Column
Instagram.com/easterneyenews/ • www.easterneye.biz • April 11, 2025
Amit Roy
Amit Roy
“THE British left all this behind,”
says Gaya Prasad Sitaram, with
an expansive sweep of his hand.
He is indicating the trees in
the Botanic Gardens in Kolkata
where the 76-year-old, who owns
a sari store in nearby Howrah,
takes his morning walk.
The gardens were founded in
1787 by Colonel Robert Kyd, an
East India Company army offic-
er. A major change in policy was
introduced by the botanist Wil-
liam Roxburgh after he became
superintendent of the gardens
in 1793. Roxburgh brought in
plants from all over India and
developed an extensive herbari-
um. There is a plan to restore
the house, which was home to
Roxburgh, revered as the “father
of Indian botany”.
I arrived at 8am with my
niece and brother-in-law to es-
cape the heat of the day. Instead
of going to the holy Ganges, I
find the lotus pond where I toss
in a lipstick and a hairpin in
painful memory of a lost love.
Once known as the Royal Bo-
tanic Gardens and then the Cal-
cutta Botanic Gardens, the
place is now called the Acharya
Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian
Botanic Garden. (Later I ring
Cipla chairman Yusuf Hamied
in Spain and tell him that Bose,
like him, studied science at
Christ’s College, Cambridge).
Bose discovered radio waves
before Marconi, and later showed
that plants respond to light.
Sitaram said there are 14,000
species of trees and plants in
the gardens which cover some
270 acres. The star attraction is
the ‘Great Banyan Tree’, be-
lieved to be 250 years old. It was
recorded to be the largest tree
specimen in the world in the
Guinness Book of World Records
in 1989. It has survived cyclones
in 1864, 1867, and 2020.
The Great Banyan, which is
protected by a circular fence,
appears more like a dense forest
than as an individual tree.
Club legacy of the Raj
THE British departed India when
the country they had ruled more
or less or 200 years became inde-
pendent in 1947.
But what they left behind, espe-
cially in Calcutta (now called Kol-
kata), are their clubs. Then, as
now, they remain a sanctuary for
the city’s elite.
One evening, I am invited to din-
ner at the Bengal Club by a friend,
Devdan Mitra, deputy editor of the
Telegraph, an English-language
newspaper. The club, the oldest in
India, will celebrate its 200th anni-
versary in February 2027.
Devdan’s position as a member
of the food sub-committee is an
exalted one, for the Bengal Club
prides itself on its culinary excel-
lence. It has a reputation for its
lobster thermidor, though I am
happy with the grilled beckti.
The beckti, or barramundi fish,
is known by many names around
the world, including giant perch
and Australian seabass.
“Our beckti is the fresh river va-
riety, not sea beckti, which isn’t as
nice,” says Devdan.
For dessert, I am persuaded to
share a soufflé with him.
Once upon a time, Indians were
not allowed into the club, as Lord
Minto discovered when he invited
Sir Rajendra Nath Mookerjee, a
Ben gali nobleman, to dinner in
1906. “But he’s my guest,” protest-
ed Minto when the doorman
barred the Indian from entering
the premises.
The doorman was not impres-
sed that Minto was viceroy and
governor-general of India (from
November 1905 to November 1910).
“Rules are rules,” he said.
An embarrassed Minto prom-
ised his guest: “I will get you the
land to start your own club where
there will be no discrimination.”
In such a manner was the Cal-
cutta Club born in 1907. Its first
president was the Maharajah of
Cooch Behar, Sir Nripendra Naray-
an. The Prince of Wales, later King
Edward VIII, had lunch at the club
on December 28, 1921.
Today, the club has a ‘Nirad C
Chaudhuri corner’, housing rare
books, paintings and awards that
had once belonged to the eminent
author who spent the last decades
of his life in Oxford.
In fact, I actually rescued his
belongings when they were about
to be stolen and arranged for them
to be shipped to the Calcutta Club
after the author died in Oxford in
1999. But that is another story.
Meanwhile, in the dining room
of the Bengal Club, the turbanned
waiters were moving about like
Jeeves. I asked Devdan about one
of the several portraits of English-
men that still hang in the club. It
was that of Charles Metcalfe, the
son of a major general who was the
club’s second president and held
the post for 11 years until 1838.
