My recollections of Bhubaneswar go to 1955 while we were at
Koraput. I would never miss a trip to the city with father in our relatively
new Landmaster Car via the breath-taking Salur Ghat, with a brief stop at Salur
for filling a few gallons of petrol into the car and a must-stop at Srikakulam
for a delicious lunch of rice laced with ghee; sambar, rasam, vegetable curry
and an unforgettable dish of mutton curry--- tangy and pickle-like. At
Ichhapore, a whiff of air with Orissa aroma would give me the feeling of
Bhubaneswar getting close. The drive through Berhampur and Huma, with Salt
farming and mounds of Salt along the road for miles provided great thrill.
Chilka would hold me in awe for miles. We would spend a couple of nights in
Bhubaneswar with my uncle in his government quarters in Unit VI. Surya Nagar
had not been built by then and there was unobstructed visibility between my uncle’s
house and the Aerodrome (The term Airport was not in vogue then in the city). A
cousin of mine, barely two years old, would get restive at the sound of a
descending plane and would welcome even a stranger to get a lift in the arm to
see a huge plane roaring and landing. He was heavy; but I remember to have
carried him a couple of times to the gate and let him have the fun of seeing
the plane.
Father came to Bhubaneswar on transfer from Koraput in 1957
and we lived in a spacious Duplex Type VII quarters, on the left of the Road
between the Railway Station and the Legislative Assembly. The Deodars had grown
tall on both the sides. The government quarters on both the sides of the road
looked symmetrical. One house, next to ours, was an exception. It was built for
the state’s Accountant General. The other exception that came later was a
building for the Manager of the State Bank of India. During those days it
seemed grievances were not many or, public articulation thereof was not in
vogue. Processions; loudspeakers and tents had not arrived; nor were the
grotesque looking police Barricades on the road. The beautiful road in front,
primarily was used by pedestrians. Footfalls increased after a Train arrived
around 10 in the morning when Babus from Cuttack would detrain and walk down
the distance to the Secretariat. They would return again in the afternoon, to
catch a Cuttack bound Train. Cars were few and one would, by and large, know who
owned which one. Chief Minister, JB Patnaik, converted the empty ground in
front of the Secretariat to a garden and a beautiful statue of Indira Gandhi
was installed in the Park. Before this was done, the place was being used for
ceremonial flag hoisting on the Independence Day and Republic Day, for meetings
of political groups and even for learning car driving. These activities and
ancillary chores shifted to the beautiful Avenue during the seventies.
During the summer holidays in 1957, before my admission into
Class XI of Capital High School, I learnt the art of living which included cycling
to the Daily Market, buying vegetables and grocery items. More interesting was
my learning experience in the Post Office in the Eastern Market Tower in Unit
II. The Post Office wore a humble look and one did not suffer a long queue to
reach the helpful person at the counter. I learnt to operate a Savings Bank
Account and got acquainted with Savings Certificates. I also learnt what “Under
Certificate of Posting” meant. Fish Market was close by, at a place where, much
later, the City Development Authority built the Ashok Market, close to the
Railway Station. Unlike the crowded, smelling and boisterous” Fish Market” the
city hosts at a few places now, including the one in Unit IV, this fish market used
to be quite peaceful and orderly with only
a few customers. One regular customer used to be the affable Gopal Misra, the
well-known media man. The road between the Ashok Market and the Raj Mahal
Square had government quarters on the right and small private residential
houses were coming up on the left of the Road, known as Ashok Nagar. Further
north, on the left, was Bapuji Nagar which had come up, by then, with many residential houses. Raj Mahal was
the Hotel par excellence. I have never ventured into the Hotel Rooms but
remember to have had food in the dining hall with my wife and brothers in late
sixties. Quality of the food and the ambience of the place were in tune with
the pervading environment of frugality of the city. The presiding Deity at the
Raj Mahal Square used to be Swami Vivekananda, an austere statue of whom
remained at a side of the road. Gradually the place attracted itinerant
merchants who sold shoes, bags and suitcases and their number kept swelling.
The statue was placed within an enclosure. The Traffic Circle served for years
until planners saw little utility in it and the place was subjected to a spell
of rapid digging and building. The expensive flyover bore the “under
construction” for a few years and the plan for having an underpass for the
Janpath to pass through had to be literally buried. A drive from the Kalpana Square to the
Railway Station makes one feel the prevailing inadequacy of the road system at
the Raj Mahal Square. In the meantime, the statue of Swami Vivekananda was
removed and very few know what happened to it. Persons like me who had drawn
inspiration from it since young days still miss it at the Raj Mahal Square.
