MANOHAR DAS TARAG, ESPLANADE ... From a Pond for Cows to an Entertainment Park !!

'Tarag', in Bengali, means a pond or a medium scale waterbody having approximately 200 ft. of depth. The same meaning is conveyed by the Hindi word 'Talab' or 'Talao'. In 1706 there were only 17 waterbodies in Calcutta which catered the needs of native population. After the British settled down in the City they dug up or renovated numerous tanks to serve the purpose of drinking water, most of which are not in existence today. Among the existing ones, Laldighi and Wellington Square are the notable. But other tanks were later filled up to build parks like Curzon Park, Allen Park, Shraddhanand Park and many more.

But it was neither always the British who dug up the tank nor the purpose of public usage for which the tanks were dug up. In early nineteenth century, a Varanasi born businessman and philanthropist MANOHAR DAS SHAH converted an idle land into a pond to provide a drinking place for the cows. Yes, he was an animal lover and the tank is still there and known as MANOHAR DAS TARAG.

'HINDOO' STUART's MAUSOLEUM ... Tomb or Temple ??!!

During the Bengal Renaissance of nineteenth century, many prominent names of the society chose to adopt Christianity and converted. Reverend Krishna Mohan Bandyopadhyay, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Chandramukhi Basu are only to name a few. The scenario was similar in the remaining part of Colonial India too. With the increase in European settlements in India from 17th century onwards, conversion to Christianity from Hinduism was not a rare or surprising instance. But finding a British (technically Irish) dignitary, who inspite of adhering to his religion, embraced Hindu Culture, is a rare instance indeed !

In the 25th post, WANDERLUST explores an Irish Major-General who practiced idolatry, wore dhoti, used to bath in River Ganges, advised Memsahibs to wear Sari, built a temple, criticized European missionaries and has a Mausoleum in South Park Street Cemetery which looks like a temple !!

Presenting CHARLES 'HINDOO' STUART and his exceptional Mausoleum.

SUSANNA ANNA MARIA's TOMB, CHINSURAH ... Dutch Lady - Ruskin Bond - 7 Khoon Maaf !!!

When a guy visits the ruins of an old haveli on G T Road, Old Delhi, he was told the story of the mysterious haveli owner, Susanna and killings of her husbands...

 - Plotline of 'Susanna's Seven Husbands'

by Ruskin Bond

Bond's 5 page story was adopted by the film director Vishal Bhardwaj in 2007 and developed into a Bollywood film - '7 Khoon Maaf' (Seven Sins Forgiven), starring Priyanka Chopra as Susanna. On the request of Bhardwaj, Bond wrote a 80 page novella based on the short story and Vishal Bhardwaj made a screenplay out of it, co-written with Matthew Robins from Hollywood. The screenplay along with the novel and the original short story were later published as a full fledged book by Penguin India. 

But this post is not a film review. This article is about the principal character of the story - SUSANNA ANNA MARIA YEATS, who surprisingly (or might be intentionally!) resembles a Dutch Lady of the same name of 18th century Chinsurah, a Dutch colony then.

Read on with WANDERLUST...

BASRI SHAH MOSQUE ... Oldest Mosque of Kolkata !!

Winter is almost here and so is the season of Calcutta's Heritage Hunts, organized every year by different clubs, motoring enthusiasts' associations and media houses. Being the defending champion of City's two most prestigious treasure hunts, we have already started to polish our Heritage IQ and gearing up for the brain storming trails in the coming months. Two weeks ago, in one of those random chit chats with my fellow hunter Abhijit and Souvik, we were discussing about the 'OLDEST's of the City. We jotted down the following :

• Oldest Existing Building - Dum Dum Clive House
• Oldest Temple - Kalighat or Chitteswari ??
• Oldest Church - Armenian Church
• Oldest Synagogue - Neveh Shalome Synagogue
• Oldest Mosque - ???...

We were clueless and as the last resort, googled it. An online newspaper report revealed that the City's oldest existing Mosque is in Kashipur and known as BHONSRI SHAH MOSQUE but not much description was there. Further research in the topic led us to the Graded List of Heritage Buildings of Kolkata compiled by Kolkata Municipal Corporation and we indeed found an entry in the heritage list of Ward 6 (i.e. Kashipur Area) that describes an unnamed Category I Heritage Mosque as "Popularly known as 1, Lockgate Road".

And we decided to pay a visit...