Back Of The Book: Burrabazar's Dying Generation

BACK OF THE BOOK
Burrabazar's Dying Generation

Ignored by the younger generation, Kolkata's wholesale market—which spawned the Birla and Goenka empires—battles for survival in the hands of old-time traders.

By Debojyoti Chatterjee

Abhay Nopany has a problem. a 21-year-old commerce graduate from Kolkata's St Xavier's College, he hates going to work at his family's steel business. Nothing unusual for a youngster who has a brand new Esteem-a passing-out gift from his father-to zip around the town in. But ask his father, Braj Gopal Nopany, 45, and you will hear a near doomsday story about what's wrong with his son's generation. Son of a steel trader, who extended his business into other metals like copper and aluminium, Nopany Senior is afraid that the glitz of the new economy will lure his youngest son away from trading, and mark an end to a profession his family has been pursuing over the last three generations.

The Morning After

''My brain is just a jellyfish in the ocean of my head
'Cause I drank too much tequila and I woke up seein' red
Now all I really want from life is to crawl back into bed
On account that my brain is just a jellyfish in the ocean of my head''

—From Jellyfish, by The String
Cheese Incident

Ever felt like that after an extended weekend party? a hammer pounding inside your head, lower eyelids like miniature kangaroo pouches, eyes bloodshot and a mouth that feels like sandpaper? If you have, read on for the miracle cure. Of course, you've heard it all. How you should drink gallons of water after a binge, dose yourself up with pre-binge vitamin Cs and Bs or even an aspirin, eat honey and toast or, depending on the level of your desperation, go for a hair o' the dog. Some of that may work but most don't. But here's Treadmill's miracle cure for a bad hangover: go, exercise. Run, walk, jump on the exercycle, whatever.... exercising helps a hangover. How does it work? To work the alcohol out of your system (actually to metabolise it), exercise is useful. You really sweat out the toxins. Exercise, particularly of the cardio-vascular variety, increases your intake of oxygen, and oxygen speeds up the process of metabolisation. So does the fructose found in honey and fruit juices. So a good cure for the morning after is to drink lots of water, eat fruits, and go pound that treadmill.

If you're still incredulous about how you're going to get out of bed and head to the gym, here's an endorsement. A hard-hitting party animal and CEO of a leading MNC's Indian operations says he makes sure he hits the gym after a night of partying. ''Otherwise I just can't work through the day.'' In fact, his best workout days are Sunday mornings-after a late night of partying on Saturday.

Of course, some of you may say what the heck and settle for the good old hot bubble bath, where the heat makes you sweat out those nasty toxins, and the bubbles are an added fun factor (if you're into that kind of fun. Me? I'm not.) You may feel a bit woozy at first, but when you emerge from the tub after a good, long soak, you'll feel a hell of a lot better. But take it from me, the run works better. A run (or any form of exercise) is the quickest way to feel relief. The next time you binge, try it.

-MUSCLES MANI

Nopany isn't the only worried father at Burrabazar. In fact, the entire trading and wholeseller community in the fabled market, the largest wholesale trading outpost in South Asia, is counting its worry beads. And there's plenty of counting to do. The 2.5-sq km market, situated on the eastern bank of river Hooghly, has for the last 100 years symbolised the trading traditions of Kolkata. Fortune seekers from Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Sindh came to try their luck in the second city of the empire. They stayed on to build a mammoth trading centre in this area. You name it and you find it in Burrabazar. From cotton to steel, scrap iron to vegetables and fresh produce, readymades to tarpaulins, glass bangles to gems and jewellery, Burrabazar had it all. The congested lanes and winding bylanes were named after the products they sold. Thus the cotton market became ''suta-patti'' and the steel traders' area, ''loha patti''.

Today, a walk through Burrabazar will roughly take you the better part of the day, with cars, buses, trucks, pushcarts, people, and even cows jostling for space in the crowd. For a moment you are likely to forget that you are in Kolkata, as the local patois-an incredible mix of Gujarati, Marwari, and Bengali-sounds almost incomprehensible. And tinkling through it all is the sound of money. ''The daily turnover in this area is around Rs 3,000 crore, and yet we have failed to consolidate our trading opportunities and are continually slipping behind,'' says Bholanath Chatterjee, one of the oldest steel traders in the city. Bhola babu, as he is popularly known, has a point. Gross figures may suggest a huge business opportunity, but the fact is there has been a steady decline in the fortunes of the market.

''There is a distinct shift in trading practices. The younger generation wants its computers and to set up shop in other glitzier parts of the city,'' says Satyanarayan Bajaj, a local MLA and leading businessman. Nopany Jr. agrees: ''It makes no sense for me to be in the traditional line of trading. With the world opening up, we simply cannot continue to function as we did in the control-regime. And, to be able to move with the times, we will have start getting more sophisticated, and sophistication is something that was never popular in Burrabazar,'' he says.

So what's the step forward? Ajay Lohia, a cloth merchant, thinks he has an answer. ''The way out is to leverage our ability to serve large orders and become a part of the supply chain of various large retail units,'' he says. Easier said than done. For the average size of a wholesale operation in Burrabazar is a room not exceeding 10 by 10. And the most common sight even today is the babu sitting on a gaddi juggling three telephones and sundry suppliers. The concept of warehousing is almost non-existent and stock management is as primitive as it can get. The only thing that has changed in the last 50 years is perhaps the dhoti-kurta, which has given away to safari suits.

But signs of the inexorable decay are all around. Like the bangle bazaar on Canning Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the region. Once a riot of colours and activity, the five-storeyed building housed probably the largest glass bangle market in India, until a fire gutted it last year. Today, as the sun goes down the Hooghly, the silhouette of the charred building casts its long shadow on a few bangle seller hawking their wares on churi-patti.

Traders like Nopany and Lohia may continue to believe that all is not over at Burrabazar. But the truth is that like an old, decrepit man, Burrabazar is slowly walking into the dusk of death.

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