Treading my way through to what was once the popular Unit
One Daily Grocery Market, circular in shape and with a Clock Tower at the
entrance, in the vicinity of Capital Police Station, on May 14, 2018 , was a
journey down the memory lane. After landing there around five in the afternoon,
I felt lost. The Clock surely had stopped ticking years ago. Wading through
merchandise in sacks and almirahs strewn all over the place, and with parked motorbikes
occupying the walking space, I stopped
at the entrance of a shop which looked somewhat familiar. The young proprietor
looked up and wanted to know what I wanted. He sold rice, oil, ghee, pizza
base, macaroni, wheat, and hundred other things. "What is your name and
the names of your father and grandfather?" I asked. He was Satish Vaddi;
and his father was Baikuntha. The names did not sound familiar. "Would you
remember Sitaram, my grandfather?" he asked. That was it, I had hit the
Bullseye. It was finally Vaddi Sitaram's Grocery Shop-- a well-known
destination-- I used to visit to buy grocery items. That was in the year 1965.
"And does this place still have the Mutton Shop?" I asked.
"Yes", he said, "and it opens in the morning hours". I
walked up to the shop. I used to go there in 1957 to buy mutton. Even in 2018,
I do not see in my city a better and cleaner mutton shop it used to be. I felt
like spending more time in the marketplace and relive those past moments. It
was one of the landmarks of an infant city that was growing with us. We grew,
it stopped. We did not take care of this place though it is still serving and
gasping. The Daily Vegetable Market close by, used to be an orderly place to
buy vegetables from. Over years, vegetable vendors have been edged out of the
enclosed market and the place hosts hundreds of shops of daily necessities. My visits
to the place have become fewer over years but the small place attracts
thousands of customers every day. I wonder how the place can handle a fire
accident.
Following my father’s transfer to Sambalpur in 1957, I was
asked to stay on at Bhubaneswar and finish my Class XI in Capital High School.
The School was nearby, in Unit II. I along with two cousins, all three being in
the same class, would walk to the school. Uncle’s quarters, in Unit I, on the
RajPath; the first one of the Type VI (now upgraded to Type VII) quarters as
one moved towards the Secretariat was not far from Kalpana Cinema, an important
landmark on the Puri-Cuttack Road and the only Cinema Hall then in the town. Janpath joined Puri-Cuttack highway at the
Fire Station, more readily understood as Kaplana Chhak. While we three students
got ready to study after the afternoon tiffin, music would flow in through a
loudspeaker from Kalpana Cinema. It was indication that the evening show was
about to begin. The same songs would repeat each day and perhaps in the same
sequence. Those were all popular Hindi film songs. The last one was the best;
the unforgettable “Aakhon mein kyaa jee…“, sung by Asha Bhonsle and Kishor
Kumar in the Hindi film “Nau Do Gyarah” produced in 1957 by Dev Anand. After
this song, the flow of music would stop and would make me realise that it was time
for serious study. I then had no idea that the Hindi idiom “Nau Do Gyarah”
meant “to run away.” I used to receive coaching by two tutors, both of my
school. The Mathematics teacher taught me in the morning but I was a part of a
small group. The other teacher was versatile and would teach me Sanskrit as
well as English. I was his lone pupil. Both of them and the formidable Headmaster,
Ganeswar Misra, were keen that I brought glory to the school by getting a place
among the best ten students in the state in the matriculation examination—an
honour that had eluded the school till then. Fortunately, I did not disappoint
them.
The NCERT established the Regional Institute of Education in
1961. It was a large campus in Unit IX at the fag end of the city. I remember
the road to the area ending a hundred metres ahead of it and to signal the dead
end, a mound was created on the road. What lay beyond, was left to my
imagination. A demonstration multipurpose school (DM School) in the campus came
up soon thereafter to be a sort of human laboratory for the training of
teachers drawn from various states in the East Zone of the country. In 1964,
while my twin brothers, Prakash and Pramode were in St Joseph High School in
Class III, the DM School invited application for admission to the lowest class.
It was Class VI. My father insisted that the two boys joined the school. I was
sceptic; I suppose, so were the two boys. But father's will prevailed and the
boys were asked to appear in the admission test. I carried one in my bicycle
and a helper took the other brother in his. They wrote whatever they thought
was right and returned happy. The discomfiture both had experienced in the
examination unfolded while they asked my father what LCM and GCM meant. The
test was on two subjects-- Mathematics and English. Each subject carried fifty
marks. The sole evaluator was a venerable lady teacher, Mrs Vidyarthi. One of
the twins secured 43 and the other, 45. She declared both of them
successful. She was a worthy precursor
of the Computer. The machine would surely have done the same thing. That the
boys had scored all their marks only in English was never considered relevant.
We had a hearty laugh; the boys were bewildered. They were a lot happier in the
St Joseph School with classmates of their age. In DM School they joined Class
VI while they were only eight years old.
