Chronicler of Calcutta bids adieu to city of joy after 63 yrs

KOLKATA: When flight 6E-6965 to Kochi takes off from the Kolkata airport at 12 noon this Thursday, it will take away — for good — an important page of Kolkata’s history. Parameswaran Thankappan Nair, or P T Nair, the foremost surviving chronicler of Kolkata’s history, will return to his roots — in a small town in Kerala called Chendamangalam — leaving behind, forever, the city he has called home for 63 years.Nair arrived in Calcutta on a Thursday morning in October 1955, travelling ticketless on Madras Mail, as a 20-year-old with Rs 20 in his pocket. Sixty-three years later, as the 83-year-old prepared to pack his clothes — and his Remington typewriter, on which he banged out his adopted city’s many histories and myths — he spoke to TOI of his abiding love for the city and his love-at-first-sight moment. medium66752247That moment came on a tram that took him from Howrah to Dalhousie, across the Hooghly, when he got a glimpse of a city rising from its slumber; that “first sight of the city and its river after the mad rush of Howrah station” all combined to give him a high which, he admitted on Tuesday, held for 63 years.Nair, when he came to Calcutta armed only with his matriculation certificate and a set of clothes, did not have any plans of being the foremost chronicler of what once was the British empire’s second city. “All I knew was that I needed to find a person called U Raman, who worked at the General Post Office. I went to the GPO and took a seat facing the post boxes as I knew Raman used Post Box No. 906,” Nair reminisced on Tuesday at his Kansaripara residence, his home for most of his stay in the city.Raman did not come but a peon did, opening the post box. Nair followed this peon to Raman, who was also from Kerala and who invited Nair to his home near Kalighat temple. It was this journey from the GPO to Kalighat — made on foot — that convinced Nair that the love at first sight he felt for the city in the morning was not a fleeting emotion.Nair secured a steno-typist’s job at an office off Dalhousie Square; his first salary was Rs 130 at a time when two meals a day would cost Rs 1, he said on Tuesday, adding that he had managed “a fixed deposit of Rs 5 lakh in the 63 years between that 1955 October Thursday and this 2018 November Thursday”. medium67126319But money was the least of his concerns. The buildings that gave Calcutta its “City of Palaces” moniker and its streets soon took up much of Nair’s off-work hours. “Whenever I saw a building or a monument or came across some little-known street, I would collect material from different sources and make notes about its origin,” he said. “It is important to gather information from different sources — government records, newspaper clippings, local historians’ articles — to know a city’s history and dispel the myths about it. But written notes and histories have their limits. There is no substitute to walking the length and breadth of a city and listening to its oral histories from residents if you want to know it inside out,” Nair added. medium66752302Nair’s city has changed over the years. But its chronicler has not. He lives the same frugal life, still takes down notes of whatever he feels is important on the same small scraps of paper and uses his old, faithful typewriter. He still walks down to National Library. And, no, he does not use a mobile “lest it distract” him from his affair with the city.His wife of 52 years, Sita, has been his other pillar of support. She worked as a schoolteacher in Kerala and raised their children as he remained obsessed with his city. “Someone in a family has to make a few sacrifices for a greater cause. He is a shining star and I always want his rays of knowledge to dispel the darkness of ignorance,” she said.Nair realises what he is leaving behind. “I will miss the city and the city will, probably, miss me even more. But I am returning to my roots and will spend quality time with my family, which now includes my granddaughters,” he said. But he would be keeping himself busy, he added, by researching his native village and its history, its temples and place names in Kerala. 66752564A PARTING GIFT FOR A BELOVED CITYBefore bidding adieu to the city after 63 years, Nair will hand over his collection of 1,700 rare books to Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to help future researchers. This is the second time he is handing over his books. About two decades ago, in 1999, he had given 3,000 books to KMC. Nair said his gesture of gifting the books — his only prized possession — was meant to thank the city and its people for the love, affection and warmth he had received all these years. “I hope researchers and scholars find the books useful in future. There are still so many things about Kolkata that are unknown. The young generation should take interest in the city and unravel its myths and mysteries,” he said. The books, he explained deserved to stay here in the city for a greater cause.This article was originally published on November 21, 2018