The future looks fragile. The present is lonely and adrift. Only the halcyon days of the past make sense in the time of isolation, shortages, conflict and deprivation. The quip that the streets were empty when Ramayan played on Doordarshan (in the 1980s) and Mahabharat plays when the streets are empty summarises the relevance of lost meaning—anchoring us in a fantasy of stability. To ace the social-distancing act, people are plundering memories for comfort and belonging.
The corny cardboard arrows and Arun Govil’s sotto voce homilies are strangely reassuring. And suddenly, we wanted more of it: Amul ran its old advertisements that synced with the original broadcast date of Ramayan and Mahabharat. The sun-kissed terraces of quaint homes that we lived in, the taste of grandma’s dhansak, getting lost in the sepia-toned era of films; or exploring the stories of the past—entrepreneurs across the spectrum are aiding journeys into the past which will remain untouched long after the virus is a nasty memory. As Chef Chiquita Gulati of Spice Market, Delhi, so perfectly sums it up, “Childhood memories and flavours become a part of our subconscious.”
Restoring History
History is waiting on the banks of the Hooghly, where the Belur Rash Bari complex stands, comprising a cluster of temples, colonnaded pavilions and residential quarters in a curious, almost eccentric juxtaposition of the old and the new. Crumbling skeletons of old structures—fragments of begrimed bare-brick walls and staircases and the dilapidated, overgrown erstwhile ‘baithak khana’ at the far end of the premises represent sharp contrast to the recently renovated quarters boasting fresh coat of paint, polished fenestrations, gilded ornamentation on temple arches and manicured gardens overlooking the river.
“This place is a work in progress,” says Subhajit Datta, the co-proprietor of Twins Tours, a Kolkata-based tour outfit that manages and runs the heritage homestay. The 138-year-old Rash Bari belongs to the illustrious Daw family of Jorasankho, built by Purna Chandra Daw in the late 19th century. For decades it lay vacant. “The family only visited during annual festivals,” says Datta. A few years ago, Atanu Daw, one of its younger members, proposed a restoration. Work began two years ago with workmen brought in from Bagnan town, known for mistris with knowledge of the architecture of the past.
In recent years quite a few properties in and around Kolkata have been restored and repurposed as heritage hotels and homestays. The Bawali Rajbari, which originally belonged to the distinguished Mondal family, is about an hour’s drive from Kolkata. The sprawling mansion, nearly three centuries old, with colonnaded balconies, archways, ornate balustrades and a sprawling courtyard, got a new lease of life when Kolkata-based industrialist Ajay Rawla stumbled on the property in 2008. He got local artisans to train under the Aga Khan Foundation in lime-water construction and traditional brick-baking. He sought expert advice from specialists.
The once dilapidated mansion is now a coveted luxury destination to be ticked in the post-Covid Bucket List. Some restoration projects like Baithakkhana Amadpur have roots in family pride. The grand mansion of the Chaudhuris, erstwhile zamindars who settled in Amadpur nearly four centuries ago, has been reincarnated by scion Shiladitya Chaudhuri. He worked tirelessly with master masons from Murshidabad. “Initially I was reluctant in turning the place into a homestay,” he says.
Until February, Amadpur was a top draw among people looking for a quiet weekend away. Similarly, entrepreneur Darshan Dudhoria’s palatial 1700s ancestral mansion in Murshidabad’s Azimganj took five years to come alive. Known as Bari Kothi, the grand edifice, which stands on the banks of the Ganges, amalgamates Roman, Greek, French and Rajasthani architecture. “My purpose was to restore the local ecosystem and empower the community around the Bari Kothi,” Dudhoria said. It has 15 heritage suites and offers curated itineraries designed to showcase Murshidabad and the Sheherwali way of life.
