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THE TIMES OF INDIA | KOLKATA

SATURDAY | JANUARY 31, 2015

WEEKEND FOCUS

Kolkata: His Story

Pix: Kamalendu Bhadra

PT Nair has spent 60 years collecting and researching nuggets about the citys rich history.
Prithvijit Mitra chronicles the life of Kolkatas chronicler, fondly known as the barefoot historian

arameswaran Thankappan Nair had

arrived in Kolkata one sultry autumn
morning 60 years ago, travelling ticketless and barefoot from his village in
Kerala and fell in love with the city.
He had never been to a metro before,
never journeyed in a train and didnt quite intend
to come to Kolkata either. But once he set his sights
on the chaos and the crowd standing amidst a sea
of railway passengers on the Howrah station platform, he vowed to dig his heels and stay put till he
had explored the city. For Kolkata chronicler and
writer P T Nair, the endeavour continues for, as
he says, he is yet to have enough of the city and its
warmth.
Over the last six decades, Nair has penned more
than 50 books on Kolkata, each a result of meticulous research that took him to virtually every lane
and bylane of the city, and through countless books
and documents. He has collected more than 10,000
books, gazettes, articles, newspapers and sundry
other material on Kolkata and diligently put them
together a process that has led him to discover
and fall in love with Kolkata over and over again.
It has also made him lose interest in everything

else around him, drawing him deep into a shell

which has only him sharing space with his beloved city its past, to be more precise.
Today, he might be one of the foremost researchers on Kolkata, but it wasnt by design, he points
out. In fact, he had set himself no final destination
when he boarded a train to Howrah from Chennai.
My uncle worked with the railways, so I could
travel without a ticket. I travelled to Chennai from
my village Manjapra in Kerala thinking I
would go to any city which would offer me a job.
There was this train waiting to leave the station,
and someone told me it was headed for Kolkata. I
jumped into it and found myself here the next day,
recalls the 81-year-old.
Nair had no friends or relatives in Kolkata.
Neither did he have enough money to fend for
himself even for a day. He walked to the GPO and
sat on its majestic staircase. After a while, I
climbed up to the first floor and asked an official

Research on Kolkata continued

to take precedence over
everything else. My wife supported
me. I have always led a simple and
uncomplicated life, and that has not
changed
PT NAIR
for a job. Luckily, a gentleman called Raman happened to be there and he overheard the conversation. Raman knew one of my elder brothers and
agreed to help me. First, he offered me lunch and
then he took me to his own home a one-room
accommodation on Sadananda Road and let me
stay with him. That very day, he bought me a pair
of chappals and a shirt so that I looked decent
enough to be offered a job. I couldnt have asked
for more, Nair says.
He couldnt aim for anything better than a typists job, for he had just a matriculation degree to
show. The son of a poor grocer, he was the third
among six siblings. Back in his village, Nair first
studied Sanskrit in school and was then admitted
to an English-medium school, from where he completed his school studies. It was a quiet, uneventful
life, he recalls. I used to walk two miles to school,
plucking mangoes on the way. The rest of the world

DAILY ROUTINE: (Clockwise from top) PT Nair walks down the steps of the National Library, his everyday haunt; at his favourite chair in the librarys reading
room; on a bus to College Street, where he goes almost every day in search of books; with a rare journal on the city; browsing through a book at a book stall

was out of bounds for me, but I yearned to be there,

he recalls.
Kolkata offered a window of opportunity. He
found a job in less than a week, as a typist in Basant
and Co. at Old Court House Street, for a salary of
Rs 125. He would send Rs 50 to his father and make
ends meet with the rest. Three months later, he
changed his job and switched a couple more till he
got through to the Archaeological Survey of India
as a senior stenographer in 1957. He was posted in
Shillong, a brief separation from the city, which
changed his life yet again. There was a small library in office, stacked with archaeological books
and I had very little work to do. With plenty of spare
time, I got myself enrolled in a college and completed my graduation. I was ranked seventh in
Guwahati University and sought a transfer back to
Kolkata. It was granted, and I joined the law course
at Calcutta University. By then, I was writing for
various newspapers, which led me to research a bit.
It triggered a habit that soon turned into a passion,
Nair observes. It indeed did. He started visiting the
National Library in search of material to write. He

realized that even though loads of archival stuff

was available on Kolkata, not much had been written about the city. He still spends two hours at the
library every day.

