Batanagar: A wistful journey back in time

How a township built on the banks of the Hooghly in 1934 became an idyllic setting for colourful stories that now survive only in memory

Batanagar: A Personal History of India’s Forgotten Company Town

By Paramita Sen

Published by 

Pan Macmillan India

225 pages ₹399

 For a long time, I laboured under the misapprehension that Paramita Sen addresses in the opening lines of her book — that of Bata being an Indian company. A multinational company that entered the Indian market in the 1930s, Bata became a ubiquitous presence during the later decades of the 20th century with its range of school shoes for both girls and boys, and later through the hawai chappal. The company also built a township on the banks of the Hooghly in 1934, which was modelled on the company’s first township developed in Zlín. This Indian township was called Batanagar.

 

In Batanagar: A Personal History of India’s Forgotten Company Town, Ms Sen takes her readers down memory lane as she reconstructs a seemingly golden time from her past. In alternate chapters, she also provides her readers a history of the company, its fortunes and its functioning in India. This narrative scheme points towards an attempt to situate personal history within a larger socio-economic frame. However, balancing the two aspects is a tricky job in which the book doesn’t always succeed. 

 

The chapters that capture Ms Sen’s time spent in Batanagar are full of colourful anecdotes and memories from her childhood that transport readers into her world. There are recollections of adventures and misadventures, like the time she and her friends left a fake ransom note hoping to get some money but found themselves in hot water when they realised that the note had been reported to the police. Incidents like these make the reader chuckle, reminding them of episodes from their own childhood. This is particularly true of the generation that grew up before the arrival of the internet and video games that changed the terrain of childhood altogether.

 

There is a wistful quality in Ms Sen’s narrative when she writes about the past that includes the games she played, her friends and acquaintances, and the way Batanagar, a quintessential corporate township much like the now defunct Dunlop factory at Sahagunj, celebrated every festival, from Christmas to Durga Pujo, with equal enthusiasm and gusto. This wistfulness can be linked to the fact that Batanagar no longer exists as it once was and the plans to redevelop it into an exclusive gated community are yet to be fully realised.  Ms Sen writes that she felt unmoored when she heard of Batanagar’s proposed demolition. She also points out that besides nostalgia, it’s the township’s “strong sense of community; a perception of belonging that remains unchanged to this day”, which keeps pulling her back. This sense of community is seen at its strongest in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination when the inhabitants of the township get together in order to ensure the safe return of their children from school.

 

Ms Sen doesn’t claim Batanagar to be an ideal space. She acknowledges the fact that she lived in what were once known as the “Saheb Quarters”, and her father, who believed in treating people equally, was an outlier as “fraternisation between managers and those who worked for them was limited, maybe even discouraged”.  Later in the book, she also writes about the strike of the household helpers demanding higher wages along with better working and living conditions. Despite all this, the township comes across mostly as an idyllic space in her narrative, with Ms Sen even referring to it as an “urban utopia” in the introduction.

 

In contrast, the chapters which take readers through the journey of Bata in India have a more impersonal, reportage-like feel. This is enhanced by her use of quotations from various books and newspapers that find a place in these chapters. Using these multiple sources, she describes, among other things, the company’s beginning, the building of the township, its living conditions, and the impact of liberalisation that triggered a decline in Bata’s market share.

 

At times, the contrast between these chapters feels like reading two different books, and the constant switching between past and present breaks the flow, especially when one is immersed in Ms Sen’s personal narrative. The history of the company does provide meaningful context. A better integration of this history with Ms Sen’s Batanagar memories and experiences would have made reading the book a more rewarding experience. 

 

Although her Batanagar memories capture the reader’s interest, reading about them resembles flipping through a snapshot album. They capture moments but they never quite let the reader linger, changing quickly from one scene to the next.

The reviewer is an independent writer and translator