The imposing pediment with an ornamented tympanum, grand pillars, chess-board floors, intricate hand-painted tiles, stained-glass paintings and spacious rooms with exposed beam ceilings, ornate furniture and valuable antiques speak of the Kothi’s glittering legacy. But there is no need to drive out of Kolkata to sample ancient charms. In a quiet lane in North Kolkata’s Shyambazar area stands The Calcutta Bungalow—a nonagenarian townhouse, acquired, restored and repurposed as a heritage B&B by Iftekhar Ahsan, the founder of the immensely popular Calcutta Walks. He worked closely with scenographer Swarup Dutta to transform the crumbling North Kolkata house. “We pondered bringing in conservation architects but found that the best advice came from mistris,” says Ahsan. Master masons from Murshidabad skilled in working with old chuna-surki method were brought in.
“Their recipe to make the mortar used in restoring the building comprised chitey gur (jaggery), fenugreek, wood apple pulp, betel nut and other edible items along with powdered brick and lime water,” Ahsan says. Much of the wooden and cast-iron elements used in the reconstruction were architectural salvage from other old houses. The stunning interiors, inspired by Old Calcutta place, are strewn with vintages of an era gone by—portable typewriters, old-sewing machines converted into tables, khorkhoris or wooden shutters turned into bed heads and more. These restored homes are repositories of stories and memories waiting to be rediscovered.
Archiving an Era
Walking into Sumant and Asha Batra’s Delhi office is stepping into a Time Machine. Housing film scripts dating back to the earliest talkies to lovingly restored film reels to memorabilia spanning decades of filmmaking in the form of posters, ticket books, publicity material, film stills and more, their studio is a film archiver’s dream come true.
Their online venture Cinemaazi, based on the contents, is a digital repository of memories and fan stories relating to Indian cinema—an ideal log in for a film buff confined to the quarantine couch. Film memorabilia holds pride of place. “We archived them digitally because much of this treasure is being destroyed,” he says. Indian cinema here means Indian cinema—not just Bollywood. The Batras are helped by a very young team of largely film students. Together they researched and sourced prominent regional films—South Indian, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Assamese, Marathi, and the lesser-known Gujarati, Garhwali, Konkani, Manipuri and more.
Cinemaazi hosts regular podcasts with filmmakers and film historians and comes up with relevant features. One day it is on Dilip Kumar, another day it’s a feature on the forgotten Nitin Bose, the Father of Cinema Technique. “We want to document the legacies of people and films, and archive their contributions. We want to recount the spectacular journey of Indian cinema from the first talkie to circa 1999.
We stop at 1999 because there is enough material available on the net after that,” Sumant says. Their aim is to create a vast repository of over 35,000 films, starting from 1913—Sumant is confident of completing it by the end of 2022. His archiving method is a manual of detailing: pick a film, and offer basic information regarding plot, script, songs, cast and crew. The archive then details the career graph of each cast and crewmember, with relevant film reviews, awards, and more. Nostalgia is the Batras’ calling card. Their studio also showcases old radios, typewriters, calendar art, out-of-print books and magazines—a past which will stay alive even in the future.
Weaving Stories
The sari is the ageless symbol of Indian classical couture.
In childhood, Priyanka Modi, Creative Director, AMPM, was deeply enamoured of the sartorial style of her grandparents. The fashionista is inspired by her grandmother’s collection of cotton saris and her grandfather’s vintage jackets and cardigans. “Fashion thrives on nostalgia. It’s a recurring source of inspiration. It can either mean re-imagining an entire decade or revisiting specific eras that remind you of childhood.”
Her loyal patrons often offer to help her build an archive of past sari collections from pieces they own. Likewise, when K Radharaman, CEO, founder and principal designer, House of Angadi, first started his business, he went through his mother’s closet. He realised that even after years of wear and love, many of her saris remain beautiful and relevant. “I understood the beauty of classics through these cupboard raids.” Today’s fashion consumers may think global but they also celebrate their culture equally. “Which is why brands are reintroducing classic silhouettes with a modern twist or are constantly looking to redefine traditional garments.
