[ALOCHONA] Interesting Account: A Bengali family from Dacca in Delhi

A Bengali family in Delhi

BEHULA CHOWDHURY

SEMINAR

http://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.html

 

IN the 15th and 16th centuries, there was a steady stream of migration of Kanauj Brahmins into what was then East Bengal. East Bengal was lush and fertile; crops grew abundantly with very little effort. Chaturbhuj Sen, it would seem, was one such itinerant Brahmin who arrived 'by boat' and put his roots down in Mattagram in the Manikganj zilla of the Dacca province. The zamindari grew till his descendants became one of the most influential landed gentry families of this area. They also forged links with the Nawabs of Dacca, a source of privilege, in return for services rendered. These services were administrative rather than military. Their allegiance increased their fortune and the men established the tradition of marrying into educated families, for the sons were often profligate and incompetent. It was hoped that these young women would bring good sense and values into the lineage.

 

A few hundred years later, in the mid-19th century, the family stood at what was to become the turning point in their history. Of the three brothers – Binoy, Prasanna and Rajani Kumar Sen – Binoy, the eldest, had been disinherited because he had discarded ritualistic Hinduism and become a Brahmo. He shifted to Dacca city where he built himself a house in Wari, the old Hindu area of Dacca.

 

Prasanna Sen was more than a decade older than the youngest brother, Rajani (1868-1896), who was a poet, painter, musician, landscape artist and basically, a dreamer. He was also a womanizer and excessively fond of alcohol. Prasanna was the archetypical tyrannical zamindar with henna-tinted hair. He built three grand houses on the banks of the river. Legend has it that these would be washed away every year and he would build them again. He looked after the treasury of the Nawab of Dacca. By the law of primogeniture then prevalent in East Bengal, Prasanna Sen inherited the extensive state.

 

In 1882, Rajani was married to Monojasundari (1875-1950), who hailed from the professional and literary family of the Munshis in Mymensingh. The Bengali poet, Dineshchandra Sen, was a maternal uncle of the bride. She was a 'dakshaitey sundari' (formidable beauty); beneath the delicate and petite exterior lay a steely determination and a stubborn courage. Monoja soon became a friend and confidante of her sister-in-law, Prasanna's wife, Manodasundari, who was also from Mymensingh. This friendship stood her in good stead and probably saved her life and those of her children.

 

Five children were born to the couple, out of which four survived. The oldest was Sushama, followed by Surendra (1890-1934), Sudhindra (1894-1961) and finally, Surama. The eldest daughter, Sushama, was widowed at the age of seventeen and returned home with her two year old daughter. Surendra was a bright student, academically inclined, calm and collected. Sudhindra was more daring, roaming the countryside; at a very young age, he used a stick to measure the depth of a great water tank and managed to traverse from one end to the other. There were young boys in the village who resembled the two boys, illegitimate children of their father. Monoja nursed a deep hurt and when her youngest daughter, Surama, was born, she refused to let her husband come and see the child. He was sick and ailing, and when the baby was just three days old, died at the age of twenty-seven. The family heaped scorn on the young widow; she would, in fact, see the shadowy form of her husband's spirit lifting the mosquito net to gaze on and keep a vigil on his daughter.

 

 It was a hard struggle for Monoja to hold her own against Prasanna's scheming perfidy. She suspected he might try to poison her children and thus did not allow them to touch any food that had not been first fed to the dogs on the estate. She refused to accept that her sons had no share in the zamindari. She went and collected rent from lands that she considered to be their share of the inheritance, riding on bajras or huge covered boats with a few faithful retainers. Once she was shipwrecked in a storm and cast on the bank of the river; another time dacoits surrounded her boat and she parleyed with the leader and reached an amicable understanding with him. Monoja was defying all conventions and soon it became apparent that for the sake of her children, if not herself, she must leave the estate and take shelter, at least temporarily, with Benoy Sen in Wari. Manoda and Manoda's brother helped her escape.