Nair worked 20 years to write A

History of Kolkata Streets, one of
his major works. It should have been
penned by a Bengali much earlier,
he believes. His other major grouse
against Bengalis is that they failed
to venture into business, eventually
losing control of Kolkata

In 1962, Nair turned a full-time journalist with

Engineering Times. It was a technical journal
owned by a friend who offered me a job as the editorial in-charge. It was just the kind of work I looked

for. I would be in office till evening, return home

and sit with my books. By then, I had started focusing on Kolkata and nothing else interested me.
Four years later, Nair married Seetha, who
hailed from his village and settle down for good in
Kolkata. She taught in a school and they had three
children two sons and a daughter. But marital
bliss didnt make him change his priorities. Research on Kolkata continued to take precedence
over everything else. My wife supported me. I have
always led a simple and uncomplicated life and it
hasnt changed, he says. It didnt, even after
Seetha and the children moved back to their Kerala village 15 years ago. Since then, Nair has been
living alone in his three-room rented accommodation at Bhawanipores Shakharipara Road.
Two of the three rooms in his home are taken
up by his books, and Nair occupies the third. This
room is spartan starkly bare, other than a rickety cot, a writing table and a worn-out bench for
visitors, mostly journalists. They often drop in for
assistance to write articles on Kolkata. I help
them for they, too, are doing a service to the city

by highlighting facts about it, he says.

Nair does his own cleaning, cooking and shopping. He doesnt keep in touch with friends or
relatives and hasnt ever used a telephone. Every
morning, he walks down to the National Library
and occupies his favourite table at a corner of the
reading room. He is back by 1.30pm for lunch and,
after a short nap, travels to College Street in search
of books on Kolkata. Whenever there is a new
one, the booksellers keep a copy for me, he says.
Evenings are for writing, and hes in bed by
8.30pm. Does he miss his family? Not much, he says.
For me, only my work has been a constant companion. But I do visit my wife and children once
every two years. In fact, my wife who is a pensioner sends me money, for I earn practically
nothing, he adds.
He tells you that he started writing on Kolkata
out of sheer gratitude for the city. The city gave
me everything and I felt I should give something
back to it. Writing about the city would be the best,
I felt, and started exploring Kolkatas past. Soon,
I was startled to find that while so much could be
written about Kolkata, no one had attempted anything. While Bengali writers wrote a lot of fiction
around Kolkata, the research and facts were missing. I chose to fill the void, he explains.
Nair worked 20 years to write A History of
Kolkata Streets, one of his major works. It should
have been penned by a Bengali much earlier, he
believes. His other major grouse against Bengalis
is that they failed to venture into business, eventually losing control of Kolkata. Unfortunately, they
were never committed to business, he says.
Writing didnt come easily to him, though. He
prefers to call himself a collector of facts. Whatever I have written is a mere compilation. They
were all there somewhere, waiting to be brought
together. I have done nothing more than put them
together, he says.
Currently, Nair is piecing together facts yet
again for a book titled Gandhiji in Kolkata. It
will chronicle his visits to the city. The records are
all there in various books, publications and newspapers. I have sewn them together.
He admits to having contemplated leaving
Kolkata when his wife went back in 2000. He had
even donated his entire collection of books to the
Town Hall. But I couldnt get myself to leave the
city. Its a part of my system now. I will feel quite
worthless unless I can sit down at my table with
a book on Kolkata and hunt for little-known
facts, Nair signs off.

