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Preserving the Past: The Surviving Legacy of British Architecture in Kolkata

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Preserving the Past: The Surviving Legacy of British Architecture in Kolkata

~By Denis D. Gray (Associated Press)

The British left footprints across their far-flung colonial empire from Toronto to Yangon. But nowhere is there as vast and varied a collection of heritage architecture than in Kolkata.

Thousands of buildings — including homes, churches, palaces and even synagogues — survive here from the days of the Raj, when Britain ruled India.

This marvelously exuberant, maddeningly chaotic city began as a small trading post in the 1690s, rose to become the seat of British power and now ranks as India’s third largest city, a megalopolis of some 15 million people.

Unlike countries which opted to eradicate the physical legacies of colonialism, India has accepted them as witnesses to history. The prime eradicator of Kolkata’s past has not been politics but those whom preservationists call “land sharks,” developers against whom they wage a sometimes winning, sometimes losing battle.

To dip into Kolkata’s bygone era, my wife and I stayed at the Oberoi Grand Hotel, took afternoon tea at the still oh-so-English Bengal Club and best of all signed up for a guided walk around Dalhousie Square, the onetime epicenter of the British Raj.

Dating back to the late 1880s, the Grande Dame of Calcutta, as the Oberoi and Kolkata were earlier known, was the social hub of the colonial city. During World War II, it was party time headquarters for American soldiers. Today the hotel is an oasis of tranquility amid the surrounding vibrant street life, offering palm-shaded courtyards, Victorian four-poster beds and service which viceroys would find hard to fault.

The Bengal Club, another enduring social fixture, has been catering to elites since 1827, and the lovely premise strives to keep the modern world at bay. One may forget it is 2018 while sipping tea in a politely hushed room named after the prominent 18th century British painter Joshua Reynolds, one of whose works hangs on its pastel yellow walls. The colonials also tried to shut out a dramatically changing India: Incredibly, the club only opened its doors to Indians in 1959 — 12 years after independence was won.

“‘It was from here that 200 British officers ruled over 200 million Indians,” remarked our guide Ramanuj Ghosh, pointing to what is now the 133-room home of the state governor, where British viceroys resided during most of the decades when Kolkata served as India’s capital. Modeled on a stately home in England, it was encased in 6 acres of lush gardens and built in the Gregorian style.

What soon became obvious on our walk, even to an untrained eye, was the incredible architectural melange. The Victoria Memorial, the city’s most imposing colonial structure, is described as designed in “the Indo-Saracenic revivalist style which uses a mixture of British and Moghul elements with Venetian, Egyptian, Decanni and Islamic architectural influences.” Dedicated to the memory of Queen Victoria, its vast art and artifact collections include her childhood piano and a writing desk.

Our four-hour stroll through several centuries of history took us past the 1868 post office and the Royal Insurance Building, still busy today, where British officials would ride their horses right up to their desks. At the vast Writer’s Building, India’s still notorious bureaucracy administered a population which also included Greeks, the Dutch, Armenians and others.

Kolkata once was also home to some 6,000 Jews, though there are just a handful living here today descended from the Jews who settled here in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The city’s oldest, now restored synagogue Neveh Shalome dates back to 1831.

Most of the buildings we saw are about on a protected heritage list. But many others are decaying or have been razed.

“Indian people want to preserve the past. We don’t easily make way for the new, but powerful market forces are working against this,” says Bonani Kakkar, who heads People United for Better Living in Calcutta, an environmental and preservation group.

Developers, she says, approach owners of dilapidated homes, offer them new condos in exchange and then take them down to build high-rises. The solution, she believes, is to either “make people boast that they live in old buildings” or to bring them to life again by turning them into B&Bs, art galleries and music venues.

Philip Davies, an authority on colonial architecture, notes that there are more heritage buildings in this city than all of the United States, but that Kolkata is a “sleeping giant at the crossroads.”

“It is stumbling toward the future rather than grasping the spectacular opportunities afforded by its heritage,” he said. “Its unparalleled heritage is crumbling from neglect, and falling prey to random, speculative development.” But he hopes a brave new vision will save one of the world’s great historic cities.

Book reviews

Walking On The Razor’s Edge: The path of the seeker

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The Power of Karma Yoga by Gopi Chandra Das (Jaico Books) is an attempt to unravel the mystique of the Bhagavad Gita in the contemporary context. Is Lord Krishna’s counsel to Arjuna still relevant in today’s time and social space ? How can the timeless teachings of Lord Krishna be adopted by people struggling to cope with the stresses and challenges of modern life? Is there a key teaching which can be easily adopted by stress-torn people? These and many more questions are answered by the author in his easy-to-read style.

The basic premise is that the stress is a function of identity; identity with ego or with role-playing. We all play roles in life: in the family, the office and in the social sphere. These roles demand close identification and exact their cost by way of fear, frustration and failures.

The way out is to ease one’s sense of identity with one’s temporal roles. At the metaphysical level, it means keeping oneself in a detached state from one’s ego. This requires sustained spiritual discipline, but automatically yields to mental distancing with mundane roles as well. No wonder the Katha Upanishad compares the spiritual path to a razor’s edge.

Lord Krishna sought to instil this detached perspective in Arjuna by underlining the perishable nature of the body and the transitory nature of the world. However, the key is to strike a balance between total detachment and total attachment. The golden mean is attained by letting go with discrimination. If we detach too much, it will become difficult to perform our duties; if we cling too much, the material will become a millstone. The idea is to be in the world and yet not be of it. As the Persian saint Abu Said said, “To buy and sell and yet never forget God.”