 

The two brothers attended school in Dacca and the older brother, Surendra, soon caught the attention of a young priest, Father Shore, of the Oxford Mission. Father Shore was impressed with the fiery widow and respected her willingness to fight back. Imperiously commanded to take off his shoes before entering the room, the priest soon realized there was no scope for conversion. 'Your Christ is my Krishna,' Monoja told him. Shore drew closer to the family and was finally convinced that Surendra must leave for Oxford to study history and prepare for the Indian Civil Service examinations.

 

In the meantime, a distant relative had brought her daughter, Nilima, then all of nine years, to Monoja. Their zamindari, once resplendent, was in ruins; the girl had already lost her father and her mother was dying. Fearing that the girl would 'drift away in the waters', Nilima was married to Surendra on the eve of his departure for England (1911).

 

Surendra was admitted into Jesus College, Oxford. H.S. Suhrawardy was his contemporary as was Kiranshankar Ray who became Home Minister in Dr. B.C. Roy's cabinet. Sudhindra, also a bright student, came under the influence of the Dacca Anusilan Samiti and was strangely attracted to local mystics. One day, he was found to be standing in a trance , holding in his hand a serpent with its tail draped round his shoulder. At this time, Monoja spent money lavishly and got her youngest daughter married to Kumudshankar Ray of Teothabari. Dr. Ray studied medicine at Edinburgh and later became one of Calcutta's most eminent physicians and founded the tuberculosis hospital in Jadavpur. Early on, during Surendra's stint at Oxford, he decided to take a trip on the Titanic. When the ship sank, the family in Calcutta who knew of his plans, thought that he had perished in the wreck. They mourned for him till they learned that he had not been able to secure a berth on the ship. Death played hide and seek with him, but he won the first round.

 

As the First World War proceeded, real tragedy struck the family. Monoja received no word from Surendra and in a fever of anxiety visited a famous pir in Dacca. 'Will you be able to forbear what I show you?' he asked. There, reflected in the waters of a bowl, she saw her son lying ill and unconscious. Surendra had suffered a fall from the horse during one of the rounds of the Indian Civil Service examinations and the injury on his leg had turned gangrenous.

 

Monoja appointed an eminent Dacca lawyer of the time, Anando Roy, to represent her claim for a share of the family's land before the British government. She sold this land and sent money for her son's treatment. The leg however had to be amputated. Surendra did not qualify for appointment as a bureaucrat.

 

Monoja had come away to Calcutta as Sudhindra's studies in Dacca drew to a close and he joined the Calcutta Medical College. The family consisted of Monoja, Sushama, her daughter Sunira, Nilima and Sudhindra, who completed his studies and started a practice at Behala. He got married to Bina, who possessed literary talents and a sweet singing voice, in 1920.

 

In 1918, Surendra received an appointment at Mayo College, Ajmer, where he remained for a brief period before moving to Hindu College, Delhi as lecturer and then Principal. The family moved to Delhi in 1920 and set up home at Mori Gate. Surendra brought the western world into this family which had till then been exposed largely to indigenous culture. They listened to western classical music, read Arthur Conan Doyle and were introduced to the finest traditions of western philosophical and political thought.

 

At Hindu College, Surendra played an active role in the efforts that led to the foundation of the Delhi University with the three constituted colleges – Hindu, St. Stephen's and Ramjas (1922). He introduced sweeping changes. He started the Debating Society and encouraged students to battle out their verbal skills in an open space in the middle of the courtyard which might once have been a water tank. He held inter-college debate competitions and was supported by S.N. Mukherjee, the then Principal of St. Stephen's College. Surendra was a charismatic and brilliant teacher. There were also female students at Hindu College. Few in number, they sat behind wooden blinds listening to his lectures. Surendra invited some of the most reputed teachers from Calcutta and Dacca University to join the college. Birendranath Ganguly, who came to teach Economics, became a close family friend.

