In pics: Have you been to these places associated with Netaji in and around Kolkata?

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Not many of Netaji Subhas Bose’s admirers from Kolkata take an hour-long drive to his ‘desh-er baari’, in the village earlier known as Kodalia. Located around 25km south of Kolkata, it has now been renamed Subhashgram in honour of its most illustrious resident. The annual festival of Durga Puja brings the entire Bose clan together at this ancestral house to this day. That Durga Puja meant a lot to Netaji, as it does to all Bengalis even today, is evident from a letter he wrote to his brother Sarat Chandra Bose from Mandalay Central Jail. “I understand that you will be going to Kodalia during the Puja week. We are making arrangements to celebrate the Durga Puja here,” he wrote

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In May 1924, Calcutta mayor Chittaranjan Das appointed a 27-year-old Subhas Chandra Bose as chief executive officer of the Calcutta Corporation. The green carpeted staircase at the 5 SN Banerjee Road headquarters of the civic body stands testimony to the change in the way civic services were delivered with Das and Bose in the saddle. The corporation ventured into newer territories, such as opening schools for the poor and setting up a kitchen for the distribution of free milk among the poor. Bose was hardly in the post for five months when he was arrested by the British police on October 25. However, he continued to function as CEO of the Calcutta Corporation from Alipore Central Jail for the first few weeks after his imprisonment. On August 22, 1930, Bose was elected mayor of Calcutta while in jail. He was released the following month. But as with his stint as CEO, he could not serve his full term as mayor, either. On January 26, 1931, he was arrested, charged with rioting and sent to prison

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On August 12, 1938, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was felicitated at a civic reception in (then) Calcutta after being elected as the youngest president of the Congress party at the Haripura Congress session. The venue was an elite restaurant on Chowringhee — Firpo’s. The reception, organised by the then mayor of Calcutta, Abul Kalam Mohammed Zakaria, was a tea party attended by almost all intellectuals and celebrities of the city. The event was reported in the official gazette of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation on August 13, 1938. This is perhaps the only recorded evidence of Netaji’s association with a heritage restaurant of Calcutta. Firpo’s Market operates out of the building in the present day

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In 1909, Janakinath Bose (Subhas’ father) built a house at Elgin Road in Calcutta, where Netaji lived in his formative years. It was this house that was the centre of his political activities and it is from here that Netaji escaped from house arrest in 1940. As a result, it is this house that is most associated with Subhas Chandra Bose and is now a museum called Netaji Bhavan

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The main staircase with polished wooden railings forms a prime position in the 38/2, Elgin Road, house and divides the galleries of the museum and the erstwhile private rooms of the various members of the Bose family

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For Netaji admirers, January 23 remains a day etched in the annals of history. For thousands of visitors, the galleries turn a pilgrimage of sorts, essaying his role in the Indian freedom struggle and how he raised the Azad Hind Fauj to take on the might of the British Raj

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Netaji’s private bedroom at the house has been immaculately kept just the way as it was when it was in use till his ‘Great Escape’ in 1941. On January 23 every year, the room is decked up in flower garlands

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Netaji used this staircase (top) at the back of the Elgin Road residence to make his ‘Great Escape’ from house arrest in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on the night of January 16, 1941. He was driven by his nephew Sisir Bose in the 1937 German Wanderer W24 sedan (above) to Gomoh railway station in then Bihar to catch a train to Peshawar. He eventually reached Germany to work for India’s independence