The Bengalis have decided not
to take down the portraits of those
who once lorded it over India.
“They are part of our history,”
Devdan points out.
As I leave, I notice a marble
plaque which says the Bengal Club
had once been Lord Macaulay’s
house. He had considered it to be
“the best in Calcutta”.
I believe it’s the same (Thomas
Babington) Macaulay who once
boasted: “A single shelf of a good
European library was worth the
whole native literature of India
and Arabia.”
Part of me wishes the British
had settled in India and, in time,
said the opposite of Rishi Sunak:
“Of course, I am Indian.”
Views in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper
SANCTUARIES FOR COLONIAL ELITE NOW POPULAR WITH INDIANS
CULTURE secretary Lisa
Nandy, the only person of
Indian origin in prime
minister Sir Keir Starmer’s
cabinet, will reportedly be
visiting Mumbai and Del-
hi at the end of the month.
As a sort of “homecom-
ing”, Lisa ought to swing
by Kolkata.
There was a
time when
I used to
write qu-
ite a bit
about
her father, Dipak K Nandy,
an academic who was ac-
tive in race relations and
was the first director of
the Runnymede Trust.
He was born in Calcutta
in 1936, went to Britain in
1956, and turns 89 on May
21. He first married Marga-
ret Gracie, a fellow student
at Leeds, in 1964. Lisa was
born in 1979, from his se-
cond marriage to (Ann)
Luise Byers, a daughter
of Lord Byers, leader of
the Liberals in the
House of Lords.
I am also told that
Lisa “wants to en-
gage with the di-
aspora commu-
nity”, so perhaps
she should at-
tend Eastern
Eye’s Arts, Cul-
ture & Theatre
Awards (ACTA)
on May 23.
IN THE 14 years that I
have been away for vari-
ous personal reasons, Kol-
kata, I find, hasn’t changed
that much.
But I have very quickly
got used to the way of life
here. The loud dawn cho-
rus at home includes a
very noisy kokil (koel in
Hindi and the long-tailed
cuckoo in English).
We have more trees here
than almost anywhere else
in the city. And the kites
wheeling high in the sky
remind me of the Kipling
poem that precedes The
Jungle Book: Now Chil the
Kite brings home the night/
That Mang the Bat sets
free/ The herds are shut in
byre and hut,/For loosed
till dawn are we./
This is the hour of pride
and power,/ Talon and
tush and claw./
Oh, hear the call!/ Good
hunting all/That keep the
Jungle Law!”
I have been reading my
niece’s PhD thesis on the
women of the Sunderban
forests that separate West
Bengal from Bangladesh.
This is also tiger country,
where villagers are snat-
ched if they venture into
the forests to collect honey.
My niece received a stan-
ding ovation from her exa-
miners when she formally
presented her thesis at the
Tata Institute of Social Sci-
ences: Gender Dimensions
of Livelihood Diversifica-
tion: A study in the Sunder-
ban region of West Bengal.
What has caused a so-
cial revolution is that most
urban women are educat-
ed and in the workforce.
None of the UK’s “can’t
work or won’t work”.
But my niece will have
to leave West Bengal to
find employment in aca-
demia. Like everyone in
India, she uses her mobile
phone for everything.
Nandy’s ‘homecoming’
Cuckoos in dawn chorus
Wonders of the city’s Great Banyan Tree
in Kolkata
TIMELESS CHARM: The Great Banyan Tree; and
(above left) the lotus pond in the Botanic Gardens
FAMILY TIES:
Lisa Nandy
SENSE OF
HISTORY: Amit Roy
with the Lord
Macaulay plaque;
and (above, from
left) the Calcutta
Club; and the
Bengal Club lawns
ANIMAL PLANET:
The Sunderbans
is tiger country
© Carl Court/
Getty Images
© Calcutta Club Limited
© Deshakalyan Chowdhury/
AFP via Getty Images