Re-Visiting Calcutta’s Highlights: Motherhouse of Mother Teresa, St. John’s Church Complex, Jorasanko Thakurbari (Rabindranath Tagore’s House and Museum).
Calcutta
August 27, 2022
Breakfast in Hotel Fairlawn:
I woke up in Hotel Fairlawn to the realization that it was our wedding anniversary and that, sadly, Llew and I were so far away from each other. It would be late in the day when we would actually chat with each other and send each other wishes for many more happy years to come.
One of the great pleasures for me of waking up in a place away from home is the certain knowledge that I have a delightful breakfast to which to look forward. With the Anglo-Indian conference behind me and the bulk of my professional responsibilities over, I could focus on enjoying the next two days in Calcutta.
But then I awoke and had another irritating issue to deal with—there was no hot water in my room again for the second day. Of course, I was not going to take a cold shower two days running and so I called the Reception and told them to change my room immediately. This was arranged instantly and I was made to rearrange my stuff and my schedule to accommodate this unforeseen hitch.
My friend Prof. Sudarshana Sen, a sociologist who works in Malda, an eight-hour train journey from Calcutta, had caught the night train and we’d made plans to meet right after I was done with breakfast. Accordingly, I was to see her in the hotel lobby at 9.15 am. But, needless to say, I ended up running late as changing rooms and them taking a shower totally pushed my schedule behind.
When I did get down to breakfast, I sat right under a fan in the restaurant (rather than in the open-air atrium) as it is very warm out of an air-conditioned space. I ordered a tall glass of watermelon juice, a plate of fresh mango, a Mushroom and Cheese Omelet and insisted, this time, on finding both of them inside. This came with a hash brown and a grilled tomato. While I was in the middle of my breakfast, Sudarshana arrived and I ordered a cappuccino for her so that she had some refreshment while I continued with my breakfast as she had already eaten. About a half hour later, we were ready to leave and called an Uber so that we could get to the first place on my list.
Visiting the Motherhouse of St. Teresa of Calcutta:
I have visited the headquarters of Mother Teresa’s order in Calcutta but it was long ago and not after she passed away. Hence, on this visit, I was keen to see her grave site and tomb (Samadhi in Hindi). Sudarshana and I took an Uber there and reached in about 20 minutes. The entrance is very modest indeed as are the rest of the premises. You enter through a side door that simply says ‘Mother House’ and has a photograph of the saint. When we were there, there were just a handful of visitors—probably far greater hordes arrive in winter when the weather is much nicer. Mass (or a prayer service) was about to begin and an assembly of people were seated on the pews facing a small shrine.
On the other side of the room, the tomb stone is clearly demarcated. It is a very plain stone—just a slab of white marble on a raised platform. The tombstone contains her name Mother Teresa, M.C. (Missionaries of Charity). Her dates are also engraved (1910-1997) and below it reads: “Our dearly beloved mother foundress of the Missionaries of Charity”. And that’s it. There is a garland of marigold, a wooden rosary, two vases with artificial flowers and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary propped up on the tombstone. Simplicity personified. Visitors recite a few prayers at the site and there are benches on which you can sit if you fancy a longer visit. The tombstone is surrounded by quotations from the saint and a number of paintings depicting her work among the Lord’s poorest.
Mother Teresa’s Museum:
Next door, visitors make their way to a very modest and tiny museum that is crammed with all sorts of memorabilia from her life. Photography is not permitted and in the one large room, partitioned into two spaces, there were a number of novices who were clad in the white sari that lacks the distinctive three blue stripes that become part of the order’s habit upon graduation.
And what did the museum contain? Well, a lot of her own personal possessions—her sandals, her handbag, her cardigan, the aluminum bucket with which she showered, her plate, fork, spoon, knife, mug, glass, a single clothes-pin. Most significant is her Nobel Prize citation as well as the large number of international awards she received. There are lots of pictures on the wall featuring Mother with various dignitaries, heads of state, politicians, not to mention with members of her own order. Many paintings that depict her work are also on the walls as well as sculptured busts. There are stamps and first day covers from various countries that depict her image. It is really a wonderful receptacle of treasures from her life and I found all of it quite fascinating. We spent more than half an hour there before we went to the next show-piece in the space: a peep into Mother Teresa’s room.
