My mother's journey

---

My mother’s walk down memory lane

Determined to find 11 Kyd Street, my mother’s birth home, we walked around Chowringhee amongst faded opulence. The cracked pavement and rubble-strewn roads became too much for my once sprightly mother and we availed ourselves of the rickshaw wallah who had been hovering behind us wondering why these white people were insisting on walking. My mother’s gaze had glazed, the remembrance of a quiet, tree-lined street leading out onto the Maidan uppermost in her mind. So there it was, a ramshackle white building now housing the seedy Hotel Neelam. Lack of Hindi or Bengali made wandering around the huge rooms a tricky proposition. We climbed the stairs to the first floor where my mother’s family resided and sat on a bench at the reception desk and observed. A man appeared out of one room in a lungi, cleaning his teeth, gave us a cursory glance and shut his door definitively. A sweeper wallah brushed the floor desultorily in front of us and gestured with the indigenous head wobble to come and have a look. Cracked walls, mildew-stained with enduring marble floors made it hard for my mother to recall. No pattern to lovingly trace, no gasped exclamation at a remembered window; the garden she ran around with her friend Winnie Parker who died of dysentery aged 4, now a rubble and rubbish strewn patch.
So that was it; my mother’s birthplace once a peaceful tree-lined street of graceful mansions leading to the Maidan and Eden Gardens where she remembers being taken by her ayah, now a dusty, busy road clogged with traffic and humanity.
Walking along Park Street Mummy paused in front of some rusting wrought iron gates. ‘I remember these’, she must have often left her father here, who, as a grand master of the freemasons, must have passed frequently through these hallowed portals. Soumitra Das from The Telegraph, an internet acquaintance, who had written about Temple Chambers and other old colonial buildings, opined that the mason’s books might reveal information about the elusive grandparent. So, cousin of mine, use your influence and see what you can find out! We walked back to the New Market in the old Sir Stuart Hogg building opened in 1858 and wondered if my grandmother had ever graced its doors. We were in search of a certain type of wall hanging, a request from my sister. Twenty stalls and numerous displayed hangings later we were the proud owners of a small hanging in the style she was looking for, elaborate and hand embroidered from Rajasthan.
Our next search was for Temple Chambers and the offices of Tarmaster and Co., still functioning as an accountancy firm all these years later. We were early to the High Court, early enough to see ablutions being performed under streams of second hand water, Justine reckoned instead of being water from the Hooghly it was water that had washed many goolies!
Turning away from the typing wallahs setting up their machines for their daily writing business we caught sight of Temple Chambers, another run-down remnant of a former time. The staircase remained magnificent; five double staircases up to the top floor. Waiting for the lift, a more modern contraption perhaps, my mother looked up and remembered being rushed down the shaking stairs during an earthquake, having looked out of their window and watched the towers of the High Court tumble down. Once out of the lift she looked around bemused. All the intensity of memories, recollections, but not one inkling of which door led to her penthouse apartment. Justine and I snooped through a few offices to no avail.
Using a new address we had for Tarmaster and Co we wandered down Netaji Subash Road, visiting the impressive Post Office with its soaring dome. The glory of the writer’s building behind us we continued, the offices becoming more and more rundown as we made our way up the street. We found the number and the postbox for Tarmaster and Co, an addendum now to other accountants’ names. An extremely rickety staircase led a determined mother and entourage up to the third floor. Grime encrusted banisters, rotten floorboards, rubbish strewn corridors. Tarmaster and Co, appointed to the government as bankruptcy experts, how low had they fallen? In fact, so low the doors were padlocked with a legal notification pasted on it which in Indian legalese it was hard to decipher. Whatever the reason, they were shut. No working phone, no contact, the end of the road. Disappointment was etched in my mother’s face, visions of telling them she was the founder’s daughter, visions of sitting taking tea with the present incumbents faded with the memories.

---

Photos

11 Kyd Street
Arriving in style

11 Kyd Street
Outside the house now a hotel

11 Kyd Street
Entrance remains the same

11 Kyd Street
Upstairs

Up the stairs
She couldn't wait to see her old birth house!

Their apartment floor
Waiting to see a room

Temple Chambers
Contemplating Temple Chambers and the penthouse's former glory!

Temple Chambers
Did it really look like this?

Tarmaster and Co
My Mum was glad her father wasn't alive to see how the company had fallen

Outside Tarmaster and Co
Looking happier than we felt!

Legalese
This was why they were closed.

Comments

[Janette]

It's been intreaging reading about your families past and present memories in India. The photos really bring everything to life and you can transport yourself to another world. I hope you all have a wonderful time.