The line is slowly blurring,” believes Manjula Tiwari, CEO of Ancestry. Designer Adarsh from Osaa by Adarsh explains it beautifully. “We saw our grandmother pair a kurti blouse with a sari. Now that kurti has become a statement on its own. Modern craftsmen are borrowing a piece from that timeline to create a piece of art which everyone can take forward.” Recently, the classically renovated Bikaner House paid a tribute to past wardrobe with the ‘Conscious Sari Swap’, in which the whole nine yards were taken out from the forgotten corners of closets and exchanged with period saris from other collections. Out came Banarasis, Kajivarams, Bomkais, Paithanis and Patolas which had swirled through weddings, parties and festivals as the regalia of feminine grace and power.
Women have always repurposed their mothers’ and grandmothers’ saris; at times to preserve, or to reinvent. Says Vidyun Singh, Founder and Creative Director of Future Collective, “The concept behind the show was not just to re-churn a sea of beautiful saris. It’s a bed for an ocean of stories. The sari swap is not just about getting a sari that you like in place of one that you no longer care for. Behind every sari there is a story… should you wish to share or want to hear. It is an opportunity for women to connect through the sari and its story, to make new connections and revive old ties.”
Reliving Strokes
Restoration is another name for nostalgia reborn. When tourists were still traipsing around in Udaipur, in a secluded area of the City Palace Museum, a small dedicated group was working painstakingly on a set of paintings. Conceptualised in 2015-2016, the Conservation Laboratory at the City Palace Museum, Udaipur, became fully functional in January 2018. Comprising two consultant conservators Saloni Ghuwalewala and S Girikumar with three full-time conservators—Anuja Mukherjee, Bhasha Shah and PM Vasundhara—the team was working on the ‘Paintings on Paper’ project until the coronavirus struck. But they have already restored 22 paintings.
Mukherjee says, “When an artwork comes to the lab for conservation, the amount of restoration work depends on its material composition and condition. After a detailed documentation of its nature and condition, we establish a tentative course of treatment.” All the paintings being restored belong to the City Palace Museum, Udaipur, an integral part of Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation. In the East, the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, held an exhibition of 50 restored paintings by masters such as Gaganendranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Atul Bose, JP Ganguly, Nirode Mazumdar, MF Hussain, Paritosh Sen and Jogen Chowdhury.
Boasting a collection of over 1,300 paintings, the organisers turned to the National Research Laboratory for Conservation of Cultural Property, Lucknow, for help to restore 212 of the works. Technology is the conservator’s friend, as is evident in the operations of Odisha-based Centurion University, which preserves tribal art and culture in 3D. Researchers of the university’s Gram Tarang vocational institute have helped preserve more than 4,000 artefacts of five of the 62 tribes across Odisha.
In the basement of Chitrakala Parishath, Bengaluru’s premier art institution, a group of 10 specialists who jokingly call themselves ‘the doctors of painting’ recently celebrated 25 years as the only centre in South India where art conservation happens in an established manner. Known as the Intach Chitrakala Parishath Art Conservation Centre (Ickpac), old manuscripts and paintings are painstakingly restored here by the ‘doctors’. From paintings from the Raja Ravi Varma School sourced from Kerala to art from the US, the canvas is wide. Ickpac has restored the Shrine Basilica in Velankanni, besides conserving paintings and murals at Chennai’s Senate House, Thanjavur Maratha Palace, Ramalinga Vilasam in Ramanathapuram, and Nalknad Palace in Coorg. It’s all there, waiting patiently for the lockdown to end.
Taste of Childhood
As more and more millennials are working away from home, diners are demanding ‘homely flavours’. This has forced chefs to return to their roots and source recipes from their own childhood,” says Chef Anil Khurana, Corporate Indian Chef, Hyatt Regency Delhi. The corona-infected pizza delivery boy apart, nostalgia cuisine from Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Bengaluru is a tribute to recipes collected from traditional homes. Founders Chef Regi Mathew, John Paul and Augustine Kurian will take you on a trip down memory lane, with flavours and fragrances of northern Malabar kitchens, toddy shop snacks, Syrian Christian and Travancore food.
