Although Guwahati has changed tremendously during recent years, I still like to remember it as a beautiful city that I saw when I grew up. Nature has given it an active river; the river acts like a turbulent youth in summer and a gentle young thing in winter, with infinite nunces of beauty in its water and islands. Nature and history together compose silent epics on its many hills - Ramsa, Narakasur, Nilachal, Nabagarh, Kannachal. April heralds a season when Nature with her impatient hands starts painting colors on the skyline in parts of Guwahati like a Van Gogh painting. There is a riot of colors, yellow of Sonaru, red or pink of Golmohar, bright red of Palas, purple of Ajar, each color complementing the other and in symbiosis to present a delightful spectacle to the tired eyes of citizens under numbing weight of daily existence. The beautiful birds of Guwahati spread a white canopy in a tiny island between Kacharighat and Umananda. Koels and Indian cuckoos (ketekis) can be heard singing in several areas of the city in their season. Lotuses in the pond in front of the Residence of the Superintendent of Police that once presented a pleasing sight to the older generations of the city dwellers have now vanished, yet there is a spot at Padumbari where yearly blooms of lotuses can delight the eyes of passersby. My dear Dighalipukhuri has been robbed of the wealth of thousands of lotuses long back and lost its original grandeur. My heart cried out “please bring back the lotuses” which were more beautiful than the Daffodils of Wordsworth. In those days we went to watch the sports event at Dighalipukhuri Par. In the sixties, the sports personality were Bani Chakraborty (Habu’s sister), the fastest woman walker and Rana as I remember the fastest swimmer. (I forgot his second name)
In those days, there was not traffic chaos in the streets. Those days were very safe. I remember that as a six year old, I used to walk from Panbazar after school with my friends to join the Moina Parijat group at Judges field which was run by late Nabin Sarmah. Again at 6:00 pm, we would walk back home. St. Mary’s Convent was the only English medium private school with boys and girls combined. We did not have school buses then. Don Bosco was the only boys' English medium private school.
It was the time when the only happening place in Guwahati was Panbazar, virtually the city’s nerve-center, a rendezvous for Who’s Who of the city and generally for the people associated with art and culture, and even for busybodies and loafers. Though Panbazar has not changed much in the last three decades, however, today it does not seen to exude the charm as it did before. Its glamor has paled over the years as the city began to expand. Stories of the people who made Panbazar such a fascinating place, a Babylon of myriad myths, a scene of great friendships, conspiracy, love consummated, betrayal, intrigue and what not, have become folklore today.
It would not be wrong if one said that earlier most restaurants in the city actually substituted for hangouts where some people whiled away their time sharing the latest gossips of the town for hours on end or if they were a little enlightened, they would debate over how good or bad Bhupen Hazarika’s latest song was or how corruption was eating into the vitals of the country.
Bharali Brothers, the oldest popular music shop at the heart of Panbazar, is still there. One of the family members, Chitta Bharali, was a Cottonian and also a friend. During off-periods away from college, we used to visit the shop to listen to the all-time hits and Bhupen Hazarika’s latest albums. I remember my friend late Dost Hobibur Rahman (Louis), the one and only popular parody singer of 60’s Cotton College, when he was singing at the Union Hall College Week function! He mesmerised the audience with his most parody hits ---
“Guwahati city hol
Rasta poduli hol
Maligaon keni jam koa ….
Der ghonta kal bhai
Iea te moi aso roi
Sunu mathu dia jabo dia …." Our popular restaurants in Panbazar were Kalyani, Madhumita and Guwahati Diary. I still remember that the popular journalist Barun Das Gupta was a regular at Madhumita. At that time, the most glamorous address Panbazar ever had was ‘Delight’, an impeccable restaurant. There never was an eatery in Guwahati as exalted as ‘Delight’; perhaps there never would be one like it ever. Although a number of classy restaurants have sprung up in Guwahati of late, none can come anywhere near ‘Delight’ in terms of the latter’s bewitching appeal. ‘Delight’ was a class apart, had an air of exclusivity about it, a kind of aristocratic aloofness without being, standoffish. The men and women who frequented ‘Delight’ were also as glamorous. If one wanted to be noticed, one went there. That was how prominent the restaurant was at time when the literati and glitterati of Guwahati knew one another on first-name basis.
The most glamorous of all writers of the time, the late Nirode Chowdhury, every inch a Harold Robbins in terms of looks and output as well as the subjects both chose for their fiction, was a habitue to ‘Delight’; he had made the restaurant his second address. When he walked past our girls' Common Room in Cotton College, we used to follow him just to get his attention in our off-period! Like him, there were many. Today they have quietly slipped into the oblivion.
In an age when the builders of Guwahati have embarked on a race to create a concrete jungle in the city, no one is really bothered about the city’s heritage. Whatever little remains of it in the form of buildings and monuments, are being viewed as inconvenient hurdles to the creation of a still larger concrete jungle with no sign of greenery anywhere at all. In any case, most builders cannot think of our heritage as comprising anything but buildings and monuments. They do not know that heritage is not just buildings and monuments though, and that they are no more than, incidental adjuncts that may exist as props to what constitutes the real heritage of a society. During the Cotton College Centenary Celebration in the year 2001, when I went to visit our beloved late Herambakanta Borpujari Sir, he was crying holding my hand saying --- “Mor moromor Cotton College khon bhangi pelale, tumauke ki saboloi ahisa?" I did not have any answer then, just to fought back my tears.
Guwahatians, let us preserve this beautiful Guwahati, nature has so thoughtfully presented to us.
- By Rini Kakati, UK
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