A Peep into Mother Teresa’s Room:
As might be expected, Mother Teresa’s room in the Motherhouse is spartan. You climb a flight of stairs and then peep into a room that is literally gated and locked. Inside, there is a simple bed which looked rather small (probably to fit her small frame), a table and a bench (there is a picture on the wall of Pope John Paul II seated with her at that same table), a small wooden cupboard and a crucifix on the wall. And that is it. Also, the room is tiny—which makes me wonder what the rooms of the rest of the order are like—they ran along long corridors that were sparkling clean and very well maintained.
Outside, as we were leaving the main complex, we saw a bronze sculpture of the saint with a garland of white flowers in her hand. Of course, this has become a place of pilgrimage of sorts for all the faithful who are now turning to her in prayer since she has become a saint. I find it interesting that so many people I know actually had personal contact with her during her own lifetime. They were either blessed by her or had spoken to her and tell the tale quite proudly. I find it fascinating that all these people actually have had first-hand contact with a saint.
Off to the Church of St. John:
I told Sudarshana that the next items on my agenda was a visit to the Church of St. John; but she misunderstood me and thought I wanted to go to the Church of St. James which was across the road. We visited it, of course, as it was antiquated both inside and out and dates from the mid-1800s. But as this was not the church I wished to see, we did not stay long.
We called for another Uber and ten minutes later, were whisked off to the huge complex that comprises the premises of St. John’s Church which is the oldest Anglican Church in Calcutta. I was amazed at how beautiful this part of Calcutta is—quiet, orderly, clean, empty of human beings. I suppose, by contrast, you will understand what my impressions of the rest of Calcutta are (but that’s a story for another day).
Suffice to say that you walk into a vast property, pay Rs. 10 for a ticket to roam the premises and are struck immediately by the striking white church with its brown brick spire that contains a huge clock. For the next hour, Sudarshana and I lost ourselves in this magnificent space. I did have my notes with me (from Lonely Planet) and they were the guide that saw us through the various parts of the church—both inside and out. We walked into the church and, at the covered porch itself, I was struck by the stone plaque proclaiming that Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of India, laid the fountain stone in 1784 when the church first opened to the public on land donated to the East India Company by Maharaja Nawab Kishen Bahadur.
Inside, like St. Thomas’ Cathedral in Bombay, there are innumerable mortuary marble plaques on the wall that follow you as you walk down the main aisle to the front of the church where mosaic panels adorn the area behind the altar as well as the altar itself. We spent a while in prayer and then read our notes to ensure we did not miss anything of significance. So many of the items that drew our attention in the church added to our sense of awe and reverence for Indo-British history. Here are some of them:
--Plaque that denotes commemoration for James Pattle, great great grandfather of the historian William Dalrymple
--Plaque that denotes commemoration for James Achilles Kirkpatrick, Resident of Hyderabad, who married Khair-u-Nissa, a Moghul princess. Their love story was the subject of Dalrymple’s book, White Moghuls
--All manner of commemorative plaques with a striking one produced after World War I in Art Deco style to remember a fallen soldier in a side chapel.
--Beautiful stained glass window panels in a side chapel.
--The most striking element in this church is a painting of The Last Supper by Johann Zoffany who was inspired by Leonardo’s masterpiece in Milan. He used contemporary British colonials as his models and he filled the canvas with Indian motifs such as the goatskin water bag which is very prominent in the foreground. The painting dominates one side of the church. It is gigantic. It was done in the 1780s and restored in 2010 and looks brand new.
--Records of every Chaplain that has ever served the Anglican Church in Calcutta starting from 1677 to the present day. Nobody was as good as the British when it came to record-keeping all over their empire.
