Allahabad Anecdotes: Excerpt From ‘The House The Press Built’

Ghosh was suffering from cataract in one eye which was hindering his reading. Despite having studied only up to Class IX, he made up for his lack of formal education when he joined The Pioneer. By reading the articles that he helped compose and listening to the conversations of the editors, he became fairly fluent in business English and kept a diary of his experiences written in clear, elegant calligraphy.

In those days, a cataract operation was an uncertain affair. Ghosh entrusted his eye to the care of a German surgeon who through a tragic mistake operated on the good eye instead. The result was that to all intents and purposes, Ghosh became blind. Recovering from the various blows that fate had dealt, he decided to make the best of what remained of his days. He would listen to the devotional Shyamasangeet of K. Mullick, choosing from the 78 rpm records that he had sent from the Gramophone Company based in Calcutta.

K. Mullick was famous for rendering devotional songs in his deep soulful voice. Mullick was known only by the initial attached to the surname; the reason for this was because his name was Kader and he was a Muslim, so the record company thought it better to keep that fact hidden from his vast fan following who vaguely thought he might be related to Pankaj Mullick. Occasionally frustrated by this, K. Mullick once plaintively asked the Gramophone Company whether he could sing some qawwali for his next record. By way of response, he was apparently told that the Gramophone Company would probably go bankrupt if he did!

In the evening, Chintamoni Ghosh also had adda sessions, and all his close friends and associates, including Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malviya, Ramananda Chattopadhyay if he was there and many of the Hindi writers whose works he had made known to a wider India, and who knew of his plight, would come to converse with him. Though that was no consolation for his loss of sight, the brilliance of the conversations covering culture, politics, folklore and local affairs, though given the time politics was likely to have dominated, added a stimulating flavour to the life of Ghosh Bari. On occasion, some writers would even share their latest works and throw them open for discussion.

Ghosh had the daily papers in English, Bengali and Hindi read out to him by whichever grandchild happened to be around, so he could keep up to date with the news. It was, as he said, useful for boosting the family’s English quotient as listening to Hindi and Bengali writers did for their other languages.

On this particular occasion when the family told him that Sona hadn’t yet returned from school, he ordered out a horse-drawn carriage post haste and sent it galloping, adding that the garhwan should be careful….

When Sona was finally rescued and safely ensconced in her grandfather’s lap with nothing more than a few scratches, he made an announcement that left no room for debate. With a firm voice, he declared that from then on, Sona would study at home—no more venturing out for lessons. The guesthouse would now serve as her classroom; the same guesthouse with the grand old piano rumoured to have been played by Tagore during his visits, the piano which was originally in the drawing room before being banished to the guesthouse for the girls’ lessons.

Her days were carefully structured, beginning with lessons in Bengali, English and mathematics. A tutor would arrive punctually each morning and Sona’s grandfather would oversee her progress with a keen eye, making sure that there would be nothing lacking in her home schooling. Every subject was taught with discipline, ensuring Sona would be well-versed not only in her mother tongue but also in the language of the empire, along with the essential foundations of arithmetic.

In the evenings, as the sun dipped behind the trees and the air cooled, Sona’s lessons would take a more harmonious turn, with the deep, resonant notes of dhrupad and the rhythmic complexity of dhamar becoming her focus. Therefore, music became as integral a part of her education as reading and writing.

This was not just for Sona. Often, tuitions for the children were held in the guesthouse, with the tutors mostly coming at 7 or 8 in the evening since the children had school in the morning. This was followed by homework. The children would have to walk through the grounds in total darkness since there was no light except that from the stars and the moon, and walk back again through the stillness punctuated occasionally by the howls of jackals or the ear-shattering shriek of a disturbed peacock. A healthy reading habit and fairy stories from the grandmothers had filled them with the fear of ghosts. As a result, they would scuttle towards the guesthouse as quickly as possible with their eyes fixed on the ground—there was a fear of snakes and other rodents besides ghosts—feverishly muttering ‘Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram’, that lasted till they reached the building in the hope that the magic mantra would be enough to keep predators of the ghostly kind away. This was repeated on their way back to the main house.

As a footnote, one should add that Sona, who was always a lively presence in her grandfather’s room, even when he had meetings, once made Jawaharlal Nehru extremely jealous. Motilal Nehru was visiting Chintamoni Ghosh, accompanied by his little son. When Ghosh was building the beautiful Indian Press House, Motilal Nehru came to take a look at the progress and ask for some expert advice—which is why Anand Bhavan has many architectural features in common with the Press House, and which is also why the Nehrus and the Ghoshes were on visiting terms.