🚂 Memories from another era

By Monisha Choudhury:

My mother's (Anima Basu nee Dey) father was Basanta Kumar Dey and Grandmom Parimal Dey (nee Mitra), after whom the Parimal cottage in Jorbagh is named. Dadu was a Senior officer in the railways and always travelled first class or had an entire bogey for himself and Dida/ Dimma. 

I faintly remember travelling to Calcutta with him once. We had to keep a notebook and calculate distance with speed and time from one station to another. Another vivid memory was to list the speciality of the city we passed, e.g. it was Meerut ki kanchi, Hathras ka ghee, Aligarh ka tala, Kanpur ka leather chappal, Allahabad ke amrud (guava), Mughal Sarai ka khilona, Durgapur ke wooden khilona lattoo tea set in red, Burdwan ke mihidana. The tea in earthen kullhars became less milky and more flavourful as we travelled into West Bengal from Bihar.

Dada (Biswajit Badu) lived in Jorbagh after Daddy was posted to Jabalpur. He stayed on from 1963 to 66 in Jorbagh with our grandparents. He graduated school from St Columbus and joined DMET Kolkata after that. (Blogger Note: More about DMET days is in this post)

Jorbagh Dadu’s father was Rai Sahib Purna Chandra Rai and he was an Under Secretary in Delhi during British Raj. His wife was Manimala Dasi. I remember Ma telling me she had cancer of the cervix and the whole family had moved to Patna for her radiotherapy. They lived next door to Rajendra Prasad. Ma recalled the great earthquake of the 1930s then and how the stairs they were sitting on and eating peas, had its bottom disappear in front of their eyes while they were suspended in mid air! (Blogger Note: An 8.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Nepal and Bihar in 1934. You can read more about it 

here) 

(Chart credit: Madeleine)