A Dirge
Sushila Nibash: aesthetic beauty that is no more. Photo Courtesy: Dhaka: From Mughal Outpost to Metropolis by Golam Rabbani.
Yes, it was not there. But where was it then? Twice we went up and down the crowded road but to no avail. Sushila Nibash on 92 Aga Sadeq Road had disappeared! The beauty of a house which Golam Rabbani had thought fit enough to be included in his commendable album ‘‘Dhaka from Moghul Outpost to Metropolis”, the house in which my days as a young mother were spent, the house in which two of my babies were born, the house that had given us refuge, had dipped like the setting sun only never to appear again. Gradually it dawned upon me that those of us who had lived there would never see it again because it had been replaced by ugliness incarnate. In its place stood 97A to 97B Age Sadeq Road. The original majestic grandeur was replaced by common concrete bricks which resembled the heavy make up on a wrinkled face. The hideous, after a desecration of the beautiful was having the last laugh.
It was a shock akin to the sudden news of loss of a loved one. Golam Rabbani's album has mistakenly captioned it as 'A Zamindar's House'. This is misinformation. Sushila Nibash was built by a sub-inspector of police known as Mr. Addy. Surely this gentleman had the exquisite tastes of a Moghul king.
It so happened while showing our visiting British born grandson-in-law Sukhi photographs of old Dhaka in the album, we came across one of the house which attracted his attention. British environs had made him appreciative of things rare and antique. Sukhi expressed a desire to see it, and a Friday morning was set aside for the purpose. And this is how the story should have ended, but for some the beginning can be an end and the end a beginning.
Way back in 1947, on a wintry November evening when dusk had settled in, weary travellers from Kolkata, men and women with two toddlers, entered through the portals of Sushila Nibash. It was the year of partition--partition of roots from soil, partition of flesh and blood, partition of beliefs and friendships, partition of identity.
Four women, my grandmother, mother, aunt and myself, went to the backyard and sat on the broad steps. Three of us started sobbing, my aunt did not join the chorus as she was from Faridpur and was delighted to be back home. When shelter was scarce on both sides of the border this house was a haven of refuge for us. Did the steps ask the cudgels to be gentler because they had given some homeless people a place to sit and mourn for things lost forever?
In times to come, our Kolkata property was exchanged with Sushila Nibash. My uncle's family lived upstairs and we downstairs. Though cousins, my uncle's children were of the same age group as mine. By the late fifties there were nine of them altogether.
Little feet pattering up and down the stairs, the naughty ones stealing snacks from the 'niamat khana', dipping dirty little fingers in the pickle jars out in the sun and what not. Did the staircases remember the sound of their hushed voices and the light patter of their feet when heavy, brutal bars were pounding on them?
The intricate designs were carved out of multi coloured porcelain chips which in our days were called “China crazy”. The floors, though, were of glossy red cement. Our children's unostentatious, joyous and much looked forward to birthdays were celebrated on them. Did the even floors remember the shows our children along with Mrs. Akhter's kids Yasmeen, Afreen, Shafaat and Rukhsana performed on summer vacations?
Readers, if you ever come across the photograph you will notice a bar protruding from the central point of the roof. It is the support around which was a magnificent peacock spreading out of its flamboyant feathers. Way back in 1964, it was hit by lightning and so what now remains is only the rod, which held the structure together. Death for the peacock was sudden. A better end when compared to the mason's prolonged painful hammering.
There was a violin of multicoloured chips on the east wall; the strings were carved meticulously. What was the last music it played to stop the tormentors? Was it the last post?
It makes little sense being sentimental when sharing an era with Bill Gates and others like him. The old order has to change but the speed is astounding. The pride of living in ancestral homes is no more. Sheer logic demands that since the original price of the land on which they stand has gone up a hundred fold or more, why not go for a vertical expansion and satisfy personal and community needs that the explosive and claustrophobic population upsurge demands? But given the chance and the means, some old fogies like me would like to hold on to these priceless gems, repair them, renovate them and retrieve them from the clutches of time. Irrefutably, run of the mill dilapidated houses should give way to multistoried apartments. The poplars have to be felled and the whispering sounds of the cool colonnade must give way to the groaning of bulldozers and the screeching of drill machines. But to tear down relics or disfigure them is sacrilege. God bless the people who saved Ahsan Manzil from this disgrace. The unaesthetic crudity is not of recent origin. Way back in the sixties Shashi Lodge in Mymensingh was turned into the Women's Teacher Training College. Worse, ugly boxlike brick buildings were erected in front of it for hostel purposes, thus marring its pristine beauty. Was land so scarce that a relic had to be wantonly disfigured?
The horizo-vertical movement began some years back. Encroachment of land, filling up of water bodies and other such anomalies have been rampant, the infrastructure is not as reliable as expected, earthquake proof structures are hard to come by. But whining on in this labyrinth of no return has done no good to braver souls than mine.
Wanting to end on a lighter and happier tone, I would like to add that old Dhaka, after all, is a homely, friendly and neighbourly place to live in. My children living abroad have had the experience of seeing eyebrows raised when their friends came to know that I live in Churihatta in Old Dhaka. I enjoy their friends' reactions, but the offspring being of a different generation are hopping mad at me for owning such a postal address! Is the locality one’s seal of gentility? Old Dhaka to me is synonymous with Sushila Nibash, which again is synonymous with refuge and beauty.
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