Same,Different Residence: My Unfolding Voyage 013

The Same, Different Place

I meet someone at Heathrow Airport and soon he asks me “where do you live?" I answer I live in India and waiting for the next flight to Atlanta in the US to the US. He says that he lives in Brazil and is on the way to return home after an assignment in Russia. How much do I understand where do we live in? I had never been either to Brazil or to Russia. We just killed time.
The same question could have been asked during the flight from Heathrow to Kolkata by a fellow traveler from the US on a trip to India and I would have replied that I lived in Kolkata. He might have inquired "where in Kolkata?" and I would have said "Dum Dum near the Airport". I would have presumed that he would know very little about Calcutta.
If the fellow passenger were a Bengali from Calcutta, my answer would have been that I lived in DumDum. He would have probably asked " where in Dum Dum?' I would have said "near Nager Bazar". The person could have further asked "where in Nager Bazar", I would have replied " in Clive House". Since we somewhat friends, he would have asked for my residence address. The residence that I live in is at Gurudham, No.xyz, RG Avenue, 700028. There is no mention about Kolkata, no mention about Dum Dum and no reference either to Nager Bazar or Clive House (a multi-century old historical fort, used by the British Lord Clive who won a battle through espionage to sow the seeds of the British Empire in India, and a house that has recently been considered a heritage building to be renovated).
The same question has so many different answers. And, all the answers are equally correct. Why do we have different correct answers for the same question asked by the same or different persons? It depends on the answerer's perception about the intent and capability to understand of the person who asked the question. It may also depend on the preference of the answer: like, my wife would have said that she lives with me in South Dum Dum in RG Avenue off the Highway near Christ Church School. She likes the words Christ, Church and Highway and dislikes the words Nager or Bazar. She likes the place Gariahat because it sounds good like Pizza Hut, though Gariahat literally means a rural dirty market place.
But all the same, the House I live in now is a 2006-vintage building that replaced a 1930 building at the same site where I started living after a year after I was born nearly 60 decades ago.
Sixty years made a great difference to the place I live in. I live in the same place but it is different. Not merely because the old two-storied building has yielded place to a new four-storied one. Nor is it just because I have grown old. The place I live in has changed in many different ways. The inmates have changed. I am the only child of my parents who now live in this house still named Gurudham. The entire landscape has changed in the locality. It is now an area of about 150 brick and mortar buildings mostly multistoried - multiple apartments with a population of about 2500 residents. Half a century ago, the same 20-25 acre area had about 45 houses of which hardly a dozen were two storied and a few thatched huts. The resident population was close to 250. Gone are 30% of the water bodies that were later filled in with soil to construct many multistoried buildings. The street light posts remain practically the same in number: the serial number on the post (Gurudham is just opposite the post numbered 23/53) is still not used by residents to indicate their location to first-time visitors.
The sprawling greenery is lost. Resident children to play football or cricket are still there but rarely use the two playgrounds. The third playground that we used for other games like Khoko or volleyball has been converted into a nice children's park.

There is no change in the boundaries of the locality. On the east and the North runs the highway named Jessore Road that can reach one to the Bangladesh Border with three just three lanes of the locality connected to the highway. On the North the same old water canal separates the locality from a factory on the other side of the bank with no road or bridge connection. On the West, a long sewerage drain separates our locality from the neighboring locality with a single, non-motor-able narrow connector.
Lord Clive's Fort building that used to house about a dozen displaced from East Bengal (now called Bangladesh) is now under the Archeological departments never progressing renovation care. This is the House built on a 30 feet high table-land in which we used to run up through the winding staircase with 100-odd steps and with very little light coming through two small holes on the Eastern walls to reach the roof-top (at a height of about 120 feet from the ground level) that enabled us to come closer to the blue sky, have a bird's eye view of the surroundings and have a glimpse of the famous Howrah bridge at a distance of about 10 kms. Howrah Bridge, originally built in 1974 and renovated into the world's forth oldest cantilever bridge, is now called Rabindra Setu (after Nobel Laureate Poet Rabindranath Tagore whose Nobel medal was stolen a few years back from the Viswa Bharati University he had built) links the twin very old Indian cities of Calcutta or Kolkata and Howrah, an industrial agglomeration of the 20th century. There is a nice website of the Howrah Bridge now.
Those days there were few buildings that were 36 feet tall in Calcutta: our old Gurudham was one of them and we could see a portion of the Howrah Bridge from the terrace.
Climbing the stairs was great fun in childhood but I missed out on swimming despite the many large water bodies around. Our childhood freedom was obviously constrained by various dos and don’ts that set the boundaries. Staying away from the ponds and pools was one of them. Not getting into the Highways was another. Returning home after afternoon games before the street lights were on was still another. Day time freedom included walking down the lane, crossing into the neighborhood locality with lots of trees, collecting some leaves or fruits that the trees so kindly shed for our benefit, to reach the school off the Dum Dum Road, a minute's walk from the point at which this road meets the Highway Jessore Road. This crossing is still called Nager Bazar More, though the market place that the family of Nags built shifted down south along the Jessore road more than five decades ago.

Given the limited boundaries and the timing specifications, the childhood days were more Gurudham-centered exploration. It took nearly 40 steps to go up to the rooftop and hardly a few seconds coming down along the sliding aisles. It is this House that I was destined to return to after 25 years of life elsewhere. My wife and I live there with a photograph of my parents that my elder brother gave me after both the parents had passed away and the large wall-mounted oil-painting of my Grandfather that my got a painter to make as probably the only significant inheritance by default (did not have to ask for) from my father.
It is the same but different place that I live in: the Googleearth shows exactly where it is. Did I ever dream that the unfolding voyage would take me away from Gurudham for long and bring me back? How long am I going to be in Gurudham?