Keeping communities alive

The Chinese Community Club off Central Avenue is where the Cheenapara Heritage Gallery is located

Well before the buzz around Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting became one of the highlights at the BRICS Summit in Delhi on September 12-13, a development in Kolkata that connected the same countries grabbed our attention.

On September 5, Black Burn Lane in old Chinatown, Tiretti Bazar, experienced a sea of activity with the opening of the Cheenapara Heritage Gallery, India's first space to document the history and culture of its resident Chinese community. For the uninitiated, Cheenapara is the local name for the area (Bengali: ‘Cheena': Chinese, ‘para': neighbourhood).

Located in the Chinese Community Club, off Central Avenue, the project is a collaboration between Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and The CHA (Cities, Heritage, Architecture) Project, a Singapore-based urban design studio established by a Kolkata resident, Rinkoo Bhowmik. This gallery includes a permanent display of curiosities, antiquities, photographs, souvenirs, archival material, and documents sourced by Kolkata's Chinese. This grand initiative will help join the dots of the community's links with Kolkata that dates back to over two centuries.

Members of the community interact with each on a Saturday evening in Old Chinatown. Pics/Fiona Fernandez

This columnist was lucky to have experienced the sights, sounds, and character of this untouched quarter of Chinatown last year. I also interacted with a few homegrown residents. The Chinese, who originally came to India for trade, and better working opportunities, while fleeing from conflict and natural disasters, have assimilated into the Bengali ecosystem. Apart from restaurants, they set up salons, leather businesses and other commercial trading activities. They speak fluent Bengali, eat dal-chawal, and keep tabs on cricket like most of us. It was revelatory to study a community with roots in another county, and their organic shift towards their home city.

The news of the heritage gallery is a great avenue to not just preserve their ancestry but also to showcase it to the rest of the city, and the world. This is where I got thinking about Mumbai, and the ‘melting pot' tag that we take for granted. Apart from the galleries dedicated to some of the city's original and migrant communities in our city's museums, there are no permanent spaces to celebrate their rich contribution to Mumbai's indigenous or migrant communities. The FD Alpaiwalla Museum is an exception, and crafts a great storytelling narrative around the Zoroastrian community and its links with India.

Be it a deep-dive into the Kolis and Bhandaris' rooted existence since the city was all but seven marshy islands, or the fascinating journeys of the Bene Israelis or Baghdadi Jews; the Wadia shipbuilders' impact on erstwhile Bombay's shipping industry; the influence of the Goans, Mangaloreans, and Shettys, who travelled for better opportunities; the trading communities of the Bhatias, Shroffs, and Banias who were key members in the city's early financial network… The list is endless, and makes for an envious idea. Each of these communities and many others have shared their cultural influences and have also imbibed a certain ‘Bombay-ness' along the way. It is this beautiful jugalbandi that needs to be documented to a level of permanence.

Imagine gazing at 18th century cooking utensils that originated in a Goan kitchen, or at forgotten Kunbi weaves. Or the joy of marvelling at details of replicas of boats used by Baghdadi Jews to arrive on the Konkan, or famous ships built by the Wadia shipbuilders? What if we could glimpse at restored hundis dating to the early 19th century (traditional indigenous bills of exchange) that were used by the Shroffs?

All of these possibilities are ripe with opportunity and can offer an unbelievable repository as well as a great service to the communities that built Mumbai's storied legacy. Our guess is that logistically, it might be a nightmare to bring all of them under one roof. Instead, standalone community-driven mini museums and galleries can go a long way in engaging and educating the visitor. The more the merrier. Sustained efforts and financial support from our heritage and cultural stakeholders and well-wishers is needed to set the ball rolling. Else, in a fast-changing metropolis, where markers of community living remain increasingly fragile, we will be staring at the loss of these movers and shakers that gave us that ‘melting pot' tag in the first place. And made us, quintessentially, Mumbai.

mid-day's Features Editor Fiona Fernandez relishes the city's sights, sounds, smells and stones...wherever the ink and the inclination takes her. She tweets @bombayana
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.