Calcutta was once known as the city of palaces and if one were to transfer that epithet to present times one will have to add ‘decrepit’ before palaces. If we take the birth of the city from the arrival of Mr Charnock, the East India Company agent, on its shores in 1690 then it’s a rather young city which looks rather old thanks to its lack of upkeep. We often joke in our tours that the city has a lot of its heritage intact thanks to its economic stagnancy. It would be funny if it weren’t so scathingly true.
In spite of the lack of economic progress Calcutta has a huge wealth of ideas to offer to the world. There is more human learning in its streets than in the most hallowed of educational institutions anywhere. And it is this learning that we have been sharing with our visitors through our many different walking tours. What bothered us for the longest time was why hadn’t someone taken a beautiful old structure and fixed it for good. Why aren’t more people in the business of restoration of Calcutta’s glorious past? It is as baffling an idea as exciting. So we set our sights on correcting that anomaly.
We set out looking for a suitable structure to base our first adaptive reuse project in. After inspecting dozens of buildings we narrowed down on this one for several good reasons:
- It had a 40 feet road in front of it which is unusual as most North Calcutta homes are tucked inside narrow alleys, and ingress and egress becomes a Herculean task in the day.
- It’s connectivity to the airport is 30 minutes maximum which is a big blessing for the city. The Oberoi Grand, on the contrary, is at least an hour away.
- It was built in the classical style in spite of being a 1926 structure when other modern buildings were being built in the art deco style. So in a way it captured the golden era in Calcutta's construction history.
It was located in a wonderful neighbourhood with a close knit community. Calcutta’s largest public park is nearby which houses swimming clubs, tennis courts, cricket pitches, football grounds, children’s playgrounds, yoga clubs et al.
- Structurally we couldn’t have found a more stable 90 year old building especially after seeing several in various states of disrepair. This one needed very little structural strengthening.
- It had two courtyards so there was a ‘private piece of the sky’ available for the residents.
Then began the long drawn process of acquisition from a dysfunctional Bengali joint family which took us about 2 years of going back and forth. The longer they took to come to the table the more time we got to gather resources needed to go through with the acquisition.
Gallery- Before and After
What is astounding is that the owners did not spare any amount of money or care for their own dwelling and had only seen it as a cash cow to sell and make money from. The good thing that came off that for us was that the architectural details were intact and barely any changes had been made to the property at all. That helped us immensely. We couldn’t imagine our search for references, had the place been cemented up from time to time and eroded of all its original character.
We set out looking for a good architect for the project but soon realised that there wasn’t any real architectural intervention needed. We were going to keep the whole space as close to the original as possible. We began looking for the right kind of designer and along came Swarup Dutta, who became friend, mentor, guide, teacher, architect as well as interior decorator, all rolled into one.
Swarup and I throughout the course of this property’s resurrection would get into very many discussions and arguments about how this property should be restored. Among our many healthy differences of opinion we agreed on:
- Keeping the interiors humble and suited to the way of life of an upper middle class household from back in the early 1900s Calcutta.
- Using a subtle and subdued colour scheme so that the property does not start looking new and retains and displays its age gracefully.
- Keeping the decor as minimalist as possible so it does not become overbearing to stay in for longer periods.
Many of these points were agreed upon while having breakfast together in Jodhpur or visiting design fairs in Delhi or scouting furniture from dealers in Noida. We made several trips to different parts of the country partly to tap into the many resources that Swarup had garnered over the course of his multidimensional career and partly to educate ourselves into a design sensibility based on the craft traditions of India. Like they say ‘a man searches the world for something and returns home to find it’ so was the case with our sourcing quests. While we did get some of our furniture and bric-a-brac from places like Jaipur, Jodhpur and Delhi but we came back to realise the wealth of possibilities of design inspiration from the streets of Calcutta. Also, it was only right to pay tribute to a city by being loyal to its craftsmen.
We consciously bought and upcycled as many old and reclaimed items as possible since the whole point of the exercise was to celebrate a glorious era gone by.
Almost all our wood and iron came from buildings that fell in other parts of the city. For example we bought tons of khorkhoris or louvred windows and re-purposed them as installations in the courtyard and bedside tables.
We managed to get small portable typewriters and put one in each room. We have made them functional, hoping that guests will use them for typing out letters to send back home.
Our exposed brick walls are made of a plaster that has half a dozen food items in it besides lime and plaster. The masons or Raj mistries that came from Murshidabad used an ancient formula that involved mixing jaggery, wood apple pulp, fenugreek seeds as well as betel nuts among other things. It was cured for over two weeks to make the perfect mortar.
These and many such little nuggets went into the making of our boutique hotel. We have got the hardware sorted out, and now it is time to work on our soft skills in hospitality. Only a good marriage of the two will yield results that will be remarkable enough for many others to pursue this line of action. And a city as beautiful as Calcutta needs hundreds of such projects to bring it back up to anywhere near the glory that it has witnessed in its short but action packed history. Calcutta has loved and embraced everyone that has come to live in it and through Calcutta Walks and now Calcutta Bungalow we are trying our best to walk the talk and show people the way to love her back.
If you need to use our now considerable resource base, please get in touch with us for the contact details of workmen, specialists, contractors, etc.