There have been many notable Bengali settlers in Delhi, among them Dr H C Sen, the legendary doctor on whose death in 1906 the whole of Chandni Chowk was closed. Notable also were his sons, Dr B C Sen and Rash Behari Sen (Adu Babu), grandson R N Sen and great-grandsons Rana Sen and Shantanu Sen, ex-Joint Director of CBI. Incidentally, historian Narayani Gupta is a Bahu (daughter-in-law) of the family.
Then there was the great writer Nirad C Chaudhuri, whose photographer-author son, Dhruva now lives in Faridabad. Dr H K Sen and Shyamaldas Seth of Roshanara Gardens were the two with whom Swami Vivekananda stayed when he visited Delhi at the fag-end of the 19th century.
There were others of note and fame too, among them Swami Gokulananda of the Ramakrishna Mission in Paharganj, the founders of the Bengali Club at Kashmere Gate in 1925 (whose indefatigable past president is S P Mitra) and the organizers of the first Durga Pujas in Delhi in the opening decades of the last century. More recently, Neepesh Talukdar and his sister Deepali Nag were among the notables that include Nandan Dasgupta, publisher of the quarterly Hindol magazine and the late Shankar’s Weekly-cum-Statesman artist, Reboti Bhushan Ghosh.
Some Bengalis migrated to nearby places like Agra and Mathura during the revolt of 1857 and made their mark there. Besides them were the Bagchis. I had known the Bagchis since my school days at St Peter’s College, to which Capt K P Bagchi was attached as visiting doctor. Two days before his weekly visit the compounder of the school infirmary, Pascal would start making preparations, along with the matron, saying, “Let’s tidy up things or the Headmaster, Mr Merriman would get annoyed.” Capt Bagchi came in his car, dressed in coat and trousers with a sola topi on his head. The boys were lined up ~ he examined each of them and instructed Pascal about the treatment. Father used to take us to Capt Bagchi (Kali Babu) in summer when the school was closed for treatment of seasonal ailments.
At home the doctor wore dhoti-kurta and I remember that he had very small, almost dainty feet, which he kept fidgetting while sitting on an easy chair. He would dismiss complaints of constipation with a wave of the hand, saying, “If you sit long enough in the bathroom after a glass of warm water, you will come back relieved. Mrs Bagchi was a petite lady, wearing a Bengali-style sari and tending to the banana plant that grew in the small garden with its Bangla ambiance. The following piece was written by Father (Thomas Smith) in The Statesman, dated 25 July, 1987, under the heading “An Agra gharana ~ the Bagchis”:
“Agra has been the home of several Bengali families of note, among whom are the Bagchis. The family traces its ancestry to Rameshwar Bagchi (1789-1863). He was a descendant of Rambhadra Bagchi, who settled down at Jamsherpur, in Nadia district, about 1650 A.D. Later the area came to be known as Bagchi-Jamsherpur. The first of the family to come to Agra was Dr R P Bagchi, MD, a physician, who stood first in the MB (now MBBS) examination of Calcutta University in 1885. He was the only candidate who was successful at the MD examination of the university in 1888 and the third student in its history to obtain this degree.
“Dr R P Bagchi, who was nine-years-old when Ghalib died in 1869, settled down at Agra in 1890, becoming a lecturer in medicine at what then was the Agra Medical School for Licentiates. He had an impressive personality, with a flowing beard and charged Rs 4 as visiting fee. And if the patient was unable to pay, the fee was waived. He died in July 1931, at the age of 71, leaving behind three sons ~ Har Prasad, Kali Prasad and Ajit Prasad ~ and two daughters, Nirmala and Kamala. The eldest son was a reputed lawyer, who went on to become Professor of Law at Agra College, being closely connected with the Nagri Pracharini Sabha and the Agra Bengali Library. He died in Delhi after a stroke in February 1981, on his 93rd birthday.
“The second son, Dr K P Bagchi, was a well-known physician of Agra, who saw emergency service in IMS, attaining the rank of Captain. He was president of the Indian Medical Council and also honorary physician to St Peter’s College, Agra. Captain Bagchi died at Agra (in 1987) a few months ago, in his 96th year.
“The third son, A P Bagchi, now about 84, was a superintending engineer in the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department. Among the other descendants of the family are G P Bagchi, IAS, former Chairman of the Tripura Service Commission, and B P Bagchi, ICS, who was a lecturer in English at St John’s College, Agra, in his younger days.
He later served in Bengal, UP, Punjab and, Jammu and Kashmir, and was successively Secretary to the Government of UP, Commissioner of Gorakhpur Division, Chief Commissioner of Chandigarh, and Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms. After retirement, he was part-time lecture in English at St Stephen’s College, Delhi.
“While the boys of the family are mostly administrators, educationists and business executives, the girls have excelled in music and the other fine arts. Mrs Aparna Chakravarti and her sister, Mrs Sunita Chatterji, are well-known exponents of the Agra Gharana of classical music; Mrs Basanti Sanyal is a short story writer in English and Bengali, and Mrs Alka Chakravarti a reputed Western classical vocalist (soprano).”
Most of those mentioned are probably no more. I used to meet Basanti Sanyal at the Allahabad Bank branch in Chillint Ghattia, where the Bagchis stayed. She was a pretty lady with an attractive face, but dark circles under her eyes (like her father). She was the only locally known “Basanti” before Hema Malini took on that name for the film Sholay. P P Bagchi I came to know (after B P Bagchi) when he came to attend meetings of St John’s College Old Boys’ Association in Delhi.
Only after his death on 5 April, 2016, in Kolkata did I learn that he had married Ruby Halder, my classmate in St John’s in 1960-62. Ruby now lives with her son in Gurgaon ~ and her sister Sona, who was a year or two junior to us, in Bengal. The Bagchis’ house has been sold and the new owner has opened a nursing home in it, but whenever I pass by it old memories are revived about the marvellous family.
Also worth recalling are Dr R M (Ram Madhav) Sarkar, the famous homeopath and cricketer at whose house the only Durga Puja in Agra used to be held. Dr P K Haldar was a lover of old monuments, taking time out from SN Hospital to visit them. P C Bose (now 87) lives in South-West Delhi’s Mayapuri. Prof Taluqdar, was the historian in whose memory the Taluqdar Cricket Cup is played between St John’s and Agra colleges.
Dr Hazra, who became Guru of the Soami Bagh Radhasoami sect, has an equally well-known son, D K Hazra, an expert in nuclear medicine and recipient of the Padma Shri award two years ago. There were two Bengali Christian families too ~ that of Lawrence Tobias (Bimal Bindu Biswas), Supt of Orphanage Press, and Moitra Babu, who came to buy mutton at Ghattia bazaar every Sunday. He would call out “Thomas, Thomas” to greet father and one wondered how he could ride a bicycle while wearing a billowing dhoti.
Tobias went back to Calcutta to join the Alipore Jail Press and like Moitra died long ago.
But P C Bose still talks about his old abode in Nuri Darwaza, known as Mithai-ka-Pul, where the jinns are believed to be the midnight customers. Something also recorded in an 1894 novel, Mariam ~ A Tale of the Indian Mutiny, among whose first readers was Dr R P Bagchi, who had settled down four years earlier in front of the Chillint building that later housed the ubiquitous D Bond’s medical store of D Bandopadhya.
R V Smith