-Hari Ram Pandey
It is not precisely clear when, how or by whom it was decided that goats could graze in the heart of the Old City here. One local historian traces the decision back nearly three centuries, to the early days of the British East India Company. A different explanation says the goats were liberated to graze when India was liberated from Britain in 1947.
Not in dispute is the obvious fact: in the middle of this city of 15 million people, the goats are still grazing. Right beside the mules. Not far from the white dome of the memorial built to Queen Victoria during the Raj. Or from the Pakistani tank that stands as a trophy from the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. Or from the statues of a British viceroy, a Hindu spiritualist, a Bengali social reformer and an Indian soccer star, among others.
Yet perhaps the oddest feature in this quintessentially Kolkatan tableau is what unexpectedly dominates on many mornings in one of the world’s most clamorous cities: silence. There are only the occasional shouts in Hindi or Bengali of herders driving their goats. Or, on a recent morning, of Hindu devotional songs floating out of the open windows of a gold-colored sedan weaving down an empty street as a man in the driver’s seat stretched both arms out the window, blissfully, rhythmically waving, as if in a trance.
“He comes every day,” said Mohamed Azad, a herder.
Whoever he is, he is not alone. Few cities are more synonymous with the messy crush of humanity than Kolkata, which about a decade ago changed its name, if not its identity, from the old British assignation of Calcutta. And yet Kolkata, too, needs a place for people to breathe, to run and to stare at an open blue sky. So like the goats and the mules, they come to the grassy pasture in the heart of the city known as the Maidan. To the uninitiated eye, the Maidan is just a park. To Kolkata, it is the “lungs of the city,” a recharge zone for the soul.
The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of souls in Kolkata and relatively few other open spaces for them to go. The Maidan, like the city around it, exists in a perpetual state of siege with humanity. The morning silence is quickly overwhelmed by the assault of daily life. On weekdays or weekends, thousands upon thousands of people play soccer or cricket or just walk. Or picnic or hold weddings or discussions.
Yet the people also burn garbage or encroach on the Maidan by building illegal structures. Electioneering also presents a problem. Political season is just under way, with critical state elections coming, and rallies are known to draw anywhere from 100,000 people to as many as one million. Periodic efforts to ban rallies from the Maidan have brought mixed results.
“Every big rally takes place there, every year,” said Faiyaz Ahmad Khan, who supervised the Maidan for the city government until 2009. “You can’t even see the grass. You can only see the black grass — the color of people’s hair.”
Given the pressures on the Maidan, it might seem fitting that the park’s custodian is the Indian Army, whose Eastern Command now inhabits Fort William, the former British military garrison in the heart of the park. The British built Fort William in the 1750s, after a Mughal prince overran the city’s previous fortifications. A star-shaped structure erected on the banks of the Hooghly River, Fort William dominated the city; fearing another possible assault, the British cleared a swath of jungle so soldiers would have unimpeded sight lines on approaching attackers.
Yet as the British became more confident of their position, the space was planted and public access was granted, if restricted. When India became independent, the British Army handed over the keys of Fort William, and the Maidan, to their Indian counterparts. Depending on one’s perspective, this was a mixed blessing for the Indian Army.
“It is a state of mind,” Col. Debashish Mitra said. “If you feel it is a headache, it is a headache. If you feel it is a pleasure, it is a pleasure.”
A few years ago, Colonel Mitra was stationed on the Pakistani border, one of the more sensitive military postings in India. Then he was transferred back to , Kolkata, and placed in charge of the Maidan. Asked which job was more difficult, he smiled. He spent a year learning the overlapping laws, regulations and court judgments related to the Maidan. He estimated that every day about 20 people show up with grievances, suggestions or requests to rent space for a wedding or some other event.
Inside an Army administration building, Colonel Mitra unfurled a satellite photograph of the Maidan’s 1,400 acres. Much of the land, roughly 900 acres, is dedicated to Fort William and is off limits to the public. (In military parlance, this is the Green Zone.) Then there is a small area (the Yellow Zone) that houses the state’s High Court and legislative assembly building. Seventeen acres (the Red Zone) are the ground of the Victoria Memorial. Which leaves the Blue Zone, known to civilians as the grassy pasture of the Maidan.
“The Blue Zone is open 24 hours a day,” Colonel Mitra said. “The Army is the custodian. We are here to facilitate access.”
Without saying so directly, Colonel Mitra made it clear that his biggest headaches came from people more than animals. Herders pay the city police an annual fee for grazing rights and drive the animals through the streets to reach the pasture in the early mornings. (Mr. Khan, the former city official, equated the goats with lawn maintenance.) Asked if any linguistic problems arose with the animals in a city where residents speak Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, English and other languages, one herder seemed baffled by the question.
“They are animals,” he said in Hindi. “If you speak to them in Hindi, they will understand Hindi. If you speak to them in Bengali, they understand Bengali.”
The mules and horses, about 100 in number, mostly work pulling tourist buggies at the Victoria Memorial while grazing and living inside the pasture, some tethered, some not. Some are descendants of mules that worked around the Maidan during the Raj. Occasionally, a mule wanders into the maw of traffic, but most intuitively understand to remain inside, as if an unseen boundary surrounded the park.
People have a harder time with boundaries.
“There is always encroachment of the rules,” Colonel Mitra said. “So I act as a watchman. I have people spread all over the Maidan. I have some intelligence sources.”
It is the ongoing battle of a crowded city where sometimes just an ordinary day can seem like a battle: the search for silence, for an open sky, for a day in the park.
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