A treasure trove of culture with 35,000 artefacts. A morning walker’s paradise. But above all, a sanctuary of love, protected by, and sometimes despite, armed guards.
The many facets of Kolkata’s relationship with Victoria Memorial came to the fore at a session on Day Four of Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet (Kalam), held in association with the Victoria Memorial Hall and The Telegraph, on Friday.
Titled Victoria Memorial Shatabdi, the bilingual session featured historian Jayanta Sengupta, secretary and curator of Victoria Memorial; Bachi Karkaria, journalist and author; Anindya Chattopadhyay, singer, lyricist, writer, director and actor; and Agnijit Sen, radio jockey.
The construction of Victoria Memorial began in 1905. It was opened in December 1921.
The moderator, Poorna Banerjee, asked Sengupta with due seriousness about “reclaiming” Victoria Memorial from the British.
Sengupta said pictures from 1921 to 47 show only a handful of Indians on the vast expanses of Victoria. Now, Victoria Memorial is the most-visited museum in India. Before Covid, the museum had 4 million visitors in 2019.
“There is a reclaiming in this. The driving force behind this reclaiming is people’s love for Victoria,” said Sengupta.
And then he added: “Also, the fact that Victoria is a place for love.”
In 2013, when Sengupta took charge of the museum, he went to his predecessor, professor Swapan Chakravorty, who passed away last year, for some tips.
Among many other things, Chakravorty had told Sengupta “to be watchful” during his rounds of the campus about “various interesting ways” umbrellas were used on the Victoria premises. “Don’t try to remove an open umbrella,” Sengupta remembered Chakravorty as telling him.
“Calcutta has been through a lot of turbulent times — Partition, refugee influx, food revolution, the Naxalite uprising. Through all of it, this 57-acre campus has been a shelter to Calcuttans. People have come here in droves, they have made this place their own.
“In Teen Bhubaner Pare (a 1969 Bengali film, based on a novel by Samaresh Basu, starring Soumitra Chatterjee and Tanuja), Soumitra and Tanuja’s courtship blossomed at Victoria Memorial. Over the next 50 years and more, this place has emerged as the foremost place for love for Bengalis,” said Sengupta.
Official secrets
Sengupta also shared some official secrets that had the panellists and the audience in splits.
One of the former directors of Victoria Memorial had a long binocular, which he used to keep an eye on the gardens.
Another predecessor had a stick with which he used to chase lovebirds. As an inheritance, a colleague had tried to pass the stick on to Sengupta. It has since taken an “involuntary retirement”.
The authorities keep getting one or two letters every month from senior citizens who come to Victoria. They feel the young brigade are destroying “traditional Indian family values”.
One day, Sengupta showed such a letter to a CISF commandant and sought his help. The officer, an automatic weapon slung on his shoulder, put his foot down and apparently said: “Sorry sir, we are not moral police.”
Hearing that, Sengupta realised that Victoria is now a “protected place with armed protection for love”.
Asked about her first memory of the memorial, Karkaria said Victoria was “part of the subconscious skyline” of anyone who has lived in Calcutta. “There is never a time I can remember when I did not see Victoria,” she said.
She said Victoria was “so many things for so many people — romance, morning walks, culture”.
Growing up in north Calcutta, prone to waterlogging at the drop of a hat, Chattopadhyay knew Agra “had Taj Mahal and Calcutta had Victoria Memorial”.
“It is a sanctuary of love in a city that otherwise lacks places for romance. I have seen three pairs of lovers share a single bench. This plurality of love is possible in Victoria Memorial,” said Chattopadhyay.
Session postponed
A session called “Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh”, featuring Shrayana Bhattacharya and Paroma Roy Chowdhury, supposed to have been a part of Day Five (Saturday) of Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet (Kalam), held in association with the Victoria Memorial Hall and The Telegraph, has been postponed, said organisers. The session will now be held at 12.10pm on Sunday.