Olden times(Dacca)

Old parts of Dacca was were once history had been made. The Lalbagh fort standing in its majestic aura, still red and grand as it was meant to be. Built in the 17^th century, said to be incomplete, it had lavish gardens and fountains, water channels, a Turkish bath, a mosque and importantly the mausoleum of Pari Bibi, the daughter of Shaista Khan. After her death the fort was somehow considered ominous. The fort had seen revolutions, revolutions of the British Raj mutineers, failed mutineers later publicly hanged in the once Victoria Park. Mighty days the fort once had seen, now just stands still only to welcome visitors, who can only be in awe of its magnificence.

 The old Dacca was much different than the much more lavish and newer part. The roads and streets were smaller, all intertwined into a massive complicated web. Someone who was new to the area would easily get lost, even memorizing ones path was not enough, one would only go in circles and get ‘more lost’ so as to speak. The buildings where all close together, cramped without any consideration to space. People rarely had courtyards or gardens. In some cases, un-identical neighbouring buildings shared the same walls, like terraced houses. Even second story verandas hovered over the narrow street beneath. If residents couldn’t extend their property out of their boundaries on land, it became no problem extending it in mid air. When light entered into one of these buildings it never came out. A lot of the houses had beautiful decorations on them, decorations that resembled Mughal design and architecture. On others, decorations were mostly of deer’s, birds, flowers and even senseless emblems. Old building could always be seen, some hundreds of years old, on the verge of collapsing. An earthquake could probably be the most devastating thing that could possibly happen to an area such as this. These were not slums, it couldn’t be. It was a known fact that a lot of the richest business-men of the city and even in the entire nation that had lived in these parts, congested and unsafe. Among buildings whose status can be compared to ruins. No one knew if these people were in love and in nostalgia that they refused to leave or were they just simply misers.   

 People here lived dynamic lives, always something happening to someone and the whole community getting involved. Tea-stalls playing Hindi songs loudly, common local rascal’s playing cards and teasing girls passing by, problems they were. But an integral part in creating the scenario that unfolds in front of a new-comers eye. In one stall, a popular song  from the film Muglai Azam, played on repeat. Pyar kiya to darna kya......: I loved, why be afraid, a meaning close to that. The privacy in the lives of the inhabitants was always at stake, the close and tight quarters ensured the spread of people’s secrecy. No one seemed to mind anything of it. Everybody probably had dirt on everyone else. A system had prevailed and it kept people close and in love with their neighbours. If someone in one house had constipation, he or she can be sure someone in the next house would know of it, knowledge gained intentionally or unintentionally, it wouldn’t matter.  Residents spoke a different dialect, a highly accented Bengali with a slight mixture of Urdu, a linguistic habit picked up due to the influx of Muslims from all around the Indian subcontinent that started from the Mughal period till now.

A drainage system was nearly absent, only half-foot wide and half-foot deep gutters that ran across one side of the lanes. If it rained, it flooded the entire area. Most houses had a concrete barrier lining their front door to keep the dirty water away. All the water unable to escape mixed with the clogged drain mixture full of dirt, urine, human and animal faeces, domestic refuse and so on; a foul mixture. It even smelt peculiar in the dry season. On one side is the ever-growing metropolis and on the other side was the old polluted river, on which the cities rubbish was being dumped on, it was Buriganga.  The river two hundred years ago went by the fort, but now it flows a mile away.

In all of this, the old part of Dacca was famous for something, its culinary culture. Rich cuisine influenced by the Mughal and the local sultanate that once existed hundreds of years ago. The age-old restaurants and eateries made Dhakai Bakarkhani, Kacchi Biriyani, and varieties of Kebabs, Halim, Meat, Shahi Paulav and so many other foods that had their own speciality. People from the edges of the city travelled for hours to eat the food of these restaurants. Foods that guaranteed the cholesterol, diabetes and heart disease level of the city remained at its all time high. It was what they created were what the cities gastronomic traditions were all about.

Dacca in all her richness had such variety. She had housed many foreigners from the time of her birth some three and a half centuries ago. Armenitola, where the Armenians traded and lived, stood an Armenian church. Forashganj was the colony populated by the French, Forashi meant French. The British? Well, they once lived everywhere. Near the Armenian clubhouse was Victoria Park, named after the once ruling dear old Queen ‘Vicky’, later renamed Bahadur Shah Park, after Khan Bahadur Shah, the last Mughal Emperor. The park now just sits idle facing the St. Thomas Church. Nothing interesting happens there anymore. The race course sits idle now too, no more horse races, no more; the Europeans had left, left a long time ago. The Race Course that once had English women in their Sunday hats clapping for the race jockeys zooming past is being awakened once again by the political gatherings of the ‘black coats’. From Gulshan on the North-east, Dhanmondi, on the east of the city, area such as those where the posh dwelt, where streets were cleaner and tidier, foreigners and high commissioner bungalows and offices scattered around the residential areas to the high street of Kawran Bazaar, Farmgate, Azimpur and of places where the cities middle class lived and to the outright slums near Mirpur, Dacca was buzzing with variety. The sights and smell never being the same; always changing, Dacca was always changing. A lot of their residents seldom travelled to the dirty underbelly of the slums, red-light districts and or even to the majestic-crowded-old city. In These parts where nobody ate fast food or Chinese, no Catholic girl’s school played softball, parts where nobody danced to Elvis’s beats in their long-playing records, where nobody wore high-fashioned jeans trousers, discussed Samuel Beckett’s plays, or drank foreign Brandy.

Dacca was like an evergreen woman growing old, who has started to show signs of ageing, wrinkles and decay. This decay was from pressure of housing the 'Bongs' migrating into her nipple, nipple situated in a breast of Mother Bengal. Among her two daughters, Calcutta was more British, for it being the former ‘capital’ of the British Raj, even more open and foreign with its cabaret-style nightlife of Parkstreet, where the middle-class Babu’s ran the show, with their love for coffee-houses and communism. Whereas the other daughter Dacca, well, she was desperately trying to hold back what it had centuries ago, her tradition, her inherited ‘Mughalness’, her conservative children fighting an undying battle with her newly-improved-liberal children. The newly improved children, was slowly gaining momentum with their big word ideologies and university fed social theories. Slowly Dacca was rising up to her modernity shared by her sister nursing on the breast on her west.                

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    Nirjhor Barua 27/12/2011

last time modified: April 18, 2012, 2:26 a.m.