 

The two brothers, in 1925, set up the Bengali Club, which devoted itself to the pursuit of Bengali literature, music and arts in a city where the intellectuals wrote and thought in Urdu. In the same year, they staged an open air show of Tagore's Falguni in Qudsia Bagh. The blind minstrel's role was played by Sarada Ukil. The brothers started an annual Durga Puja at Lakshminarayan Dharamsala; this puja shifted to the Kashmiri Gate Polytechnic in 1947. In 1937, Subhash Bose attended this puja along with Durga Ma who was a 'manashkanya' of Sarada Debi. The younger brother, Sudhindra, who was very musical, would personally direct the plays that were staged during the five days. They ranged from Rabindranath's 'Balmaki Pratibha' to Saratchandra Chattopadhyay's 'Datta'. The actors were amateurs, recruited from among the families of the club's members and for a month before the pujas, Sudhindra never came home before two in the morning.

 

Surendra also founded the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society and began to publish Ruplekha, an arts journal. He organized arts fairs where eminent painters like Gaganendranath Tagore exhibited their works.

 

Shortly after coming to Delhi, Surendra had helped his brother set up his own pathological laboratory in Chandini Chowk. Sudhindra, a skilled physician, soon gained a reputation for himself and in later years treated Motilal Nehru, Chandrasekhar Azad and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

 

The family had shifted to a sprawling mansion at the Sultan Singh Building complex at Kashmiri Gate in November 1930. Bina and Sudhindra had by now four children, two sons and two daughters. The older son, Dipak, was known as Principalsaab's son and followed his uncle round everywhere. Surendra and Nilima did not have their first child till October 1928, when a daughter Jayasree, was born to them. Jayasree was followed by Atashi. A door was built into the wall at the back of the garden next to the cages where Sudhindra bred guinea pigs and rabbits for his experiments. Surendra went into the college through the door in the wall.

 

The home at Kashmiri Gate became something of a cultural Mecca. In the early thirties and for a decade or more afterwards, artists of all kinds passed through its walls. Hafiz Ali stayed there for several months. Faiyyaz Khan, K.L Saigal, Alauddin Khan, Dr. Ansari (grandfather of the present Vice President of India), Shambhu Maharaj were frequent visitors. Sudhindra's younger daughter, Malasri, learnt Kathak from Lachchu Maharaj; Hindol, Sudhindra's younger son, played the sitar; Bina had started translating Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet into Bengali. The family gathered religiously at six every evening to sing Tagores's songs, to read aloud from the classics and to recite poetry. University professors, intellectuals including Nirad Chaudhari and his wife, and Amartya Sen's father, Prof. Ashutosh Sen, lent a vibrant quality to daily life. Dr. Zakir Husain, future President of India, was a close associate.

 

Surendra was fond of playing bridge and there were frequent bridge parties at home. At night he paced the veranda, his wooden leg resounding on the floor, mulling over the agenda for the next day. He loved to keep his papers in cheerful disorder and hated Nilima's attempts to tidy them. Monoja remained the family's backbone, telling the children stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas. Surendra kept indifferent health; in 1934 he had a mild stroke and during his period of convalescence, Sir Percival Spear, then a teacher at St. Stephen's, would come and sit by his bedside every day for several hours and keep him company. Surendra was sent to Dehradun for rest and repose. College was going to reopen on the 1st of October. The students gave him a resounding reception. As he stood up to speak, he took a sip of water, coughed once and fell unconscious to the ground. He was taken home. He died the same day at the age of forty four. His third and youngest daughter, Manjusree, was three months old. Nilima was bedridden for months. The infant was looked after by Aruna, the only daughter of Anil Bhattacharya, the Head of Hindu's English Department. They were neighbours of the Sens.

 

Sultan Singh, who was the Sens' landlord, a patrician U.P. 'rais' whose own house inside the complex boasted of a swimming pool and tennis courts, did not take rent for a year. A huge cortege of students accompanied the body to the crematorium, scattering flowers all along the way. An era had come to an end.

 

Sudhindra, who had inherited his mother's indomitable spirit, took the responsibility of the two families upon his shoulders. He threw himself into his work, visiting patients like the Nawab of Rampur. The begums would merely extend their wrists from behind the purdah. Sudhindra would often come back with as much as Rs 20,000 from a visit. In 1935, Sudhindra organized a music conference in the Law Faculty Hall of Delhi University. Apart from classical musicians like Naseeruddin Dhurupadiya, S.D. Burman came with his stock of baul and bhatiyal songs from Bengal.