On joining as an
Assistant Professor in the Post Graduate Department of Political Science at
Vani Vihar in 1965, I would go to the city Bus Stand in Unit II, in front of
the Western Market Tower and board a bus for Vani Vihar. The place is now being
used by the State Horticulture Directorate for raising seedlings of flowers and
vegetables. On some days, I used the old Bicycle of my father to reach Vani Vihar.
The city had spread by the time I had joined the Secretariat. Raj Path was
widened; the Dairy Plant of OMFED was commissioned at a place away from the
city-hub. Housing activities gained momentum. City planners, however, faltered
and continued allotting small plots to individuals. We didn’t lease /auction large
parcels of land for developing self-contained mini townships. Private builders
looked at owners of agricultural lands for developing dwelling units resulting in
deficits in drainage, sewage and drinking water facilities. New institutions came
up with government’s proactive attitude, adding impetus to the city’s growth. A
modest city, the German Architect, Otto Konigsberger, had conceived in 1946, had
grown bigger. The predominant assumption of the architect that Odisha people
like to remain connected to the soil which made him plan mostly single storied
houses with a courtyard, however, continued to rule the roost for decades. No condominium
and no tower were thought of for years and we lost good parcels of valuable
land through spatial mushrooming of tiny buildings. The city continues to
spread to new areas. On the north, the capital region is soon expected to
spread up to the Kathjodi River near Trisulia and towards south, Jatni—Khurda
area would soon be a part of the capital region.
Around 1967, fruits in the city were to be seen in a few
stalls in the vicinity of the Lingaraj Temple. Situation changed; fruits and vegetables,
in plenty, are available in all parts of the city. Archaeological Survey of
India set up reasonably good gardens around important ancient Temples; the
Plant Resources Centre provided the city’s needed lung space; municipal
authorities developed a number of large public parks. All these developments
made the city a city of walkers. I think among all the Tier II cities of India my
city would perhaps have the largest number of people who love walking either in
the morning or evening. We built a beautiful stadium, a facility that the city
is proud of. After the super cyclone of 1999., the stadium was the nerve-centre
for relief operations.
Around 1978 we started looking for shops selling ice cream.
Our daughter, three years old, was fond of it. We made friends with a few sellers,
all in Bapuji Nagar. One of them was more worldly-wise and responded to our
needs. We were looking for a suitable toy-strewn nursery close by. He mentioned
about Ruchika and Mrs Khurana. We got connected with the young institution in
Forest Park area, in a small private house. There were initial challenging days
in making our child realise that that was the place for her to spend a few
hours in the morning. She protested, but Mrs Khurana’s perseverance won.
Ruchika grew fast and blossomed into a sought after High School in Unit VI.
In 1957, two avenues in the city had looked charming. The
first one was between the Railway Station and the Assembly Building; the other,
between the Assembly Building and the campus of the Territorial Army. The
Deodars, on both sides of quiet wide roads, added grace to the surrounding.
Today the first one looks vanquished by the yelling voice of grievance and
protest. There is still a small stretch of road -- between the Planetarium and
the Sainik School -- where tranquillity prevails. A long stretch of road for
pleasant drive could develop if we act fast and take care of the recently
constructed stretch of the national highway between Rasulgarh and Daya River.
Shady trees with wide canopy on both sides would have magical effect. The other
stretch could be the Road along the Kuakhai River up to Balakati after one
crosses the Bridge on way to the Chaushathi Yogini Temple at Hirapur.
The city has by now excellent Train and Air connectivity.
Excellent academic institutions have come up. We have satisfactory hospital
facilities as well. It has overcome the initial resistance to the entry of
Department Stores. Now kirana stores and Department stores enjoy peaceful
coexistence. Uber and Ola have arrived and added value to urban transport. I
remember our Rickshaw rides from the Railway Station to the Kalpana Colony ending
with inevitable haggling over fare. Certain challenges still persist, like the
traffic pandemonium at the Khandagiri road junction and in front of the State
Museum; open defecation; the unclean Bindu Sagar and the choked natural water
channels. Airnb, the worldwide accommodation leader, is yet to arrive in the
city.
Despite its shortcomings, my city continues to be adorable.
It is one of the most liveable II tier cities of the country. I know many
people who have been reluctant to leave this city for a posting in a
metropolis. I foresee its future as a world class tourist-hub and a sought
after learning centre. With almost six decades of association with the city, I
would suggest two projects for its long-term growth. We must have a new
rail-link between the New Bhubaneswar Railway Station and Khurda Road through
Khandagiri-Dumduma area—a sort of Ring Railway for the city. We must improve
the quality of the Daya and Kuakhai Rivers including the river banks.
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