On An 1880 Photograph of College Square (Kolkata)

Subhransu Maitra

Had I been living here one hundred and 

fifty years ago, young and flowering, 

as many young men and women flowered 

then—gladly opening up to the festive, 

flickering paradoxical rays 

of the fugitive Renaissance of Bengal, 

I would go– 

–as I occasionally go now, a hundred and 

fifty years later, an anguished wraith, a  

troubled pilgrim– 

to this old scene of complex genesis, 

the great consciousness matrix 

where our heaven and our earth 

were forged from a partly idyllic 

partly nightmarish medieval womb or void 

and formless Gangetic silt and moored 

in the characteristic mire and fury 

of Bengali flesh and blood, powerful 

driving reveries and chronic infirmities 

perhaps induced by a Circe.  

 

I would go, slowly walk round the water, 

reverently mindful of David Hare 

as I passed along the southern side 

and turning west, survey the grand symbols 

of the shaping of an emerging new 

age of agony and joy– 

the Senate Hall of Calcutta University, 

Hare School, presidency College, 

and coming north, I’d also see 

Hindu school and Sanskrit College 

now famous for its formidable principal, 

the diminutive titan– 

Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar.  

 

Then I would pause, sit down  

on the grass patch on the edge  

of the big pond and contemplate,  

perhaps in a prefiguring tangled reverie– 

the images reflected in the sunlit water 

of the tormented artifice 

of the nineteenth century 

and beyond…   

(April, 2025)