Origin of Bangla Fourth Part Kalapani

By Dibyendu Chakraborty

The importance of the word Kalapani in historical and political perspectives with respect to Bengal is immense. For a large part of the history of India’s struggle for independence, this word has a very significant presence. Persons who were considered to be revolutionary by the British rulers of India used to be sent to ‘condemned cells’ of a jail that was named as ‘Cellular Jail’ by the British. Many of such rebellious souls were from Bengal. The construction of that jail was completed at the beginning of the twentieth century, and within no time it became synonymous with ‘Kalapani’. Every citizen of India learns about the country’s freedom struggle; it is an integral part of the Indian education system. Through that process, the word Kalapani becomes acquainted with every Indian. Any inquisitive mind thinks at least once in life about the origin of the word Kalapani, as that word hardly has any other use in the Indian languages. Through his quest, spanning almost his entire active lifespan, Naru has found an explanation of the origin of that word. Through this book he has brought that unique understanding to the readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Mar 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9783748769286

Book preview

Chapter 1 – In search of Kalapani

Prelude

Young Naru would remain mesmerized when the stories of Shoilobala Majumdar would start to be unfolded. After the end of the rainy season, at the advent of the autumn when she used to travel from her home in Kayetgram to her home of the maiden days at Nilganj in Kishoreganj of present-day Bangladesh, that time the river bed could be clearly visible through the crystal clear water. Bright moonlight happened to beam through the greeneries along the banks of that river. Naru used to be transported to another world by that description.

During the early years of the secondary schooling, when Kalapani ( ‘black water’ when translated verbatim ) appeared in the study books, then it became rather difficult for Naru to digest the notion that the colour of water could be so blackish that it might be termed Kalapani.

Many decades later, when the information technology industry was touching new heights with every passing day, then Naru came to know about the existence of a river at the boundary of the Khasi and Jaintia hills of the North-Eastern India where the boat on the river water seems to float in the air as the unbelievably clear water cannot be captured in the photograph.

All through his life Naru went on getting amazed by the ever changing beauty of water. In his tender age it was a huge depression that brought multi-day long, very heavy rains at the end of the official rainy season in Bengal. Sparsely populated, huge open tracts of land of his birthplace were submerged with ankle-deep water. Green vegetations (mainly short grasses) were swinging under the clear flowing water. The flat ponds were being overflowed. Naru was sitting alone on the high embankment of a huge pond in the middle of that landscape. The afternoon sun was hidden behind the thick cloud cover stretched deep into the western half of the sky. The western part of the sky was opened-up to the horizon. The sunlight that was being reflected from the clouds somehow created a highly luminous, glittering silver coating on the all pervasive water-land. Every one of those millions of ripples on the surface of the mercury-like water-sheet was sparkling in that whitish light. That time Naru lifted a silvery fish with his fishing rod and the fish came flying through the air from the water of the pond. In that evening while studying in the coziness of the second floor of their residential building, Naru faced a lot of difficulties in accepting that natural water can be of black colour, so that it may be termed Kalapani.

Kalapani could never be got rid of as Naru’s mind never accepted that explanation. Naru even revisited the map books again and again to reassure himself that the colour of the ‘Black Sea’ was not shown in black colour there. He did remain unable to find the description of ocean water that was so dense in colour that it could be termed black water. Every new amazing experience with water caused the resurfacing of the issue of Kalapani.

Puri – Sea Beach at the Dead of the Night

It was the full-moon phase. Probably one or two days were to go before the full moon. In the early evening the Moon was yet to appear. A good number of visitors were there scattered on the beach around the place called ‘Swargodwar’, the central area of the Puri Sea Beach. In the second half of the 1980s the atmosphere on the beach at Puri was quite different than what it is today. The rides, camels, horses were not present on the beach and the number of tourists, though were large but not as huge as it is today.

That day, the ocean seemed to be behaving strangely. The waves were coming rapidly one after the other, and the water was rougher than what Naru had experienced earlier. After some time Naru could notice that the number of rollers and their intensity was higher than the other evenings. The number of rollers was going up to eight breakers in one series, in comparison to two to three in a normal evening. The ocean water was creating awe in the eyes of the spectator.

That was the second trip of Naru to Puri. He and his friend hardly had the minimum amount of money to stay put at Puri up to the intended date of return. But that was not a limiting factor. They had enthusiasm beyond any limit. Till that time (late 1980s) the rudimentary hotels and lodges had the system of counting