No one expected the rooftops of Kolkata to suddenly become a battleground.
In the last few years Kolkata has discovered terrace dining. Rooftop cafes and restaurants have sprouted all over the city. Fairy lights, potted plants, perhaps a view of the Victoria Memorial lit up at night added a touch of romance to the city’s nightlife.
Then a devastating fire in a hotel killed 14 people this month, the city administration decided rooftop establishments were a fire hazard says Asianet News.
NEWS1: Speaker1: Just days after the incident, Mayor Firhad Hakim announced the immediate closure of all rooftop restaurants across the city, a move that has sent ripples through Kolkata's vibrant hospitality sector.
Restaurants cried foul, saying they were operating with valid permits granted by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
NEWS2: Mayor Hakim said that rooftops are common spaces and cannot be used for commercial purposes, underscoring that public safety must take precedence over business interests..
The matter has gone to court.
This is Sandip Roy.
But the rooftop turf war has reminded us about how much Indian cities like Kolkata were once joined together by terraces. From the airplane the city was a patchwork quilt of terraces. Life as we knew it in Kolkata was lived from rooftop to rooftop. We were the children of terraces.
When she wanted to talk to my sister Basabi Our neighbour yodeled BASOBI-DI from the window instead of picking up the phone. As my mother chatted with the aunt on the third floor of the house next door, the aunt on the second floor would appear at her window, drawn by her voice, standing behind the half-curtain and join in the conversation. In an age before the Internet and mobile phones this was our social media.
The terrace changed with seasons. In the monsoons it was slippery with moss. In winter it was the place for sunning. I hated being slathered in oil and sent out to the terrace before my bath. But I loved to see the jars of pickles people would put out in the sun. In summer on nights with power cuts we lay on the terrace and imagined stories about the ghosts who lived on the neem tree.
Terraces were also places of escape. A young woman could get away from watchful parents to lock eyes with some unsuitable boy next door, standing on his terrace stealing a few puffs from an illicit cigarette leading to an inter-terrace romance.
When she was in her nineties my aunt Chinmoyee told me that in their joint family, 20 cousins lived in one house, each family squished into a single room. The girls couldn’t go out anywhere without supervision. When we went to the roof our minds would lift she said. They would light Chinese lanterns and watch them float away into the night while the boys flew kites. Somehow that would make the world expand beyond the confines of their home. That was attractive.
CHINMOYEE1: Exactly. Baari bheto bondo hye jaaeto, eto klok eto bhai bon. Jodi chaat na thaakto. Chhadta amader khoob attraction chhilo. That was very attractive.
But as the years went by the terraces fell into disuse. The old houses, including our own, vanished replaced by apartments where we live boxed-in air-conditioned lives. Our washing hangs out to dry on the balcony. The roof might technically belong to everyone as the mayor says. But in reality it means it belongs to no one. It’s often abandoned, languishing behind a rusty padlock, the forgotten part of the house.
Perhaps the current terrace tussle will remind us that terraces are indeed our common wealth. Not just as cafes and restaurants but as places where we once lived out our lives.
When I went up to the terrace in our building it looked so forlorn. A few plants wilting in their pots. An abandoned toy. No hopscotch grid drawn in chalk. The crows cawed in alarm upon seeing me. But the city still looks different from the rooftop. The clamour of the street falls away. I can look up at the bowl of sky and the buildings straining to touch it. I can see the top of the magnolia tree on our street. The perspective shifts. It is a reminder that in a world preoccupied with exerting our rights over a patch of land, once I had a patch of sky as well and a clothesline strung across it where my stories could hang out to dry.
It made me remember I had a roof once - to dream, perchance to sleep.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW