Big Clock @ Howrah Station

I cannot remember when I first boarded a bus, a car or a train in my life. Perhaps I was not ripe enough to understand that at that time. But I can still remember my long train journeys for my maternal uncle’s house. It used to happen mostly during the summer vacation and for some reason it was my parents who actually fixed that destination. My uncle’s house is in a village far from the city and I had to board suburban train to reach there. I used to spend nearly one month i.e. almost the whole vacation and then return back to my home. While returning I was accompanied by some fellow villager known to my uncle or a neighbor who was bound for Kolkata for some activity. He just escort me up to the terminal station i.e. Howrah Station and drop me into the safe hand of my father. It was during this time, I came across the Big Clock of Howrah Station as my father used to wait for me under it.

Now let me give a brief background of this historical clock at Howrah station which every citizen of Kolkata is more or less familiar with. This twin clock was designed keeping in mind the Big Ben of London. In 1926, clock manufacturer Gent’s of London made this clock. This 45 inches diameter clock is popularly known as Big Clock or Baro Gari and continues to be the most prominent meeting point for the travelers leaving the city or entering the city. Even in this digital age, this old analog clock (driven by electronic pulse master) is the timekeeper and landmark for the city dwellers.

My mother said that her father too used to wait for her under this Big Clock whenever she arrived to the city from village. She told me that the life in the village was hard in her childhood. There used to be very little earning from cultivation and scope of other employment was less. Lack of education system, lack of medical facility made her whole family to move to city for survival. But the root was embedded in the village and so there was need to travel to the village house quite often. I have learnt this from my mother but that old Big Clock has witnessed this all. It has witnessed generation after generation moving from village to the city for fortune. People have waited, people have meted, and people have separated in course of their journey. It has seen people laughing with friends, crying in the hand of dear one, anxious for leaving the familiar world behind, worrying about someone not coming in time. Sometimes I feel if using time dilation I can reverse this clock and can take it along with this whole station corridor in the past, I could have witnessed my grandfather in his young days, arriving the city to seek luck!

Last time when I was leaving Kolkata for Delhi, I encounter a group of 30 odd teenagers with their rucksack, directing their friends on the way to station to meet under Big Clock. It’s good to see that the Big Clock is still a rendezvous point for young generation too. I ‘m not sure whether this bustling station really cares about this clock in the age GPS and mobile phone but there are people like me who have favorable memories attached with this Old Man, really want history to survive amidst all modernization of city life.