POINTS AND CLICKS

Brilliant graphics, bizarre cultural goof-ups

A

s my taxi sped up the dizzying

heights on the dangerously winding roads to Darjeeling, the driver
joked that driving here was like
driving on PlayStation.
He didnt know that
there was indeed a videogame where one could
actually drive in the
hills and we started talking about Far Cry IV. As
a game set in the Himalayan country Kyrat,
with a South Asian proSOUVIK
tagonist named Ajay
MUKHERJEE
Ghale and replete with
Indian fauna, Bollywood music and choice Hindi expletives, it
was a game that we both agreed was a mustplay. Here is the tale of my experience in
Kyrat and Far Cry IV.
The game begins with you, Ajay Ghale,
heading towards the Himalayan country
called Kyrat and then being kidnapped by
the countrys dictator, who captures him
after engineering a scary bus explosion.
Ajay has come to Kyrat to scatter his dead

mothers ashes in Lakshmana and he has

no idea where that is. Instead, he gets involved in the civil war between the dictator,
Pagan Min, and a revolutionary outfit called
the Golden Path. Pagan Min kills one of his
own soldiers and then takes a selfie with
Ajay, holding his camera with bloodstained
fingers. As the protagonist, you get to join
Pagan at a gruesome dinner where he sticks
his chopsticks into your companions neck.
Yes, Far Cry IV will be very gruesome indeed and Kyrat is not recommended for the
weak of heart.
After you escape from Mins fortress,

Game | Far Cry IV

Genre | First-person
shooter, action/adventure,
open-world game
Platforms | PC, PS 3 & 4,
Xbox 360 and Xbox One

Rating |

VISUAL TREAT: A screenshot from Far Cry IV

the game takes you on various adventures

with the Golden Path. The revolutionary

movement is also faction-ridden and your

story takes very different paths depending

on which faction you support. The in-game

choice structure also factors ethical choices and decisions about whether you save
lives or gather intelligence that will overthrow the regime. Whatever you choose,
the beautiful land of Kyrat is teeming with
danger whether it is the clouded leopard, the elephant or the deadly Hunter
brigade of Pagan Min. The games graphics are superlative and its portrayal of the
terai flora and fauna is realistic. The Dunia game-engine, used here again after Far
Cry II and III, does well with the game
physics and both the driving and the ballistics look very convincing.
What Indian gamers might find bizarre,
though, is the games portrayal of religion
through a strange mix of Buddhist and
Hindu practices. For example, the player
has to witness a goat sacrifice in a place
called the Chai Lama Monastery and ashsmeared bearded ascetics tell you to spin
the Buddhist prayer wheel. Amidst this chaotic mix of religions, the local gun-seller is
an African called Longinus and he keeps
quoting verses from the King James Bible!
The menu in the local restaurants is written

in the Devanagari script but the words are

all English clearly not what one would
expect in a roadside dhaba. Ubisoft definitely needs to do more homework if it
wishes to make its games richer and more
plausible in cultural terms. Most of the
NPCs (non-player characters) speak a stereotypically heavily accented English with
the occasional Hindi word thrown in. Adding to the orientalist discourse, the games
tyrannical and psychopathic dictator, Pagan
Min, is named after a Burmese king from
whom the British East India Company conquered Burma and annexed it.
Some of the games missions are quite
repetitive: either a town needs to be defended or some artefact needs to be obtained.
After killing scores of Tibetan wolves and
waves of Pagans soldiers, the player might
just feel that the action begins to drag in
certain spots. However, variety is never a
problem with the Dunia engine there are
always elephants to ride, tigers to shoot and
random missions that come the players way.
Pagan Min is a very convincing and dangerous antagonist and completing the game is
certainly bound to be rewarding.
All said, this is still a fun game to play
despite some obvious room for improvement, the experience of playing the first full
triple-A game set in the Indian terai is not
to be missed. Get on the next bus that is
bound for Kyrat but be prepared for a touch
of the bizarre and the chaotic!