When a perfectly ordinary day is suddenly overwhelmed by an aura of mystery and enchantment, is magic at work or is it just our imagination working overtime? A couple of Sundays ago, we were driving down the Barrackpore Trunk Road in North 24 Parganas, our destination being an old and abandoned jute mill.
I was with Jeffrey Clark or Jeff, as his friends call this very tall Scotsman. We had not met before, but we had been mailing each other regularly for a decade now, ever since he had stumbled online upon a newspaper article I had written long ago about one of the many jute mills that had closed down after the British left, leaving hundreds and thousands of workers in the lurch. Jeff revealed in his amusingly long-winded sentences, generously sprinkled with quaint Scottish expressions, that he and his younger brother were both born in West Bengal, he in 1952, a year after me, in Angus nursing home. It was one of the facilities enjoyed by those who worked in the eponymous jute mill close to Bandel. Angus Jute Mill and the one we were headed towards that Sunday were just two of the many mills whose ghosts still haunt the Hooghly riverside.
As we passed the Ishapore Gun Factory, I realised we were close to our jute mill, once said to be the largest in undivided Bengal, constructed on a 560-acre plot way back in 1862. It closed down in 1997, and when the last owner declared that he was unable to pay off the workers, the company went into liquidation.
School across the river
It was not by accident that Jeff was born in a jute mill. His father Stanley Clark, like thousands of Scotsmen before him, had started working in there in 1948, when the mill was an industry leader. Jeff was there with his parents for seven years, and he went to school just across the river. Stanley Clark was employed at the mill as a supervisor/ overseer from 1948 to 1959, when he returned to Scotland with his family for a short break, only to return in 1960 and join another jute mill, which, like the Angus mill, was also on the opposite bank of the Hooghly. Thereafter, the Clark boys joined a famous Kolkata school, where I studied too, but we were strangers.
Little wonder that Jeffrey’s strongest and fondest memories are of this unnamed jute mill, and he is able to recall all his Indian and Scottish neighbours and servants. He talks untiringly about life in the tiny world of the jute mill seen through the eyes of a child.
With its spacious bungalows — each with its Hindi nickname like teentalla kothi , or three-storey house, and neechi kothi or ground floor of a double-storey building, where the Clarks lived — its tennis courts, birthday parties, swimming pool, and drives to the glamorous nearby city, where the adults had fun at night clubs. Among Jeff’s most prized possessions is a bunch of photographs from those unhurried times, when serpents lurking inside the coppices posed the only real threat to this Eden. Being well aware of the racism that prevailed even after Independence, he says his mother allowed them to mix freely with Indians, and his Hindi was perfect then. His mother’s Hindi still is.
The road to the river
I was aware of all this, and I had, about eight years ago, made a trip to this mill as Jeff had entreated me to do. I had written about my journey as well, and so I was almost destined to act as Jeff’s guide. The mill is out of bounds for unauthorised persons, and although a local can slip in undetected, it would be difficult to smuggle in a tall, white man.
The car took a left turn and drove down a dirt road past the miserable coolie lines with their shanties, puddles and swine. A beautiful mosque was the only landmark there, and after the initial muddle, we took the road that leads to the river.
The car stopped in between the two gateways, the one on the left leading to a large three-storey unkempt, seemingly unoccupied house. We walked in unhindered, and Jeff clicked some photographs with his phone. But he was rather confused about the house’s identity, even though the locals insisted it was teentalla kothi .
We walked across the road, and were about to enter the gateway when the old and wiry watchman emerged from his shelter and stopped us. He was unmoved by our entreaties, but the moment I told him I had written about the jute mill and Jeff some eight years ago, he melted. He inquired with a smile if Jeff was “Clark saabka beta ”.
He, like many others there, had obviously seen the article, and it came to our rescue.
The wee ‘baba’
I showed him the article online on my phone. It carried a black-and-white photograph taken more than half a century ago of Jeff as a “wee” baba, standing on the steps leading to neechi kothi . By this time a knot of people had gathered around us, and they were all very excited by this discovery. This was happening in front of the watchman’s shelter. A row of houses that had fallen into disrepair stood in a clearing behind it. The watchman asked us to wait, making a series of calls on his phone.
A thickset man cycled by. He promptly invited us inside his house on the groundfloor of a double-storey building with high ceilings, large doors and jalousied windows. He was a Rajput, and his father worked in the jute mill once, and he had decided to stay here till his dues were cleared. A large bed occupied the living room. The fireplace was a shrine. The whitewash inside was fresh. His daughter, who spoke English fluently, offered us a drink of rosewater and sweets.
It was home once
Jeff had brought with him a Kashmiri shawl the mill workers had gifted his father when he left. He offered the shawl, still in perfect condition, to our host’s mother, and the old woman received it with gratitude. By this time two men had been assigned to us as guides.
And then with them we stepped into a space where the silent tread of time was visible. Man was vain enough to think he could overpower nature by constructing a sprawling mill with unending rows of workshops and sheds and laboratories. But nature stealthily reclaimed her domain once human agency proved ineffectual. What was once brick and mortar was a sea of green now. The giant constructions were in the vice-like grip of the serpentine roots of countless parasitic trees that had leapt out of them.
A dense thicket flourished beneath the canopy of trees. An eerie stillness pervaded the area. We walked down the maze-like pathways in search of the neechi kothi of Jeff’s childhood, as the skies rumbled above.
Jeff was confused about its location, but our guides proved right. The double-storey house was smothered in greenery. The veranda with louvred arches and the windows had turned into dark caverns. Jeff and one of guides stepped into the gloomy interiors for a few moments.
The sky was inky and suddenly the air was chilly. We lingered awhile before the house when the wind began to howl and the spirit of the past seemed to reach out to us. We felt its presence as the path before us was strewn with a shower of flame-red krishnachuda flowers. The rustling leaves added to the blustery chorus. The rain started to pelt, and we rushed back to the car. The downpour began.
The writer focuses on Kolkata’s vanishing heritage and culture.
