WALK THE CHOWK
Now conducted online, the ‘walks’ organised by Heritage Walk Calcutta are an antidote to hollow nostalgia
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HWC The academic both and research accounts anecdotal Kolkata to bring its alive for walkers
Much of the heritagewalk industry in India peddles nostalgia and notions of a romantic past. Calcutta is a prime site for such soft-focus confections. Even as the city’s built heritage continues to be vandalised and dismantled by the nexus of builders and succeeding political parties in power, clichés about the city being the capital of history, culture and heritage abound in everything from government brochures to Bollywood middle-cinema.
Heritage Walk Calcutta (Heritagewalkcalcutta.com), founded three years ago by Dr Tathagata Neogi and Chelsea McGill, provides a much-needed antidote to this hollow nostalgia and brings academic rigour and inventiveness to the exercise. Typically, you would meet the team at around 7.30 am, have a bhaand of tea and begin your walk. On a Durga Puja walk, the context of the spread of the urban puja within the rise of Kolkata’s zamindari class is wonderfully explained, with the walk leader delivering information and anecdotes about the richly-layered history of the ritual and the patron community, painting a picture of a sub-city of rich Bengali entrepreneurs and landowners coming up inside the burgeoning colonial centre.
In view of the lockdowns and requirements of physical distancing, HWC has begun conducting ‘walks’ online via Zoom. The format has the same convivial but rigorous spirit as the physical walks. The leader of the tour now has at their disposal maps, archival photos and videos of the areas being explored. For instance, one ‘architecture walk’ takes you down the historical Chowringhee road as it transforms from a dirt track with ponds on one side and the city’s early colonial mansions on the other, to the city-defining boulevard of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the World War 2 walk, you find yourself in roughly the same area but with a whole different history unfolding as the city goes through influx of foreign troops, famine and communal bloodshed.
HWC provides a refreshing model that other ‘heritage’ entrepreneurs could look to as a method that incorporates research with a respect for heritage as a lived experience rather than glorifying the city for the many tropes of decay and preservation.