,the Himalayas and the sea.

            My district training was at Bankura and this was my first interaction with Bengal. Bankura stint is personally dear to me as I got married here and also, we set up our first independent house at Raipur block when I held the charge of BDO for four months. The place was Maoist infested, underdeveloped and no one spoke a word that was not in Bengali. I picked up Bengali faster than my batch mates because there was no other alternative to survive in this place. In this place, I learnt the indispensability of mosquito net. Our private joke was that without a mosquito net, if you do not fall prey to malaria, you can be sure of anaemia at least. Snakes were another common feature of this place that came and went by. They had more claim on that compound than we had.And then, there was these millions and millions of ants who appeared unannounced, made large black patters on the wall and vanished as fast as they had arrived.

Life was different but people there ensured that we had no discomfort. They took extra effort to get whatever we needed. When I got my farewell there, I found people crying, and there was a lump in my throat, something that I have not been able to avoid in all subsequent farewells. This was the place that turned me into an officer from a young inexperienced trainee.

            After that, my first posting as an SDO was at Alipurduar. North Bengal is beautiful beyond words and I had to  travel to Jalpaigudi that was the then district headquarter from Alipurduar and in that three-hour road journey, lovely mountain ranges of Bhutan  accompanied me on the highway. Some days, we could spot wild elephants on the road and they would disappear as discreetly as they had arrived. SDO Alipurduar had a beautiful bungalow with a lovely balcony. When it rained, it poured for days on and on and we just sat there and watched the incessant rains. During nights, the entire garden was lit up by thousands of fireflies and one has to witness it to believe how majestic it looks.

            My next five years were spent in Kolkata in three different stints and I totally fell in love with that city. Kolkata grows upon you and once have stayed there for long enough, you find it hard to adjust to any other place. Now, I can appreciate why Kolkatans find it hard to work in any other city. Kolkata was also the place where I started enjoying the cultural life of Bengal. I got introduced to plays that took place in different auditoriums of Kolkata. I watched the likes of Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Raval and Anupam Kher perform. The majestic beauty of listening to Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma on the banks of Hoogly at Princep Ghat is a memory that we will cherish for a lifetime. I also witnessed cricket matches at the famed Eden Gardens. Eating out on Park street and visiting the Oxford book store were always our favourite past times.

            In IAS, the most prominent job that one gets is that of a District Magistrate and I got my first posting at Darjeeling.It is and has always been a complicated place but not many hill stations in our country can claim to be as beautiful as Darjeeling. I had stayed at Mussoorie before during our IAS training but I found Darjeeling much more beautiful that it. All our weekends, we had an option to stay out at any exotic location and each place turned out to be more beautiful that all that we had previously seen. I was fortunate that Darjeeling remained peaceful during my tenure and we could enjoy the place and its beauty. Some of the tea garden bungalows we stayed at turned out to be more beautiful places that the best five-star hotels I had seen.

During my stint, Kalimpong district was carved out of Darjeeling and after nearly two years, I was posted as District Magistrate of Burdwan district. Again, I had to bifurcate Burdwan, into Purba Bardhaman and Paschim Bardhaman and till date I hold the distinction of being the only District Magistrate to have bifurcated two districts.

My posting is Burdwan was sort of my coming back to the real Bengal. Burdwan always had a prominent place in West Bengal. This place has lush green fields spread across the district. Three major rivers, Damodar, Bhagirathi and Ajoy flow across it and keep the land fertile. The place has excellent rail connectivity and is a prominent town on Grand Trunk Road. It has everything that any perfect human habitation needed; fertile land, water source, moderate climate and good connectivity. It has rich culture and history and this place was the perfect rural setting of Bengal that I had read about in the novels of Sarat Chandra and Tagore.

            After bifurcation of Burdwan, Purba Bardhaman became primarily an agricultural district with a rich cultural heritage. This place still is the rice bowl of West Bengal and out of the total paddy procurement of the state, Purba Bardhaman supplies major share. Farmers of Burdwan owing to the fertility of land, unlike that of many other places are comparatively well to do. Burdwan town is big enough to have all modern amenities yet it has a flavour of small countryside towns. Burdwan Raj, ruled by efficient Mahtabs, had a major contribution in the development of this place and their insignia and other symbols are still present all over the place. Till today, Curzon Gate built by the Mahtab’s is the most recognised symbol of Burdwan town. Burdwan Raj also took special interest in education and Raj college is one of the oldest colleges of Burdwan. Burdwan University has been set up on the buildings and land donated by them.

Another distinct feature of this place is fame of its sweets. People all across India know about sweets of Burdwan and this time when I went back to my hometown Kanpur, everyone demanded sweets from this place. Mihidana of Burdwan has already acquired Geographical Indiactor(GI) tag and soon Sitabhog and Langchawhich are other specialities of this place should acquire the same. In UP, there are some wonderful sweets but back here, sweets are less heavy, have less sugar and yet they taste better. This is probably the speciality of sweets of this place. I have stopped consuming ‘Chena’ back home as my standards have been significantly enhanced.

