Fresh look at Kolkata's 'old haunts' of macabre pasts

KOLKATA: There's a fresh coat of baby-pink paint on this two-storey house in Salt Lake, where a spa (which promises to "revive", "renew", "reenergize") has come up. It's a pleasant surprise for local residents who know of the property's macabre past. For 18 days in 2018, it was here that Maitrey Bhattacharya lived with his mother's corpse, perhaps refusing to believe that she had left the corporeal world.
Even as the Salt Lake property has revived, renewed and reenergised itself, ghosts of the past linger on at some old haunts.
Perhaps the most sensational of "living with the dead" stories in the last few years came out of 3, Robinson Street. In 2015, it was here that Partho De was discovered with the rotting corpses of his sister, Debjani, and their two pets. It was here that the charred body of his father, Arabinda, was discovered in a bathtub.
Over the next two years, during which De made an attempt to rehabilitate himself, there was no shortage of interest in "that house on Robinson Street". De himself was found dead in a flat he moved into two months after he was released from an institution, in 2017. It may've been a suicide: beside his charred body, eerily similar to the state his father's body had been in, was a bottle of petrol and a matchbox.
De's death sparked a renewed interest in the Robinson Street property. Jay Choudhury, the proprietor of a film company whose ancestral home happened to be 1, Robinson Street, even planned a movie called, unsurprisingly, 'House of Robinson Street'. Almost six years and a pandemic later, shooting has not yet begun. Choudhury claims that "something or the other" has happened to team members, "from illness to family tragedy".
The curse remains, and the house itself has become something of a modern-day Tutankhamun's tomb. "We have not aborted the film, but are waiting for the right time, as everyone is a little scared of the uncanny circumstances," Choudhury told TOI. There's also talk that the current owner wants to tear down the house and the one next to it in order to build a "16-storey luxury block of flats", and that "work can begin any moment", but there's neither confirmation nor denial from the owner, despite repeated calls.
Another address, this time in the southwest corner of the city, has had a happier turn of events. In 2020, for the third time in two years, residents had woken up to the stench of a decomposing body from a flat.
The woman was found living with her father's corpse, just as she had with that of her brother in February and mother who had passed away five months previously. "She was unable to deal with the back-to-back deaths," said Ratnaboli Ray, a mental health activist.
"She lived with her father's body for about two days, not knowing what to do. Cops were informed once the body started to smell. They admitted her to a mental hospital. She was discharged from there and is now under the care of an NGO," Ray added.
She said the woman's recovery was possible because there was no "judgement" from any quarter. "This incident was not seen just as a psychiatric case, but as a response to a critical situation. She is doing well now and has picked up music. She is trying to get back on her feet and be self-reliant economically. She now has the key to the flat and is planning to go and clean it."
Maitrey, now 41, says he is "doing well", except for the habit of chewing tobacco that he picked up at the Calcutta Pavlov Hospital.
"Maitrey has to be given medicines regularly. He needs doctor visits every three months," said his cousin, Subhankar Bhattacharya. "His house in Salt Lake was in terrible condition. It has now been restored. The ground floor (where the spa has come up) was rented out last year. That money is required for his upkeep."
At two other similar houses, there's no response ever after multiple knocks. Indrajeet Mukherjee still lives in the same flat of Karunamoyee Housing Estate, where he was found staying with the decomposed body of his 65-year-old mother for at least 48 hours.
Fifty-something Subhabrata Majumdar, who reportedly mummified his mother's body and kept it at home in a commercial freezer for three years, also lives in the same house on James Long Sarani.
Neighbour Amar Kanti Guha, who knows the latter since his childhood, however, said Majumdar keeps to himself and "doesn't respond to queries." "Anyone who peeps inside can see that the ground floor - which once had that freezer - is stark empty," he adds.