- On the main road of Beadon Street is situated the Chaitanya
library, founded in 1889 on the day of Saraswati Puja. At its inception, there were 284 members out of which only 6 were
females. Women were not allowed to read and
write during that time so they were hardly seen in the library. Today the library is in pathetic shape with
empty reading rooms, damaged, termite infested rare collection of books on the
floor, layers of dust, damp rooms and broken ceilings.
- Chaitanya Library is the
conceptualised of Gaur Hari Sen and his bosom friend Kunj Behari Dutta.
Grandfather of Kunj Behari, Shri Ganganarayan Dutta was then a well-to-do
person in the Beadon Street locality. Gaur Hari persuaded him to donate some
money and a large room on the ground floor of his house to set up a library.
Apart from that, Noni Mohan Banerjee donated Rs.20 for the library.
Rabindranath Tagore was one of its founder members.
- Today this library holds
approximately 1, 50,000 books and 27,000 periodicals with several rare volumes
donated by stalwarts of the Bengal intelligentsias of the bygone era.
- As one
proceeds along Girish Park and Minerva theatre, Garanhata Road is the next
destination. The placed is believed to be named after ‘garan’ trees, native to
the Sundarbans mangrove forests which were present in plenty.
- Where the street
turns into Jadu Pandit Lane are twin temples, surrounded by small welding
factories and jewelry shops.
- Just before the largest Bengali festiva Durga Pujo
one finds the shops displaying ornaments to adorn the Goddess and other
associate deities. The area being close to the Kumortulli (where idols
are constructed) probably saw the rise of this jewelry business.
- The Jora Shiv Mandir in the typical Bengali ‘aatchala’ style, were reportedly built by Panchanan
Dutta in or around 1803. Panchanan Dutta was initially a trader of
textiles who later earned huge fortunes by selling Garan tree wood. Today its
address is H9R6+JHQ, Garanhata St, Garanhatta, Beniatola, Kolkata 700006. Later
the temple was renovated by Ramkanai Jaminiranjan Pal of College Street Area.
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