 

In 1939, Sudhindra set up the Delhi School of Hindustani Music and Dancing with Nirmala Joshi as the Principal. This institution became the basis of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. The family, along with others committed to the cause, would travel by bus to places like Meerut, Ajmer or Jaipur, to put up shows to gather funds for the school.

 

As the practice flourished, Sudhindra built a beautiful bungalow in the Civil Lines area designed by the eminent Delhi architect, Kothari. On the day of the 'grihapravesh', Sudhindra's young son, Hindol, flying a kite on the roof, fell through the skylight and had a miraculous escape. The house was considered inauspicious and when war broke out, 'well-wishers' advised him to sell it, for it might be requisitioned by the government. Thus, the family never left Kashmiri Gate, although the house was reputed to be haunted. Lights would come on mysteriously. Sounds of earth being turned would be heard at night and a mysterious beast-like face would appear at windows and terrify all those who saw it. On hot summer nights, they would sleep on charpoys on the terrace. If anyone left a pair of spectacles outside the mosquito net, they would often wake up to find a bespectacled monkey grinning back at them.

 

The war brought Hollywood films, the GIs and rationing. The older children passed out from St. Mary's, the younger children went to Presentation Convent. Two enigmatic teachers of English and Geography, Miss Fleming and Mrs. Rodric, decided to join J.D. Tytler's New Delhi Church High School which had been set up in tents in the Church of Redemption. It was this school which later became the Delhi Public School. Jayasree, Surendra's eldest daughter, along with many of the students left Presentation Convent and joined the new school. Her younger sisters followed suit. The classes then shifted out of the church and into tents at the Purana Qila grounds (1945).

 

As the war drew to a close, terrible Hindu Muslim riots wracked the country. Malabi and Dipak, the two eldest children of Sudhindra, left to pursue studies in England at the Royal Holloway College and the London School of Architecture, respectively. Interestingly, Malabi's letter of recommendation was written by Father Shore, who had kept in touch with the family. They left on the first ship that sailed for Europe after the cessation of hostilities. Dipak's coming-of- age gift from his father was a tin of cigarettes!

 

The house in Kashmiri Gate was surrounded by four mosques and in the evening crowds would gather and send up cries of Allahuakbar in the air. Some Sikh patients of Dr. Sen came from Sis Ganj Gurdwara and left four swords with the family. These had to be carefully hidden, for even the possession of a knife was declared illegal by the government. Monoja ordered her daughters-in-law to boil water and keep hot oil ready in case the house was attacked. The family was finally shifted to the residence of Atul Dasgupta and Dhiren Sen, both ICS officers on Raisina Road. Since food was scarce, they had to eat papad curry and omlette curry prepared from egg powder. The women put out their pickles in the sun; they also made small balls of 'gul' (coal dust mixed with cow dung) to be dried in the sun and be used as cheap fuel. For the children, with schools being closed for a month, it was one long picnic. Sudhindra went to his lab in Chandni Chowk every day. He was often stopped but spared, because he was a doctor. The sights he saw on either side of the road traumatised him for life.

 

When the riots were over and the children went back to school, more than half the class had left for Pakistan. There was a huge exodus of Hindu Punjabi population into Delhi and the aristocratic Muslim culture of Delhi irrevocably changed. In 1950, first Atashi, then Malasree and Malabi got married. The year began with a tragedy as Monoja died of cancer on the Ist of January. From this time on, the magic would slowly dissipate, imperceptibly at first but more rapidly later.

 

The Sens remained, however, along with scores of such Bengali families all over North India, the epitome of a liberal culture that is so important to recall and resurrect. People flowed like tributaries all over this great land, enriching, invigorating and creating. It is this willingness to both give and receive that made the itinerant Bengali remarkable and the genre of the 'probashi Bengali' ('foreign' Bengali) such an important part of the composite Indian culture.

__._,_.___

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___