Wannabe Musicians of Calcutta 16

 

Image by Leroy Skalstad from Pixabay 

[This write-up, part of a promised series, was published on the Facebook Group Calcutta Connect Around the World on November 25, 2020.  I have captured it here to have it all in one place. More of these will be coming up soon. Please comment and share.  Leslie]

Growing up, Calcutta for me was a small patch of land largely comprising Calcutta 16 and a few areas defined by the term reachable-on-foot. We lived on Sandel Street and schooled at Park Street, though my sister went all the way to Park Circus by tram. Our church moved from St Thomas' Middleton Row to St Mary's Ripon Street, a hop, step and half-a-jump from home. Mum, till the age of 91, walked to the New Market or Collin Bazaar, or down the road to Methibagan for fresh beef. Our club was the Goan Association near Wellesley Tank, or the Grail Club on Park Street. Our bread and cakes were from our namesake D'Gama's or Saldanha's. Our guitars and pianos were from Braganza's or Reynold's or Lazarus Sequiera. And the piano tuner could often be found at A A Rodrick. So we walked everywhere! Especially wannabe musicians who could hardly afford their equipment.

Gibtone Guitar Corporation, Ripon Street (from their web presence)

We knew all the lanes and bylanes in around the area. In Collin Bazaar, in one of the narrow paths that open onto Wellesley Street you could get guitar strings and picks at dirt cheap rates, or you could go and look at the Gibtone amplifiers that often had three inputs so that the microphone, rhythm and lead could play out of one speaker. Or you could go the hard way and shop for an Ahuja 30W amp at Chandni, build your own speaker box with a 12 inch Harman (also Chandni plus the local wood shop) and buy cables and jacks and do the soldering yourself. There was always a backup with Alvin or Ah Fam Liao to help with the electronics.

And you would celebrate when some Goan or Anglo-Indian party decided to give you a try for some occasion. Some of us ended up doing gigs at Christ the King, 2nd Floor for any kind of occasion. Some of us cut our teeth on one-off gigs at Ghalib bar at anywhere between Rs 5 and Rs 20 per night. Weddings were the big ones. If you could get your quote past the Minstrels (they had Sax appeal) or the Amigos (they too had sax appeal but could also blow their own trumpet), you might have been offered a few hundreds to play for the wedding (as a band, of course). There were days when you would travel "out-of-town" to the DI or Swimming Club to do a show, only to be walking back down Park Street or Mayo Road with your instruments on your head after the ball was over.

Small wonder then, that the next morning you would be going back the same way for your morning walk! As the winter sets into Calcutta 39, I recall these Calcutta 16 stories and wonder how we ever thought that Picnic Garden was in another State!