parni ray

{ONE} EARLY ON 28 MAY last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at Sansad Marg to inaugurate India’s new parliament. Built on a triangular plot adjacent to the old parliament, it was a formidable looking- structure of red and white sandstone, a composite of sharp geometric shapes.

When my 65-year-old neighbour, Nitish Kumar Das, went for his morning walk at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial Hall grounds one Monday in 2018, he stopped halfway through his route through the gardens — the kalo pori (black fairy in Bengali) at the top of the dome looked different. Standing with its unfurled wings, a laurel wreath in its left hand and a trumpet in its right, the figure was turned away from him.

Tucked away on a street just off Gariahat Road in South Kolkata is the former home of music composer Sachin Dev Burman and his son, the prolific Rahul Dev Burman. The house was built by the former in 1944, shortly before India’s Independence. Two years ago, on the occasion of RD Burman’s 82nd birth anniversary, the street was renamed Sangeet Sarani in the father-son duo’s memory. To locals, however, it still remains South End Park.