In 1995, fresh from my PhD, I got a job as a social researcher for a university in London. The research was a partnership with a range of Indian organisations, including CINI and Sanchar, both in Pailan and bordering what was then Calcutta. Our study focused on the inclusion of persons with disability in urban development in Kolkata, Bangalore and Visakhapatnam.
It was a three-year project and I was supposed to be based in London and visit Kolkata once every quarter. I moved from Exeter — a small regional city — and found London cripplingly expensive and also isolating. In Exeter, my friends lived within walking distance and if you wanted to see people you popped round and knocked on their door. I was looking forward to catching up with old mates in London, but London did not work like that. If you suggested meeting up, pre-mobile phone Londoners looked at their diary and said ‘how about Thursday in six weeks?’.
Peter Evans in kurta-pajama in 2000
My first visit to Kolkata was in August. It was stinkingly hot and I bumped about in the back of an old Mahindra jeep driven by my great friend, colleague, and mentor Gautam Chaudhury of Sanchar, melting into a pool of sweat.
But Kolkata’s culture, energy and fascinating chaos got under my skin. I was lucky that email was just taking off — which made me think that rather than being based in London and faxing colleagues in India, I could move to Kolkata and see these colleagues daily, and manage contact with London via this new thing called email.
I moved to Kolkata (Alipore, then Kalighat, and eventually Jodhpur Park) and got stuck into life – chappals and kurta pyjama and my papers in a jhola like a pale sweaty version of a Santiniketan intellectual. Gautam-da taught me a lot, including my first Bengali gaalis.
'I bought a shiny new Atlas cycle and got schooled in how to ride it'
I bought a shiny new Atlas cycle and got schooled in how to ride it (knees inside, not outside, the curled handlebars — hard if you are nearly 6 foot tall), to lock it with its built-in spoke blocker, and how not to get the front wheel stuck in tram tracks. Once I tried to ride it wearing a shawl. Once was enough.
My favourite cycling routes were over Alipore bridge to the race course and Maidan to see the pack of vultures (now sadly gone); from Kalighat down Harish Chatterjee Street (past ‘Didi’s house’ – Trinamool Central Office) to Eden Gardens, and to the Maidan’s club tents to play football on a Sunday morning with staff and Gurkhas from the British Deputy High Commission, and south along the bank of Tolly’s Nullah and on to James Long Sarani, past ‘Dada’ (Sourav Ganguly)’s house to see my parents-in-law in Sakher Bazaar. People were friendly, interested, intrigued. I was chatty. Sweaty. I had the occasional road ragaragi but no real marramarri.
'Me feeding a buffalo at southern lakes, with southern avenue in distance in 2000'
Email in 1995 was rustic. You needed a landline (for me via the foreigner’s quota — installation in 3 months. With a backhander) and a whistling dial-up modem. You registered for a Bulletin Board Service (BBS) and had to write a batch of emails, compress them in a file, crank up the modem, and send the file down the line to the BBS man. In my case this was a computer man in an icily air conditioned flat in a posh block in Southern Avenue. He would collect files from all of his customers and send them off twice a day. A digital pony express. Your package of incoming emails would come in the same way, twice a day, so like waiting for the postman. Opening them was haphazard. Emails often appeared then were gone.
One day I was annoyed with one of my London bosses and wrote a grumpy email to another colleague, complaining about the boss. The software was fiddly and I pressed send, only to realise that I had copied in them both. I tried phoning the BBS man to delete the mail but his number was engaged. So, I jumped on my trusty bike, and pedalled from Alipore (close to Woodlands) via Alipore Jail, over Kalighat bridge, past Lake Market and cut through to Southern Avenue. Parked my bike, ran up the stairs, and banged on his door. I was just in time — he was about to despatch the evening’s pony express. He opened my file, and deleted my mail. Problem solved. Career saved.
That is how I managed to cycle faster than the speed of email.
Post scripts:
Email has got faster, though I now impose my own 5 minute pause before send. And triple check the cc list.
My trusty Atlas cycle was brilliant for a single man but less useful with a growing family. It was borrowed by various Darwans and iron men in Jodhpur park, and would disappear for minutes, then days, and eventually weeks until… it never came back.
I went to ‘Calcutta’ expecting to visit for a few weeks, but stayed for 6 years. We finally left ‘Kolkata’ as a little family - married in a wedding hall in Ekdalia Park, and first daughter born at Woodland’s. We moved to Malawi, then Dhaka, then Delhi. We still miss Kolkata friends, especially the late great Gautam Chaudhury of Sanchar, and his similarly amazing family - Tulika Das and Tini (Monomita).
Peter J Evans lived in Kolkata for 6 years from 1995, firstly as a social researcher and then as a consultant in water and sanitation. After Kolkata, he worked for the UK government for 20 years in Malawi, Bangladesh, Delhi, and Whitehall, then was director of an anti-corruption organisation in Norway. He now lives in Oxfordshire, UK, where he is a freelance consultant in governance and development.