After a long time, I stayed over at Durga Pujo and I witnessed the festivities closely for the first time. It would be injustice to this place if I do not describe it. DurgaPujo or let me be correct technically, Pujo is an event that Bengalis wait for entire year. A year can be divided in two parts, ten-twelve days of Pujo and other days which lead to it. All events are described if they happened before Pujo or after. If you realise that crowds have multiplied many times in the market, it is taking infinitely long time for the tailor to stich your suit and queue at the hairdresser has increased, Pujo is at doorsteps. 

 Human creativity can be seen at best during Pujo. Every year you get amazed by the creativity of Pujo pandals and the world they capture in it, and again next time year you find pandals have surpassed what they achieved a year ago. Somewhere there are Angkorvat temples, at other place kingdom of Mahismati from Bahubali movie has been created and at another pandal you are inside an aquarium with beautiful aquatic animals surrounding you.

More than the pandal, you get impressed by the Durga idol, or Thakur. One has to love goddess from all heart to imagine her in various moods/colours. The innovativeness of Thakur has to be seen by one’s own eyes to be believed. People wait in queue for hours to visit these pandals and the city comes to life for the whole night. 

The uniqueness of the Pujo also lies in the fact that it is festival that you celebrate with community. Lakhs of small neighbourhood Pujos are celebrated and you see the spirit of community in it. For days, everyone eats together from a common kitchen. For many it may come as a surprise that fish and meat often form a part of the Bhog, which is a complete meal in itself and occasional boozing is not frowned upon. Women of the family manage Kitchen and organise events/competitions and kids have a blast. Men sit together chit chatting, watching and coordinating and there is dance and music all around. Bengalis are also rich culturally and Pujo festivities is a reminder to that. Everyone can either sing, dance or recite. People of all religion staying in the neighbourhood participate in the Pujo and join hands in organising it.

If you still find it difficult to get a feel of it, imagine a wedding of your close relative where all of your friends and family gather. You meet people with whom you grew up and catch up with everything that happened during this time. Women of the house dress in their best clothes and jewellery and kids run riot with distant cousins. Entire neighbourhood becomes a big family during that time and those three four days are complete bliss to be remembered for a lifetime. Now swallow it, Bengalis get to celebrate that same wedding every single year. 

Bengali women are more liberated than their counterparts in many other parts of the country and you can sense it with their involvement in Pujo. They look stunning in their sarees which they drape with élan and elegance. Everyone is in their best dresses and people get different new attires for different days. After Pujos, it is an uphill task for many to back to their mundane lives, something of the sort that we felt when schools opened after summer holidays. I never thought that Pujas of this magnitude would take place in Burdwan town and I fortunate that I was here during Puja festivities.

Various other developmental activities have been planned in and around Burdwan. A new Rail Over Bridge is coming up near Railway station that will significantly reduce the congestion of Burdwan town.Many road widening projects are being taken up out of which GT road widening in the town is worth mentioning.Mati Tirtha has been developed at Mati Mela ground by the government and every year and aseven-day long Mati Mela is organisedat this place. During this period, award winning farmers from entire state are felicitated from this place. To promote unique sweets, a Misti Hub has been constructed.

Government is also giving a lot of thrust on development of Tourism. This place is full of historical importance and various historical buildings are being renovated and made accessible to the tourists. Watching birds in country boats at ‘Chupi’ lake at Purbastahali would compete even with Dal Lake of Kashmir. This place has immense potential for religious tourism as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had strong connection with this place and temples relating to this sect are spread all across.

Such developmental activities are being taken up not only in Burdwan but across West Bengal. The plan expenditure of the State Government has multiplied by almost four times during the last six years. Various new schemes like Kanyashree, SaboojSaathi, Shiksha Sree etc have bene launched by the Government. All this has resulted in significant socio-economic development and West Bengal has again found its feet back on development. In almost all centrally sponsored government schemes, West Bengal is doing much better that most other states.

Having been in this place for last ten years, I not repented being here for a single day. There is something in the people; there is something in this land which I still find mesmerising. In fact, I now feel more at home in West Bengal than in my home state UP. I feel both Burdwan and West Bengal are places where a lot of potential still exists and once it is utilized, these places will be no less than any other place in the world. Well begun is half done and last six years have proved it.

 I might not have been born in this place but whenever I think about this land, I am reminded of these lines by Dwijendralal Ray:

ধন ধান্য পুষ্প ভরা, আমাদের এই বসুন্ধরা,
তাহার মাঝে আছে দেশ এক সকল দেশের সেরা,
ওসে স্বপ্ন দিয়ে তৈরী সেদেশ স্মৃতি দিয়ে ঘেরা।
এমন দেশটি কোথাও খুঁজে পাবে নাকো তুমি,
সকল দেশের রানী সেযে আমার জন্মভূমি,

Fields of golden grains, meadows of fragrant flowers,

Two delights from earth of her many natural treasures,

Nestled within is a place divine set far above all measures,

Created from dreams anchored by memories,

Nowhere else a place of such luminous glories,

This the Queen of all lands on earth,

This the land of my birth, the hallowed land of my birth,