I have a thing about addresses — they must speak to me. It began with me asking a few friends for their addresses so that I could send them a recently published book. The first response came from Canada — 4835 Bayview Avenue, #LPH 07, Thornhill, Markham, ON L3T7N2, Canada. The one from the USA was worse — 63405 Turnmore Road, Silver Spring, MD 60703, USA. That’s it, guys? That is it? Short, terse, and definitely rude.
In sharp contrast the one from Bengaluru was heartwarming — AD 703, Bairavi Cruz Boxer, Opp. St Stephen’s Church, Chelekere Main Road (off Ring Road), Kalyan Nagar, Bangalore 560043. The one from Jaipur was almost poetry — 105, Prattle Road, Suburban Woods, Vatika Infotech City, Ajmer Road, Jaipur 302026, Rajasthan. Now that is an address! Each bit of it evokes such imagery, each word is an invitation to imagine a different world. Prattle — I can almost hear the children. Suburban Woods — did Robert Frost stop here? Vatika and Infotech — the co-existence of contrasts. Ajmer Road — is that a fortress I espy? Splendid, absolutely splendid!
‘Good addresses are like conversations’
‘Short, terse, and definitely rude’ — the addresses of Canada and the US, marked by numbers are not nearly as heartwarming as Indian ones Shutterstock
Good addresses are like conversations and not just geographical pointers or guides. Thankfully, Kolkata is full of them. Durga Pitury Lane, Swarnalata Street, Fancy Lane, Ho Chi Minh Sarani — just four random names but between them runs a fair amount of history, literature and revolution.
Durga Pitury Lane made headlines as the Metro Railway made it dangerous to live in, Fancy Lane is not quite fancy except that it commemorates the hanging of Maharaja Nanda Kumar, Ho Chi Minh Sarani is the last of the Red memorabilia celebrating the revolutionary Vietnamese leader, and Swarnalata Street is the only road in the city to be named after a novel written by Taraknath Gangopadhyay. If street names are so evocative, can addresses be far behind?
There is history, literature and revolution in the names of Kolkata streets like Ho Chi Minh Sarani My Kolkata
For instance, a reputed housing complex in town is at Anandapur High Road, Madurdaha, East Kolkata, Kolkata 700107, West Bengal. Ideally, it should have had a few more details like ‘next to or before Heritage School’, ‘behind Ruby Hospital’, and ‘off Kumro Godown’.
The age of brevity has taken the charm out of our addresses. A hundred years ago, one could imagine the address acting like a roadmap for the postman. He knew which lane, next to whose house, and adjacent to which primary school he had to deliver the letter.
A friend of mine would write out his address as ‘P 527, Raja Basanta Roy Road, opposite back entrance of Ananda multi-storeyed building, in the same lane as Buddhadeb Guha’s residence and in the lane next to Somnath Chatterjee’s house’. If you are a Kolkatan, you would know how difficult it is to look for addresses around Southern Avenue but everyone would know where Buddhadeb Guha and Somnath Chatterjee lived. You could not miss that. And, it also served to feed my friend’s delusion of grandeur — he indeed had very eminent neighbours.
Fading magic
With the advent of GPS and Google Maps, post and postmen might become a thing of the past Shutterstock
GPS and Google Maps have put paid to the magic of addresses. Technology is such a b*tch! Postcards have disappeared, so will postmen someday. Maybe soon we will not need names either. We will be just numbers pinned to a location. Probably not as haunting as Sukanta Bhattacharya’s Rannar, addresses are still accomplices to the incredibly arduous tasks postmen, couriers, and delivery boys perform every day.
Whether we live in Beleghata — Bele is a corruption of the word bali meaning sand, which was deposited along the canal, or Beniatola — Benia referring to Banias or traders, bankers and moneylenders, our addresses have as many stories to tell as we do. There is a beautiful advertisement by a paint company which says, ‘every home tells a story’. So does every address. Care to listen?
Arup Ghosh is a former journalist and a communications expert
