AMAR, in Bengali, means "mine"; in Hindi, the word means "undying." Either way, when you put amar before para, it sums up what the para means to every Kolkatan.
Everything comes with a shelf life, or so we are told; we are also told there is an exception to every rule. It seems every Kolkata para sprang to life and exists without a shelf life to show us how exceptions rule in life.
A para, whose closest English translation would probably be the "neighbourhood", means many things to many people. At its basest level, it is a neighbourhood, a physical entity located at a specific place. But in Kolkata, since when it started as an agglomeration of three villages - Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata a para has always meant much more than a geographical location.
OF PARA DNA AND THEIR NAMES
The earliest paras would have been statements of tribalism. So Anglo Para or Saheb Para (the few blocks that formed the centre of the city) was the domain of the Brits (and the Anglo-Indians).
Ghoshpara was the place where people having a common surname stayed together. Trades, too, lent their names and character to Kolkata's paras. Kumartuli was the neighbourhood populated with "kumars" (or potters and people working with clay) and Kansaripara was where the "kansaris" stayed together, working with metals, primarily the bell metal (an alloy of copper and tin).
But, with the city growing in size as well as stature and wealth, things got blurrier as people tended to look at other factors for setting up home. They no longer needed the safety of staying together with clanspeople. And neighbourhoods populated with one particular tradespeople failed to provide the other conveniences that the inhabitants of a rapidly expanding city were looking for.
So paras became much more secular and this started getting reflected in the names that people started giving to their neighbourhoods. So we had a Creek Row (named after the creek that connected the Circular Road moat with the River Hooghly) and an Entally (named after the forest of "hental" mangroves that was cleared to make way for human residences).
Neighbourhoods and streets also started reflecting more modern aspirations. College Street became the name of the street that housed the country's first undergraduate college (Presidency) created as a replica of colleges in the Mother Country (England) and then the Medical College and Hospital, the Sanskrit College and Calcutta University.
And, as a city that started to take pride in its nascent history, many more streets and neighbourhoods started to take their names after luminaries, both British (Canning and Dalhousie) as well as Indian (Vivekananda, Netaji or Gandhi).
CHANGE AS A CONSTANT
But Kolkata paras, just like the city and its inhabitants, are a story of constant change and evolution, though in some neighbourhoods particularly in the north time still seems to stand still (which may actually be comforting and not all that bad in this rushed world). Paras outgrew themselves and, in many cases, became more of class constructs than tribe or trade constructs. Alipore became a magnet for the rich, mercantile class; and, as it rapidly outgrew itself, the area immediately south of Alipore became (what else but) New Alipore, where people with more modest means but upscale ambitions started flocking.
NORTH BY NORTHEAST, SOUTH BY SOUTHEAST
The upper and upper-middle class families splintered from joint to nuclear and many of them started moving south of the Park Circus-Lower Circular Road dividing line to set up home in paras in the Ballygunge-Gariahat belt. These paras soon started to acquire an air of culture and sophistication that rivalled and then outrivalled those in the north, drawing in even more like-minded and well-heeled people. The movement continues with the city growing more and more south and southeastward; areas south of Garia and east of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass now have some of the biggest developments in the city.
But there is only so much you can move south without reaching Diamond Harbour or the Sundarbans. So another trend of rapid expansion towards the north and the northeast (which started with the reclamation of the brackish swamp of Salt Lake) has accelerated even more now, with the Rajarhat belt becoming the city's New Town.
Something similar has also started happening along Jessore Road and Barrackpore Trunk Road, the two arterial roads that take us out of the city northward and northeastward.
Jute mills were rendered unviable, first by Partition (as much of the jute-growing agricultural lands went to East Pakistan) and then by the hostile labour climate (also a byproduct of the first factor). Now, on the land left fallow by defunct jute mills and other manufacturing units, are springing up some of Kolkata's newest realty projects, which changing the very shape of Kolkata's paras. along with their cousins in the south and the east – are changing the very shape of Kolkata's paras.
THE VERTICAL PARAS
If the erstwhile paras were hemmed in by lanes and streets, the sky is the limit for Kolkata's new paras. Complex living has made life simpler and, sometimes (because of gates and security guards), safer. So, many of the city's newest paras are now vertical constructs where the floors are meant for personal space and the level zero is meant for community living. The para-culture DNA of Kolkata has survived this vertical push as these towers and complexes replicate the community living that people used to enjoy when they lived in the older, more horizontally laid out paras. The Durga Puja, with its mandatory dhunuchi naach, stays the same though the bhog may have become more calorie-conscious in keeping with contemporary demands. The Rabindra-Nazrul evenings are still there but now face some fierce competition from antaksharis. These vertical paras now probably offer the soundest view of what Kolkata's para culture may look like in the future.
THE OLD, TOO, REINVENTS ITSELF
But let this not be an elegy for the old. Some of Kolkata's older paras have started thriving anew as they seek to reinvent themselves, both physically and financially.
Nowhere is this more visible than in many of South Kolkata's genteel neighbourhoods. These paras have staved off decay by housing commercial establishments, most of them in keeping with their original character. Buildings with art deco parentage have (sometimes maybe unwillingly) become neighbours of buildings with faux old-North-Calcutta exteriors as they compete to draw in coffee drinkers and art-and-bling lovers to their new-age cafes and stores.
But it is not the genteel alone that has made this successful transition. Go to one of Kolkata's erstwhile "roughest" of paras, Chinatown in Tangra, and you will witness something very similar. The old tanneries, driven away to the city's fringes by environment-protection laws, have now been replaced by gigantic and glittering eateries in what must be one of Kolkata's most successful turnarounds.
CELEBRATING KOLKATA AND ITS PARAS
The series that we launch today seeks to celebrate Kolkata and its paras, which give the city much of the flavour that sets it apart from many other Indian cities. This will be, in some ways, an extension of our earlier celebration of the city and its way of life I Am Kolkata but will dive deeper into the city's old and new neighbourhoods and their very mindscape and DNA.
The series will celebrate the constants (like College Street's Boi Para and the central business district's Office Para) as well as the evolving (like some of Kolkata's youngest paras such as Tech Para in Sector V). We look to bring alive on TOI's pages with your active participation and help the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch of the paras that give Kolkata its amazing diversity and unique, paanch-phoron flavour.