Visiting the First Office of the East India Company:
We thought we were done with the interior of this impressive church with all its abundant memorabilia when one of the helpers in the church opened up a small door leading to a sort of secret room in the front vestibule of the church and announced to us that it was the very first office of the East India Company in Calcutta. I was simply stunned. Inside, we found a small space that would have looked the same in the late 1700s. There is a gorgeous ebony round table in the center surrounded by beautiful ebony carved chairs, each of which is in a different pattern and design. On the walls are dozens of photos, prints, drawings, water colors and charcoal drawings, including a framed specimen of Warren Hastings’ signature and a self-portrait of Zoffany whose amazing painting is in the church. In addition, there are safes, clocks, knife boxes and all sorts of ephemera that take us back to a bygone era with such an immediacy that it was a bit scary. I loved being in this space and since photographs were allowed inside, I took some.
Outside the Church of St. John:
If the inside of the Church of St. John is so marvelous, you will be stunned with how much interest the outside holds. There are a number of mausoleums that memorialize prominent colonials who made their mark on Calcutta in the early days of the British Raj (while it was still the East India Company administering the city rather than the British crown). The most important of these is the mausoleum of Job Charnock who is considered the Founder of Calcutta. His structure is designed in Moorish style in grey and white and is set slightly away from the church itself although it is well within the compound. Right next to it, is another structure that remembers a British lady called Frances Johnson who married five times and survived four husbands with whom she had several children. There is also a superb memorial monument to the notorious incident of the Black Hole of Calcutta in which several British and Anglo-Indian soldiers lost their lives at the hand of Nawab Sirah-u-Daulah. The incident sparked off the infamous Battle of Plassey in 1757. Many names of British worthies are mentioned and it is with a kind of reverence that one reads them all. I was quite excited to see the gravestone of Lord Brabourne, Governor of Bombay and for a while Acting Viceroy. The famous Brabourne Cricket Stadium in Bombay is named after him. In the back porch of the church, there is a beautiful monument to Lady Canning, French wife of India's first Viceroy, Lord Canning. It is amazing how superbly these bits of Indo-British history have been preserved (and how few people know about them or come to see them).
And so, we paused at each of these monuments under the blazing heat of the sun and almost 100% humidity that made it feel much hotter than the 82 degrees it was supposed to be. Poor Sudarshana was wrung out by our exertions and does not seem to have the staying power and endurance I have. Furthermore, she had traveled on a train all night and probably did not get too much sleep. When I saw how tired she looked, I suggested she return to her parents’ home and relax and that perhaps we could meet at dinner later that evening. She liked the idea and straight away made a reservation at a famous restaurant in Calcutta called 6 Ballygunge Place that is reputed for its typical Bangla food. We decided we would re-connect at 7.30 pm and indeed that was how we parted. We stopped for a cold Sprite at a small bakery because we both badly needed to rehydrate with long cold drinks and then she and I called for individual Ubers and were on our separate ways. I was headed to the next item on my agenda—a visit to the home of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
Visiting Jorasanko Thakurbari (Home and Museum of Rabindranath Tagore):
Lonely Planet lists this venue as one of the highlights of Calcutta and as I had never really visited it before, I decided to do so this time. I say really because I have actually visited it once before—on a previous visit to Calcutta—during a literary festival, my friend Mita had taken me to see a performance of Indian dance on the ‘stage’ in this grand sprawling mansion. But it was dark and followed a very long day on my feet. I was very tired then and certainly did not have the energy to explore it—which was not even possible on that occasion.
This time, I covered it minutely. Again, there was a Rs. 10 entrance fee and believe me, one would be hard pressed to spend a tenner more efficiently. The place is in a tucked-away enclave in a corner of a really busy road called Rabindra Sarani (named, of course, for the poet). It is a sprawling mansion of 35,000 meters’ area on two floors, surrounded by vast green lawns. A small sculpture of Tagore is in the front lawns, but this is the only area where you can take pictures. Photography is strictly prohibited inside and the guards are quite vicious about the policy.
And what a place this is! I guess I did not know what to expect when I came here and I was quite overwhelmed by the immensity of it all. This house was built by the poet’s father, Debendranath Tagore, who made a fortune in coal mining commissions by setting up a firm with British collaboration called Corr, Tagore and Co. Of course, I had no idea Tagore came from so much money but indeed it was this resource that helped him travel around the world (almost an impossibility in those days) and reach such diverse audiences. As the visitor goes from room to room, you come across the ‘maternity room’ in which he was born and the room in which he breathed his last in 1941 on the bed that is also in the room. From detailed curatorial notes, the viewer learns that Tagore was very ill in the last year of his life and repeatedly suffered renal (kidney) disease which, ultimately, killed him. You also learn that by the time of his death, he was an iconic figure and probably Bengal’s most beloved son. Thousands of people crowded his mansion as news of his death spread.
