It’s an oasis of tradition and modernity under one roof. But the contrasts are never at loggerheads with each other. They rather bridge the gap of ages between them.

The worn-out plaster-coatings on the vintage walls can whisper their long lost stories. While the vitreous tiles of today’s well-furnished adjacent cafe can listen to it with great interest. Standing tall with a 150 year-old rich history in its cobwebbed veins and honeycombed arteries, the Harrington mansion of Kolkata is a watch-tower of many events and winds of change. The edifice is a testament to the bygone British era and its facade still bears a signature stamp of intricacies of the colonial architecture.
Carved out of wooden staircases, arched doors, enormous windows, lengthy corridors, huge colonnades, antique furnishings, spacious foyer areas — the gigantic archaic structure is situated in a posh pocket of the city’s well-known Hochi Minh Sarani, aka the erstwhile Harrington Street.
The vicinity bristles with the everyday hustle and bustle. On the one hand, it bubbles with a seething cauldron of commercial activities. On the other, the lane is dotted with a row of palatial buildings wearing a silent, weathered look, having stood the test of stormy times and numerous revolutionary movements. It’s no wonder that these old residential chateaux are either being sold out or revamped to resuscitate their glorious status as a new-age haven for a high-level of “thinking, creating and educating” affair. For instance, the Harrington Mansion’s 2nd floor is a clear case in point.
In sync with its classic touch and the aristocratic lineage of the many inhabitants in the mansion, the Harrington Street Arts Centre — an art gallery clubbed with a coffee-shop — was thrown open for the discerning connoisseurs on January 12. Coinciding with the venue inauguration, an art exhibition titled “Essential, Eclectic, Ephemeral” was also unveiled. The colourful array gives a sneak peek into a selective survey of the language of modern Indian art from the first half of 20th century that sought to strike a balance between realism and abstraction. Interestingly enough, this show is vested with a dual purpose of presenting two primary genres — the abstract as well as the figurative form of post-independence Indian art. Therefore, all the exhibits are by a constellation of artists who received their academic training between the late 1950s and the 1960s. Almost all of them except the late ace painter Paritosh Sen, defines their vocabulary during the decade of the 1970s.
“It’s never an old versus new war. But certainly a cultural confluence right at the heart of the culture capital. We just intended to float an intellectual hub where both the old and the young alike can meet and mingle to create a new idiom of art and the novel dynamics of multi-dimensional aesthetics. Plans are also afoot to construct a separate section for the projectors to screen films, a resource centre for the cyber-savvies to log in and out of computer chat rooms, key in and collect a sea of data from the Internet and browse through the stocky archives of a library. It’s just the beginning, and we’ll hopefully gather a few more pebbles on the way that would pave the right path for a bright future,” says Sayak Mukherjee, arts and administrative co-ordinator.
Noticeably, the modern interior decor of a funky cafe aptly compliments the traditional one with a vast verandah and sunscreen shades hanging from the ceiling on top. The slick designs of furniture for a surge of customers to make comfortable with and an attached confectionery store that doles out a reasonably rated spread of sandwiches, snacks and hot beverages, are tagged as an added bonus.
Having combined two massive flats on the same floor, the total area adds up to a voluminous 7000 sq ft. The corridor coffee shop harks back to the old European coffee house culture, where the intelligentsia — a coterie of writers, litterateurs, poets, critics, philosophers, artists, musicians and  singers — would discuss politics, different branches of fine arts and learning and other topics of diverse interests and subjects under the sun. Several periodicals would be ideated and published from this platform. Closer home, the Indian Coffee House tucked away in a dingy bylane at Kolkata’s College Street boi para (book hub) as one of its significant landmarks still maintains the age-old convention of carrying out animated adda-sessions over a cuppa. The city’s literary luminaries would converge and converse in a free-wheeling manner over a tapestry of issues ranging from the serious to light-hearted ones.
The group show of modern masters, comprising an array of paintings and sculptures of adroit, accomplished artists is on till February 1. The modernist perspective showcased in this exhibition through figurative and abstract practises sprouts an opportunity to take a fresh look at the post-independence modernism and re-examine its relevance. To look back at high Indian modernism from the standpoint of the present and trace back the paths of possibilities that an elevated modernism laid out for the practitioners of the future, is the principal premise of the aforesaid show in which both the abstractionists and figurative artists are shown in a soundless pictorial dialogue with one another. The artists on the show’s catalogue include: Ganesh Haloi, Antonio E’ Costa, Daroz, Vasant Wankhede, Prabhakar Mahadeo Kolte), Paritosh Sen, Jogen Chowdhury, Krishen Khanna, Laxma Goud, Himmat Shah.
The exhibition also features Synapse, Again — an installation of handicrafts by the students of Akshar, an integrated school with a 20 per cent reservation in each class for special children created under the guidance of their skilled art teacher, Samir Roy. As an exciting nugget of trivia, it is here at this historic Harrington Mansion where famous actress moon Moon Moon Sen had met the deceased nonagenarian queen of lilies — Maharani Gayatri Devi, the respected Rajmata of Jaipur, who breathed her last in 2009. “I still remember those golden days when I had bumped into my late revered aunt-in-law (Maharani) at my hubby’s (Bharat Dev Barman) flat at Harrington Mansion in the then Calcutta. She walked in from the front door in the middle of a grand party in progress. And I was instantly bowled over by her sheer charm, glamour and elegance. She was an extremely tall beautiful lady with a heart of gold,” said the actress, while reminiscing about the princess after her demise last monsoon.

By Pramita Bose