Gole Bazaar 1960s - Railway Gardens

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After the Mughal Empire and then the British Empire vanished like so many flakes of snow, there is only one Empire surviving here: Indian Railways. For, it is a Central Government monolith crisscrossing the entire country and uniting it, sort of. It has resisted all talk of privatization. And the Ministry of Railways is a coveted portfolio sought after by as diverse persona as Lalu and Didi. It has its Colonial Romance intact, including the Coal Mafia and Wagon-Breakia. Yet they are as much part of its body politic as our own wisdom teeth and appendix...

The quaint charm of trains didn't escape great artists like Mark Twain and Satyajit Ray. My best moments have always been associated with trains...not that I got my bride on a train journey as I hear many do nowadays...but, having to travel days on end alone between Gudur and KGP, those were the hours of woolgathering and settling many pending issues of life and, yes, death...as the train chugged through Palasa and passed within arm's length of Chilka Lake.

I haven't traveled in a ship on high seas...which is said to be the most boring thing...although C V Raman and his nephew S Chandrasekhar settled many path-breaking issues of Physics while on the high seas. But I did travel for a couple of hours each by Indian Airlines, Jet Airways, Kingfisher (now less of a King and more like fishy) and IndiGo. Well, it is most boring...no landmarks at all. I wonder how my son travels 15 hours at a stretch on his Trans-Atlantic flights...he says he sleeps.

For one like me who lived in a Railway Town like KGP for all those decades, the Railways sort of rub off. And to add fuel to the fire, my wife hails from a Railways Family and to hear her talk on the wedding night of all those charming towns called Wardha, Manmad, Bhusaval and Jalgaon added to the romance (not to speak of the kachoris of Shegaon...they are real good). And when my friend in the Army Medical Corps talked of the Kamrup Express passing through Duliajan and Tinsukhia, they sounded like Timbuktu and Tipperary.

When I was 8 my eldest cousin posted at Calcutta and working in the GSI spoke of Kalka Mail as the fastest in the country. I thought he was bluffing and boasting. But the other day the great Sunanda Datta-Ray (of my Statesman years) wrote nostalgically about his father taking him along in the Kalka Mail...I knew its grandeur was something unparalleled by today's Rajdhanis and Palaces on Wheels.

Well, since money was never a problem with Indian Railways (the GoI prints it), there was this fabulous Railway Gardens on a loop line from IIT to Gole Bazaar. I recall taking my son there in the front basket of my pushbike on our winter picnics. Huge place full of all kinds of winter flowers tended with love and care by an old gardener who became our friend. I don't know if it survives still.

On our way there, we cross so many red-bricked mansions of the Colonial Raj. The British knew how to live in this sun-baked subcontinent. Those bungalows had super-high sloping ceilings and a verandah that runs all the way 270 degrees arc in front of it. I was inside one of them once and it was awe-inspiring.

At our own IIT, there is this Old Building which housed our freedom fighters of the Hijli Jail, with its cells, single, double and solitary...I taught Electrodynamics for third years in one of those cells much later. Apart from it, there was only one Raj Building which was the mansion of the Jailer and his family. This was converted into our Faculty Club during my heydays where I read Time and Newsweek, played TT, Carroms, and Tambola. This building was later annexed by the KV School, and last I saw, it was teeming with kids...the Jailor's soul blessing them.

Every Director of IIT KGP left his mark. S R Sengupta with all those PAN Halls which, with their huge verandahs looked so cool. Brigadier Bose erected the OAT, now TOAT after Tagore, but we used to call it BOAT after Brig Bose. He also cleared the jungle within the Main Building as you entered the Main Gate and got most species of roses planted there and tended them. We used to call it the Bose Garden. Shankar Lal built the famous Technology Guest House as an Annexe to his Director's Bungalow. GSS wanted a clone of the Powai Lake and refurbished the Gymkhana Lake with a Mini-Howrah Bridge spanning the lake into the greenery which he converted into a mini-zoo housing several species of birds. KLC laid the Bypass Road and converted the Old Building Ground Floor into the Nehru Museum. AB brought his IITK ideas and implanted them as the fabulous Vikramsila-Takhasila Complex where I taught the Jumbo Physics Class in my last semester at IIT. Rest is silence as far as my ignorance goes...

Well, I love gardens; provided someone else lays and maintains them...they are such a headache.

Hyderabad has its Public Gardens like Delhi has its Mughal thing. Bangalore used to be called the City of Gardens before the IT Revolution.

Everything has its flip side as Jerome put it when the mom-in-law died but they came down for the funeral expenses.

Every City of Gardens has its curse...it is called Asthma. Several of my friends had to quit Bangalore on account of it; and KGP as well...



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