In addition to this, there are rooms filled with photographs, paintings, his poetry, plays, short stories, novels, etc. Tagore’s long association with four countries (Japan, China, the USA and Hungary) are documented in four different sections or galleries that contain a vast amount of memorabilia from his visits to these nations and his contact with intellectuals from these institutions. So engrossed and so tired was I by the content of this material in this museum that I was just barely conscious of the fact that it had started pouring outside. I thought this was a very welcome occurrence as it had been blisteringly hot and I felt sure the temperature would cool down considerably with the rain. What I did not realize was that the rain was torrential and continued for at least two hours!
Caught in the Worst Flash Floods Imaginable:
The end result was that by the time I was ready to leave the museum about two and half hours later, water had accumulated in almost the entire city of Calcutta! Right outside the museum gate, there was about two inches of water and I literally had to take off my sandals and wade through it to reach the watchman’s cabin where, as I had to call for an Uber, I was made very comfortable by the watchman.
When I called for an Uber, I was told the closest one would take 25 minutes to reach me. I began to feel really nervous about getting back to my hotel, but the most astonishing part of all was how easily the rest of the Calcuttans seemed to take the floods in their stride—as if this were a regular occurrence and not at all something about which to be perturbed!
Eventually, when my Uber came, a good 45 minutes later, my poor driver literally had to drive me through hell and high water to get me back to my hotel. A short journey of 4 kilometers (2 miles) took more than an hour. At times, we inched through areas where the floods were at least knee high. I do not understand by what miracle I was able to reach my destination and I can only put it down to the calmness and patience of my driver who used every bit of driving skill to get me there.
By the time I reached my hotel, I was so shaken by the unexpectedness of the entire experience that all thoughts of going out again for dinner were wiped off my mind. In the safety of my room, where I simply threw myself on my bed to recover from the experience, I texted Sudarshana and told her to cancel our reservation. She had been texting me to find out if I had reached my hotel safely and, quite understandably, was of the same mind when I suggested we cancel. So, in the end, I did not get a chance to try out the cuisine at 6 Ballygunge Place. But this was a small price to pay for staying safe, dry and warm in the sanctuary of my hotel room.
Dinner at my Hotel:
Not surprisingly, when I went down to the restaurant in the hotel, I decided to have a mango lassi, a bowl of hot and sour soup which was served with a slice of garlic bread and a salad that was advertised on the menu as being a Greek Salad with goat cheese and caramelized walnuts. As it turned out, the lassi was warm, the hot and sour soup was the hottest and sourest soup I have ever tasted and the salad turned out to have feta, not goat cheese, in it. The walnuts were non-existent—what I did get were crunchy bits of sweet praline that did not go well at all with the savory nature of the feta and created a very jarring mouth feel. I ordered a tiramisu (which was on the menu) for dessert, but was informed that it was not available!
It was when I was leaving that I ran into Nimmi and Diamond Oberoi, the couple that run the hotel. They belong to the famous family of the Oberois, the scion (now deceased) who had pioneered the five-star hotel culture in India (M.S. Oberoi). They invited me to sit with them and we chatted for quite a long while as I recounted for them the ups and downs of my day—from scintillating lessons in spirituality and poetry that I picked up from Mother Teresa and Tagore (both Poet Laureates and both from Calcutta) and the history that so enthralled me at St. John’s Church to the horror of the flash floods. I took a picture with them when I realized that in the good old days I had taken a picture with Violet Smith and her English daughter, Jennifer (former owners of the hotel). We exchanged phone numbers and I adjourned to my room where I received a call from Tony, a friend in Canada, who was calling to wish me for my wedding anniversary. We had a long chat and then I dialed Llew to finally wish him after such an adventurous day. (He was en route to New Jersey for a big party at our friends’ The Rajans’ place). Just a little later, I called it a night.
Until tomorrow…