Detachment, however, doesn’t mean irresponsibility. On the contrary, it means working with utter responsibility; with a sense that the job at hand is a moment to glorify the divine. It is not only work for work’s sake; work is taken up as a tool for self-realization. This is more deeply grasped if we acknowledge that the Gita is not only a handbook of divine knowledge or spiritualised action but essentially a guidepost for the man treading the path of enlightenment.

Sri Aurobindo says: “The Gita is not a weapon for dia­lectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual truth and experience, and the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision.”

Or as Paramahansa Yoganananda puts it: Gita sheds light on any point of life in which the devotee finds himself in.

Delving yet further, Gopinath explains in the book that letting go is made easy by the practice of apagriha, or being unattached to desires with conscious control on attachment-driven strivings. In the process, one’s motive gets transformed from want-driven to purpose-driven. The aim, at the highest level, being self-realization: the acme of spiritual strivings. For all material strivings ought to be in essence spititual strivings.

When we shift from want-driven to purpose-driven action, the need for personal validation ceases. In our quest for a spiritual-centric action mode, yagna plays an important role. The concept of yagna is transposed from a religious fire-rite to diurnal mundane acts in which personal motives are quenched. As the borderline between the spiritual and the material gets increasingly dissolved, the quest for enlightenment becomes the summum bonum of life.

The direction and blessings of a sadguru is also needed in this eternal quest for soul freedom. In the ultimate sense, the material life and its duties become a stepping stone for a higher life which man embraces to achieve the state of kaivalya. The book lucidly interweaves real-life stories with philosophical concepts, which make for interesting reading.

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Entertainment

Justin Bieber shares unseen pictures from Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant pre-wedding sangeet

Justin Bieber’s energetic performance on Friday was the highlight of the sangeet ceremony, which took place at the Nita Ambani Convention Centre in Bandra, Mumbai.

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Justin Bieber shares unseen pictures from Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant pre-wedding sangeet

Global popstar Justin Bieber brought the energy at Anant Ambani and Radhika Ambani’s pre-wedding sangeet on July 5 in Mumbai. The soon to be married couple (wedding in July 12th) was spotted enjoying themselves as Bieber belted out his hits. While glimpses from the night went viral earlier, Bieber has now shared unseen photos and videos from his memorable trip to India.

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The heartwarming pictures show Justin Bieber bonding with Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant and their family. In one picture Justin stands with Anant and Radhika, all three dressed festively for the sangeet ceremony. Another photo captures a casual moment where Justin Bieber is seen chatting with Akash Ambani on a couch while Anant and Radhika are posing with him.

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The group also posed for a larger picture that included Shloka Mehta and Anand Piramal. The final photos show Justin Bieber and Anant Ambani engaged in a friendly conversation, solidifying the warm atmosphere of the visit. Justin’s trip to India started on Friday morning with his arrival in Mumbai.

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That night Bieber transformed the Jio Convention Centre into a party zone with his hit songs and celebrities like Salman Khan and Alia Bhatt grooved along with him. Videos circulating on social media show Justin Bieber dancing with Orry and receiving a hug from Alaviaa Jaffrey( daughter of Javed Jaffrey). According to reports Justin Bieber has been paid $10million for this special performance.

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https://www.instagram.com/p/C9Fu5I5oxBm

Bieber’s energetic performance on Friday was the highlight of the sangeet ceremony, which took place at the Nita Ambani Convention Centre in Bandra, Mumbai. The singer made the guests groove on his songs Baby, Love Yourself, Peaches, Where Are You Now and Sorry. Bieber’s fresh off his triumphant return to the stage once again set the internet ablaze with his electrifying performance at Anant and Radhika’s sangeet ceremony.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C9Fv2nuI1_e

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Entertainment

Yashraj Mukhate collaborates with Amit Trivedi for Mann Dhaaga song

In a post circulating on Instagram Yashraj Mukhate talks about his experience of listening to Amit Trivedi’s music and recalls how he had always dreamt of collaborating with Amit Trivedi. He said his dream came true 2 years later in 2024 where he collaborated with Trivedi on the song Mann Dhaaga.

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Amit Trivedi is known for his soulful compositions which weave profound lyrics, captivating music lovers. His songs spark a deep desire in aspiring artists to collaborate with him. Music producer and You Tuber Yashraj Mukhate had immense admiration for Trivedi’s artistry. In a post circulating on Instagram Yashraj Mukhate talks about his experience of listening to Amit Trivedi’s music and recalls how he had always dreamt of collaborating with Amit Trivedi.

He said his dream came true 2 years later in 2024 where he collaborated with Trivedi on the song Mann Dhaaga. He wrote that he had been listening to the entire Dev D Album carefully in 2012. And he kept listening to it on loop for 3 weeks. He continued to listen to Amit Trivedi compositions in Aisha, Kai Po Che, Udaan, Lootera, Queen, Fitoor continuously. He said he could not stop himself and became a big fan of the music director. He said he started dreaming of meeting his idol one day and collaborating with him.

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He recalled that he had to download songs from songs.pk and listen to them. He said the songs kept running inside his mind all through the day. He added that he even remembered Amit Trivedi’s ad jingles word for Fanta, Frooti, Dish TV and all of them.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C35NUIVNz5h/

Mukhate said he always dreamed of meeting Amit Trivedi and wanted to thank him for giving this experience. The post has gone viral on social media with 96,445 likes till now. Large number of social media user commented on the social media post where one user Parth said the Yashraj Mukhate was truly an inspiration. One user said his dedication had brought him to level. One user said a man should make all his dreams come true by going through one hustle at a time.

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