A home extraordinaire

A Boys Home right next to a convent in Calcutta (now Kolkata) may evoke arched eyebrows today. However, Dr. Grahams Homes chose that very locale at Middleton Row for a half way house for boys. Those boys who may come to seek a calling or pursue higher education in the bustling city of Calcutta far away from their idyllic school settings in Kalimpong. The foundation stone laid on 8th July 1925 reads: "A gift from Sir Archibald Birkmyre to the Reverend Dr. John Anderson Graham for the boys of Kalimpong". Yours truly, a Dillir Bangali, sometime in early eighties, by some divine serendipity, chanced to seek lodgings upon this hoary institution. Patronage having slacked temporarily, Birkmyres was obliged to seek paying boarders. The parsimonious Mr. French, affectionately called, you got it right, Frenchie, surveyed me from the top to bottom and thundered, " You pay bills on time, you stay or out you go". The overture to Birkmyres Hostel & Club was intimidating, the stay, Dickensian!

Undeniably, the heady days of Calcutta were long over. Blue Fox where Pam Crain and Louis Banks set jazz nights ablaze had shut shop, Miss Shefali no longer performed at Firpo's or Grand and the charms of Free School Street had jaded. Calcutta, yes still Calcutta, neither cared nor craved redemption. But read on friends, for here is a city which has an inexplicable stratagem that grabs souls and changes beings forever. Calcutta with its improbable nom, cité des palais, singularly caches numerous edifices which possess infinite metaphysical energy. On first sight, Birkmyres is certainly not akin to a palace. It is a genteel four storied colonial vestige, imposing in its own way, solid, spacious, alluring but also a wee bit daunting. It has high ceilings, huge windows, a ball room, hall for dining, a heavy wooden staircase in the cavernous interiors, even a descript and non-functional wooden lift! The ventilation is excellent and interiors so airy that even the fiercest summer days and balmy pre monsoon nights have scant impact on its sanctum. Mind you, those days Calcutta had constant load shedding. With clockwork precision, electricity would go off at 11 30 pm, resulting in an exodus of residents, armed with bed sheets and pillows to the roof top. Being a Delhite, I was familiar with sleeping on rooftops but Calcuttans found it bucolic. The dew factor and occasional rains also played spoilsport. A surprising aspect was the total absence of mosquitoes which were constant companions elsewhere in Calcutta.

Initially, I was allocated a suite which I shared with another resident. Later, I shifted to a 12 feet by 10 feet wooden partitioned space which went for a room. At Birkmyres, every resident was allotted a butler whom he shared with three to four other residents. Like the proverbial Jeeves, they conducted meal service, collected postal mails, handled laundry and infrequently run errands. Their smooth flowing motions of placing cutlery, unobtrusively helping a resident select the correct fork or knife or gently guiding a resident's elbows off the table could easily outdo the services of any premium five-star hotel or luxury cruise. Admittedly the food was tasty, what irked was the quantity or to be precise, the lack of it. The rules were clear, strictly no second helpings; asking the proverbial Oliver Twistian - " May I have some more"; blasphemous. Food was important business at Birkmyres. Like the typical Englishmen fretting over London weather, the residents would constantly agonize over food. Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner would at times be punctuated with Mr French's portly, young daughter yelling at the cooks or the butlers - "Baba logo ko khana diya ? Dekar jaldi se upar aney kaa". It never occurred to her that her baba log were anything between eighteen to sixty years of age.

The sixty years old persona was a permanently sozzled, pale, feverish looking Anglo-Indian Piano Player and Tuner. He slept most part of the day and in evening, donning his frayed suit went out to play piano, arriving back at wee hours of morning. The eighteen-year lad was a rather innocent looking scion of a wealthy tea estate family. Having come to Calcutta for advanced studies in English literature, he would occasionally holler out to one fortyish punjabi resident, whose last name was Talwar; "Tally Ho, Lets Go". Upon my quizzing, he sheepishly admitted the signature call had origins in Enid Blyton's, Tally Ho Cottage. His potential as a really serious student of English literature was revealed, on a late evening stroll, when we espied a young lad doing his bit on a side wall instead of an urinal. The eighteen-year-old, spontaneously remarked, "That's what I call, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Now, Talwar, a Chartered Accountant by profession, could often be heard calling out to his beloved, Anarkali in a love lorn voice. It was later that I leant Anarkali was a famous restaurant serving delicious piping hot parathas and other North Indian savories. On numerous occasions, I had the privilege of breaking bread with Mr. Talwar at the famed restaurant, just off Esplanade. He was so disgusted with the food he was forced to partake that he sought transfer out of Calcutta. So much for Calcutta being a haven for foodies. Another resident, hailing from Benares, was a riveting story teller. His skills were practiced, in pitch darkness, during load shedding. The stories were macabre, based in the city of his birth and revolved around the famed cremation grounds of Manikarnika Ghat. His listeners were left terrorized, trembling and sleepless. Another oddity of a person was a trainee accountant whom otherwise I found quite sober, mature and collected. Only, one day, he disclosed that his mother had such a propensity and acute sense of smell that she could decipher seriatim what a person had eaten in last several meals. Much afterwards, someone told me, he was undergoing therapy. Of course, there were the elite, corporate boxwalla type residents too. One worked in Grindlays Bank; flush with funds, he would sponsor many an unsavory escapade of residents. Another was a Shaw Wallace executive who would leave immaculately dressed in morning and return in evening, barely recognizable and covered in smelly molasses. Still another, in his thirties, worked as a senior executive in Shalimar Tar Products. His favourite prank was to slip, in wee hours of morning, under the residents' doors, erotic novels.

Although, there were in house sports facilities like Tennis, Basket Ball, Table Tennis, Carrom etc. the favorite way of spending time for residents was gallivanting around Park Street or drinking tea at a roadside tea stall, christened "Chota Mocambo" to spite the famous eatery. Late night shows of English movies at New Empire, Elite or Metro were an escape into air-conditioned nirvana. Sheer necessity though dictated eating over movies. There was a plethora of choices; Nizams, Anarkali, Kalimpong Bakery, Golden Dragon and once in a while, The Other Room or Olympia. Birkmyrians were a laidback, happy go lucky crowd. Easily pleased, with no grand ambitions nor desire to reach anywhere with alacrity; perhaps a bequest of the city. I was enjoying my newly got freedom and having a time of my life. Alas, my posting orders came in fall of 1982 with directions to report at New Delhi HQ immediately. I started feeling nostalgic and looked for some sort of shoring up from fellow residents. I was left trifle surprised by the rather lukewarm response. The general concern seemed to be about selection of the person who would be seeing me off at the station. The chore fell upon a Marwari boy, hailing from a business family of Giridih, who was pursuing his B.Com.

It was a sweaty, weekday afternoon when I last knocked at Mr. French's door to say goodbye. He shook my hand limply and blessed me curtly. I came down to the ground floor where the Taxi was waiting. There was no one to say goodbye or give best wishes. I put my small suitcase in the dickey of the taxi, the dhoti clad chowkidar from Bihar, with whom we had several altercations over late arrival after night outs, waved me through and immediately shut the imposing gate. I tried to look back through the taxi's rear window but having exited towards Park Street the neighboring buildings blocked my view. I was bereft of even a last look at Birkmyres. This boy loyally accompanied me to the Howrah station. We hardly spoke on the way. He stood on the platform beside me, silent and resolute. When the train left, from the carriage door, I could still see him standing at the spot, before it became hazy. He had performed his duty in the best tradition of Birkmyres. Somehow, down the years, the parting still rankled a bit.

Now I live a retired life in Delhi. Recently, in one of my desultory internet meanderings, I came upon a short write up which informed that Birkmyres had temporarily closed down for repairs and residents shifted to other hostels. Few days later, another article, posted circa 2021, caught my attention. The home's Board of Management had offered Birkmyres as a Safe Centre for Covid patients of Kolkata. The authorities had found the building with its high ceilings, large windows, airy interiors etc. ideal for the purpose. In a flash, it dawned on me, the existential message Birkmyres had always tried to convey right through my on boarding, stay and demise. Life indeed is a many splendored things, full of ups and downs, joys and sorrows. But for all its sound and fury, life is actually a half way house where we leave indelible prints. After a life of 130 years of faithful, unabashed, selfless service, Birkmires like a phoenix, rose to combat Covid. And in so doing Birkmyres immortalized itself. Birkmyres was never an abode for boys; Birkmyres was the quintessence of life.

Views expressed are personal