Meet the man lighting up Kolkata’s path to its rich past

Mudar Patherya’s interest in heritage was kindled by his love for Kolkata and he sets out alone with ideas to preserve the city’s rich heritage

He has lit up a lot of Kolkata’s history — he is still in the process; he has brought numerous colonial gravestones back to life; he has helped restore many of the city’s water bodies; he has decorated electricity boxes on pavements, using those nondescript structures to celebrate famous people associated with those neighbourhoods.

In a way, Mudar Patherya symbolises the famous Tagore song, Ekla cholo re — If no one responds to your call, march on alone. Except that people usually respond to his call for crowdfunding, but that’s only after he sets out alone with ideas to preserve Kolkata’s heritage.

“Yes, in some ways it is a solitary game because I don’t see anybody else engaged in crowdfunding and carrying on heritage projects right through the year. But I wouldn’t say I am alone, I would say I am a lone initiator who is funded, at the moment, by 171 donors. That’s the achievement,” Mr. Patherya, 62, who produces annual reports for listed and unlisted companies for a living and is also a researcher and a writer — apart from being a heritage enthusiast, said.

His interest in heritage was kindled by his love for Kolkata — a love that didn’t allow him, unlike many others of his generation, to leave the city in search of a living. “I stayed back and I said, ‘What a city this is! So much can be done here.’ That’s how one got involved in heritage, which is a large space here, going back to 250 years and going to be continuously relevant,” he said.

The first project he took up, back in 2011, was cleaning up the Rabindra Sarobar, the prominent lake in south Kolkata around which he lives, in association with the municipal authorities. “After cleaning it up, one started putting bird boxes up on the trees, doing music events, organising mini marathons in site. Post-Amphan, I re-erected trees there. I think today it is not just a jewel for south Kolkata but for the city,” Mr. Patherya said.

The same year he also helped transform the massive hyacinth-covered Santragachi lake. “[The cricketer] Arun Lal, myself, a doctor and a businessman — four people, we turned what looked like a giant field back into a lake. And since migratory birds were about to come, we had to clean it up in record time. I remember we raised ₹6 lakh and, engaging 150 people, got it cleaned in 17 days,” he said.

“After that one has been involved in a variety of projects — whether it is cleaning tombstones in [South Park Street] cemetery, whether it is painting electricity boxes, whether it is illuminating facades of heritage buildings,” he said.

The idea for painting electricity boxes came when he found, in his locality, a box painted in a way he thought was “very childish” and he wrote to the electricity board saying it was a “very good idea but badly executed” and whether he could repaint it. Soon boxes began to be adorned with portraits of prominent Kolkatans who lived in those neighbourhoods. “I think I have done about 300 electricity boxes across the city,” Mr. Patherya said.

His biggest ambition, at the moment, lighting up all prominent heritage buildings of Kolkata to brighten the city’s post-sunset landscape. He initiated the project exactly a year ago, in November 2023, and that was also when he took to crowdfunding — until then he had particular donors helping him. Until this week, he got as many as 51 iconic buildings illuminated, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, General Post Office, New Market, and Standard Life Assurance Building.

“The full impact of this project will only emerge about three or four years down the road. It’s a game that one needs to sustain largely because there are so many buildings that need to be illuminated. If you have seen the Mysore Palace during Dasara — Kolkata could look like that throughout the year and that would be hugely transformative in terms of image, respect, visibility, and even livelihoods,” Mr. Patherya said.

Published - November 22, 2024 08:17 pm IST