For over three decades, Alok Kumar Mukherjee had preserved a document signed by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in his Labony Abasan J Block apartment. “I found it by chance while rummaging through my father’s documents one day. It was a copy of a citation for Netaji on the occasion of his felicitation by the Uttarpara Municipality.
It was dated July 17, 1938,” said the 84-year- old. The document was handed over on Saturday to the Sabarna Roy Choudhuri Paribar Parishad on the opening day of their annual exhibition on the city’s heritage at Bara Bari in Barisha, Behala. “I was undecided about the fate of the document as I live alone ever since my wife and son passed away in 2004 and 2016 respectively. My daughter who has become a US citizen, urges me to get rid of the clutter in my apartment.
Finally I thought this is where it will be well-preserved,” Mukherjee told The Telegraph Salt Lake while handing over the laminated paper to Parishad secretary Devarshi Roy Choudhuri. The Parishad maintains an archive of old Calcutta documents.
Mukherjee is distantly related to the zamidar family that had sold land rights of Sutanuti, Gobindopur and Kolkata villages to the British East India Company in 1698. “Our family received land in Uttarpara in Hooghly district on marrying a daughter of the Chatterjee family which in turn had got the land from the Roy Choudhuri family through a marital allowance,” he explained. An ancestor, Joykrishna Mukherjee, developed Uttarpara from the village it then was.
“Even today, there is a library and a road in his name.” That is why the local municipality was largely controlled by the family in the British era. “My father Kamalkrishna Mukherjee was the councillor when the felicitation was planned. Netaji was my uncle Binoykrishna’s classmate at Presidency College. It was he who organised the visit,” he recalled.
While the original citation was handed to Bose, Kamalkrishna got a copy autographed by him and preserved it. After the felicitation, Bose visited the Mukherjee residence. “My younger brother was six months old and placed in his lap by my uncle. Netaji asked his name. Uncle said he would be named after him. Thus my brother was named Subhas,” he smiled.
The mechanical engineer who specialised in pollution control is among the oldest living residents of Labony and might even be the earliest settling there to be alive. He moved in in 1974 after the commute from Uttarpara became difficult. “I would be sent a car from Ballygunge to catch early morning flights at Dum Dum. There was no VIP Road and we travelled by Jessore Road. A couple of times I missed the flight as the driver got late. So my company asked me to shift to Calcutta.
The housing board’s advertisement for apartments in Labony Estate came out around this time. This was the second oldest housing estate in Salt Lake after Vidyasagar Abasan. I booked an HIG flat for Rs 60,000, payable in instalments,” he recalls, adding how seven flats in the three J Block buildings went unclaimed. “In those days, few wanted to move to Salt Lake, fearing subsidence of the sandy soil and lack of public transport. We had only L14A starting from Labony bus stand to take us to Esplanade.
Taxis would not enter the township,” he said. Once he himself got lost in Salt Lake in the fog. “There were no landmarks on empty fields and I just could not get out of Salt Lake,” he shakes his head at the recollection. Both Salt Lake and Uttarpara have transformed beyond recognition, he concedes.