Heritage lost in time

Delhi's Bengali Club, once a thriving cultural hub that hosted Rabindranath Tagore and Ravi Shankar, now lies in a dilapidated state

It's not too easy to locate the Bengali Club in the busy bylanes of Kashmere Gate. Ask the local shopkeepers and they know where it is but one of them says, "It's shut down, no one comes there." As I climb the stairs of a heritage building which leads to the club on the first floor, the shopkeeper's comment doesn't seem too far off the mark. The roof has several cracks and the pillars of the balcony are in a dilapidated condition. From the inside, the club appears to be falling apart but retains the old British charm. The high roofs, arch-shaped windows and the wooden staircase remind you of an era gone by. It's difficult to imagine this place as one of the biggest cultural hubs for the Bengali community.

Established in 1925, one of the oldest community clubs in the city, the Bengali Club has played host to Rabindranath Tagore, Nirad C Chaudhuri, Mahashweta Devi and Ravi Shankar. Actor Utpal Dutt was a regular visitor in the 1970s. But things are not looking good for the club now.

"We have been trying to revive the club for the last five years by organising cultural programmes but the younger generation doesn't seem to have time for our culture," says Arun Ghoshal, the secretary who has been associated with the club for over 35 years. "About 30 years ago, it used to be a theatre hub and every evening, it was packed with people," he says. But sometime in the early '80s, as the Bengali population of Delhi moved towards the south of the city, the club's patrons stopped coming here. The club still has about 170 members; most of them are senior citizens. While several of them still come once a week or twice a month, on most days the club is deserted.

One of the reasons in the decline of the club's popularity is its deplorable condition. No repair work is possible without permission from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. "It's a heritage structure and we've written so many times to the government but no restoration work has started," rues Ghoshal.

P R Sengupta, who is in his 60s and now lives in Chittaranjan Park, a Bengali-dominated area in south Delhi, recalls how going to the club was a daily affair for most members of his community. "We used to play chess or cards, meet friends or just sit in the library," he says.

It's a little-known fact that the club began as a library. In 1894, a few Bengali cultural enthusiasts took up a room in a building and made it a reading corner. Back then, a lot of people used to come only to read books, but soon it became a meeting point for them to promote Bengali culture in the city. The library, which can still house about 30 people and stocks over 10,000 books, is in a bad state. The leaking roofs have damaged several rare tomes - the library houses books dating back to over 200 years. This also includes original works of Sarat Chandra Bose and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, among others. Ghoshal says that the Parliament library wants to donate old books on Bengali literature to the club. "We turned them down because we just don't have the space to store them and till the restoration starts, we can't add books to the library." The club's library continues to be one of the reasons why many older patrons still come here.

"I made several friends at the club and many of them are now no more," says B K Chatterjee, who is in his late 60s and finds it difficult to visit the club. The club's Durga Puja festivities, however, are still popular and attract members during the festive season. "Two months before pujo, we organise cultural programmes. In the last four years, the number of people attending them has encouraged us," says Ghoshal.

Even today, the club charges an extremely nominal fee for its members: Rs 35 is a one-time membership fee and every member has to pay Rs 50 per month. For couples, it is Rs 70 per month. To be eligible one has to be a Bengali and should be interested in learning about Bengal's culture. To rope in younger members, the club had organised a Bengali language course during school vacations. However, the initiative didn't receive an encouraging response.

Ghoshal remains confident that the civic bodies will begin restoration work soon. Though he is aware that the club will not relive its glory days, he and the other members want to keep its tradition alive.