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Jhamapukur Sri Ramakrishna Sangha

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Around 1852-1853, Thakur Sri Ramakrishna (then Gadadhar Chattopadhyay) came to Kolkata at the age of sixteen or early seventeen. He accompanied his elder brother Ramkumar Chattopadhyay when the later went for worshipping different household deities.    The two of them resided at Govinda Chatterjee’s house and Gadadhar used to worship the Radhakrishna idol of this house. Later the idol was shifted to an adjacent Radhakrishna temple (Shyamsundar Jiu’s temple), at an area which used to be Ramkumar’s Sanskrit school or chatushpathi. The descendants of Govinda Chatterjee still stay in this house.  During this period, Thakur used to worship the deity of Narayan Shila (Sridhar Jiu) at Digambar Mitra’s palatial house just a few minutes away from where he was residing.  Raja Digambar Mitra was a prominent businessman and the first sheriff of Kolkata The place of worship The  place of worship (Thakur Dalan) Though most of the portions of ‘ Jhamapukur Rajbari ’ was subs...
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South Park Street Cemetery

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  Coexistence of life and death – a historical and ecological perspective   Sometime around 1840s there happened to be a dense forest infested  by tigers and dacoits. This area was selected for shifting the Christian burial ground from the heart of the city. The first cemetery for East India Company was near the present-day Kiran Shankar Roy Road and this was closed down in 1767. The perpetual stench, belief in the Miasma theory, devastating sight of dead body processions, lack of knowledge about tropical diseases and unavailability of antibiotics were the reason for shifting the cemetery to the outskirts of the Kolkata. As many as four cemeteries were constructed in this forest land. It’s bewildering that this forest was none other than the Park Street; the bustling metropolitan hub that we know today. The area later on came to be known as badamtala due to many almond trees planted here. The four cemeteries as seen in a city map of 1847, were North Park Street, So...
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Abode of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay

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