Cherished family recipes are also on the menu. “What you eat in childhood evokes the strongest memories. Therein lies the nostalgia of food,” says Chef Regi. Read Kappa vevichathu, boiled tapioca mashed with crushed bird’s eye chillies and coconut; Pazham nanachathu made with sun-dried elaichi bananas tossed with shredded coconut and drizzled with paani made from slow-reduced sap of the toddy palm and Chakka vevichathu, a jackfruit jam containing freshly ground spices and grated coconut. Chef Chiquita Gulati of Spice Market, Delhi, is all for past schmaltz.
“One always relates to a particular dish or ingredient with a particular time of the year, festival, sickness or happiness. For example, my maternal grandmother, a kayasth, would always serve me the best Prawn Pulao and fried fish. Those are benchmarks that I associate with good memories.” Her paternal grandma, a Gujarati, barely used onions and garlic in cooking. But she used to make a special cauliflower dish with onions and garlic called ‘Punjabi Shaak’. Today it has pride of place in Gulati’s Punjabi household. When she was designing the Spice Market menu, her son visited the restaurant and demanded soul food—gud ki roti.(roti with jaggery).
“It is now on our menu and so is the CKP Prawn Pulao,” she smiles. Many European restaurants and South Asian eateries are also cooking up nostalgia. Burma Burma offers many dishes from co-founder Ankit Gupta’s growing-up days. Kayunin mao, sticky rice with white pea and sesame steamed in a banana leaf and served with coconut cream; Laphet thoke, a mix of fermented tea leaves, fried garlic, nuts, sesame seeds, tomato and lettuce, or the much-loved Si chet khow suey comprising thick hand-pulled noodles with turmeric oil, garlic, lemon, roasted chilli flakes and brown onions, all transport him to the time when his tastebuds were developing.
The favourite dish of Amar Dwivedi, Executive Chef, Grand Mercure Gandhinagar is his grandmother’s bhindi. “At home for a study breaks preparing for my final exam, my grandmother used to cook it for me.” The Silbatte wali bharwan bhindi is a regular on his menu. Nostalgia plays a significant role in developing food preferences. Jamsheed Bhote, Chef/Patron at Plats, Delhi says, “On our menu is a dish which is a take on my grandmother’s recipe. Called crumb chops at home, its name now is Braised and crumbed lamb steak with caramelised onion, ginger, mint and lamb jus.”
Chef Karann Talwar, Managing Director and Gastronome Chef, Kitchen Kraft Luxury Catering, reminisces how the vegetarian’s delight—cottage cheese or paneer—was a common ingredient on the dinner table. His grandmother’s Shahi paneer, with her trademark use of whole spices and fresh homemade purees, has stayed with him. He also admits he has not been able to master it. Likewise, Chef Subhash Jana, Executive Chef, Swissotel Kolkata, cannot get over his grandmother’s payesh. “It is soul food, and can never be replaced,” he says. When Chef Anahita Dhondy, Chef Partner at SodaBottleOpenerWala, CyberHub, Gurugram, decided to have the quintessential dhansak on the menu, she asked her mother to teach the chefs using authentic, homemade dhana jeeru masala. “It’s nostalgia, comfort and delicious,” she smiles.
Nostalgia in the time of Covid-19 is marking its presence on Instagram, Facebook, online playlists and book readings. It has pervaded lives. The Mumbai police tweeted visuals to harness the power of memories urging people to stick to Covid-19 guidelines—“‘Dekh Bhai Dekh’, there’s a ‘Mahabharat’ happening outside. ‘Humlog’ won’t go to ‘Nukkad’. We won’t let ‘Mungeri Lal Ke Haseen Sapne’ turn into ‘Flop Show’.” Painful or sweet, nostalgia defines us. As researchers, doctors and historians muck about in the history of past pandemics, the best of our lives offer a chance to relive and reinterpret the facets of love and beauty. It also gives us an opportunity to stay relevant today in a new world that resonates with the echoes of the past.
Restoration is another name for nostalgia reborn. And technology is the conservator’s friend. The works are all there, waiting for the lockdown to end.
The sari is the ageless symbol. Women have always repurposed their mothers’ and grandmothers’ saris; at times to preserve, or to reinvent.
When Chef Anahita Dhondy decided to have the quintessential dhansak on the menu, she asked her mother to teach the chefs the authentic recipe