The Abandoned Mosque of Beliaghata

On Beliaghata Main Road, a little under a kilometre southeast of the point where the road crosses the canal lies a mysterious, abandoned mosque. I say abandoned because the mosque is not used for prayers by Muslims anymore, although it is far from empty. What was once a mosque is now used as a residential building and storage space. I first found out about the abandoned mosque in Beliaghata from a Facebook post by my friend Avijit Das. Avijit and Souvik had been alerted to the presence of the mosque by another Facebook post. “Sayan Banerjee had posted about the mosque, claiming that it was the oldest mosque in Kolkata and that it was ASI property”, Souvik told me. But when they visited the site, they found it to be occupied by a Hindu family. Souvik was able to identify the family as Vaishnava based on the “kanthi” or wooden necklace that a male member of the family was wearing. The sheer ridiculousness of a Vaishnava family living inside a mosque was enough to pique my curiosity, and so I decided to do some investigation of my own.

The western side of the mosque

The Metropolitan Laboratory & Nursing Home Ltd., Theatre Road

“That building over there? That used to be the Metropolitan Nursing Home”, said my colleague Robin in answer to my question. He has been working at our office on Camac Street for much longer than I have, and our 13th-floor veranda gives us a bird’s eye view of the building on 18 Theatre Road (now Shakespeare Sarani). By the time I started working, the building was far past its prime, the nursing home was shut, and the entire plot was overgrown. It was only recently, over a cup of tea at my uncle’s house on Amherst Street that it emerged that my uncle, Dr. Dipak Ranjan Sarbadhikari was connected to this building.

Bose House, Serampore

I discovered Bose House in Serampore purely by chance. Actually even using the word “discovered” would be inaccurate. It would imply that I came upon something, and knew what it was. I did not. I was doing my rounds of Serampore, taking photographs of the town’s colonial era buildings, and just happened to drive past the building on 22, T.C. Goswami Street. I was struck both by the size and obvious magnificence of the structure, and it’s almost frightening decay. I told the chauffeur to pull over, and entered to take some photographs that I was pretty certain I would never use.

 

Holy Rosary Church: India's Only Submerged Church

I found out about the Holy Rosary Church, in the Shettihalli village of Hassan District, in the Indian state of Karnataka, from a photograph posted by my friend Ananya,on Facebook. A rudimentary Google search revealed some surprising facts. Remarkably, the Holy Rosary Church in Shettihalli is India’s only submerged church. Submerged by what, you may ask? By the waters of a dam’s reservoir, of course! An opportunity to visit the church finally emerged this year. I was going to Mysore, and I decided to take a day out, and drive over to Hassan.

 

It was the last weekend of May, and roasting hot in Karnataka. The monsoons would arrive by the following week, and common sense suggested that water in any river or reservoir would now be at its lowest level. I set off with my friend Sreyashi in a rented car at 6 am. The drive from Mysore to Shettihalli was about 130 km and took exactly 3 hours. The roads were in good shape for the most part, and even when they got a little patchy, they were far from the worst roads I have been on. Some distance inside the village, the car turned off the metalled road into a dirt track, and after clearing some bushes, I got my first sight of the Holy Rosary Church. To my relief, my guess was completely correct. The reservoir was all but bone dry, and the church was completely visible. Our car almost ran right into it!