The place I call home, ghar, the place where I feel a sense of belonging is Purnea, a small district and town in northeast Bihar, about 200 miles away from the capital city, Patna. Initially a sarkar under the subah of Bengal in precolonial India, it was formed as a district on 10th February 1770 under the jurisdiction of the East India Company. The origin of the word Purnea has many contestations; one of the more plausible ones is that the name comes from the Hindi word aaranya, meaning ‘forest.’ The expansive green foliage, which led to pleasant climatic conditions, is also why Purnea was nicknamed ‘Poor Man’s Darjeeling,’ a milder cousin of the chilly hill station in West Bengal. Of course, the current sweltering summers may cause locals to rethink the sobriquet.
Ghar is about memories, about being as comforting as a plate of dal bhat chokha. For me, Purnea does not merely exist as a dot on the map sandwiched between Araria and Katihar. To slosh about categorising it into neat statistical indexes of population figures and area estimates seems a rather jarring exercise. Instead, it is the place where you can find the most delicious gajar ka halwa at the famous Maheshwari Mithai Shop, a foot’s throw away from R.N. Shaw Chowk, or the spiciest pani puris outside my old school, Ursuline Convent. It is the place of potholed roads that would cause bumpy rides in cramped autos while my friends and I echoed with laughter during school days. It is home to the charmingly named Dollar House Chowk, the residential area where my family has lived for the last 16 years. If local stories are to be believed, one of the sons from the titular house went to the United States several decades ago. He sent back dollar bills to his family in Purnea. These dollar bills from an unknown land were a source of immense fascination for the locals; hence, the name Dollar House Chowk stuck!
Take a cycle ride through Sipahi Tola and Maranga, and you will find peaceful fields of unripe, green wheat gently swaying in the breeze. Visit the local Bhatta Bazaar and listen to the excited gaggle of multiple dialects of Hindi–Angika, Magahi, Bhojpuri, and Maithili. Pouches of panch phoran, the quintessential Bengali spice mix, are sold in grocery stores like Subash’s alongside steaming plates of momos doused in fiery tamatar chutney served by roadside vendors. The marketplace and the wares sold there are testament to the wonderful and diverse confluence of people in Purnea–Assamese, Bengali, Nepali, Oriya, and Santhali.
I remember my class 12th Hindi teacher recalling with pride that Purnea was the birthplace of Phanishwar Nath Renu, one of the iconoclastic figures of modern Hindi literature. There is Rangbhoomi Maidan, where melas and political rallies happen from time to time; Girija Chowk, named after the old, towering Anglican church near it; the Indira Gandhi Stadium, named after Gandhi who had come for a rally to Purnea in the late 1970s (I gleaned this bit of information from the ayah who stayed with us; her mother had seen and spoken to Gandhi when the latter had visited), and the Mata Puran Devi Mandir, the oldest temple in Purnea and one of the possible origins for the district’s name. These names and locations tussle for space in my mind, mingling fact and memory into the deliciously addictive concoction of what can only be nostalgia.
Growing up in Purnea, I never imagined placing my small town in one of the tomes of history my ICSE primary education demanded that I read. The history I read was ‘grand,’ and within this grand narrative of vibrant New Delhis and Calcuttas, to place a dusty semi-rural Purnea–a town which seemed unsure whether it should be spelled with an ‘e’ or ‘i’–seemed uncanny.
However, as I begin to understand the flaws in dominant historiography, I am keen to seek out the historical story of my town. Names fascinate me–both within my hometown and ones that I encounter in various states. Such as Gulabh Bagh (rose garden in Hindi), Oli Tola in Purnea, or tongue-twisting ones like Chirayinkeezhu and Pathanamthitta in Kerala. These small tangles of consonants and vowels can reveal so much about a place–its rich history interwoven with local beliefs, cultures, and languages. With immense curiosity about this quest, I began to see Jhanda Chowk of Purnea in a different light.
The reason why Jhanda Chowk got its name is interesting. As a child, going past the roundabout into Bhatta Bazaar, I rarely gave a second thought as to why Jhanda Chowk was named the way it was. To me, it was simply one among the other intriguing names like Line Baazar or Baksa Ghat; the latter, I thought for a long time, was a ghat filled with cardboard boxes!
Jhanda in Hindi refers to ‘flag,’ and chowk is the quintessential name given to the area at the junction of two roads in any small Indian town or semi-rural region. Jhanda Chowk got its name when the tiranga was hoisted there in the year of independence. After the international Wagah border between Amritsar and Lahore, Purnea is considered the only place in the country where the flag is unfurled at midnight.
As locals enthusiastically recall, on 14th August 1947, a group of people were anxiously riveted to their radios late at night, around 11 p.m., at the Chowk (then, unnamed perhaps). They were tuning in to the proceedings from the fifth session of the Constituent Assembly of India, which had assembled in New Delhi. Sipping cups of lal chai, all were expectantly waiting for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech, his declaration of ‘India’s victorious tryst with Destiny.’ Shortly after, one of the attendees, Rameshwar Prasad Singh, decided to hoist the national flag at the Chowk to coincide with Nehru’s unfurling of the tricolour in the Central Hall of Parliament. A well-known barrister, Singh was one of the most vocal supporters of the Indian National Congress at that time, having participated in Jail Bharo Andolan, the Non-Cooperation Movement, and the Dandi March. Alongside stalwarts like Satinath Bhaduri, a well-known literary figure, Singh unfurled the flag to shouts of Bharat Mata ki Jai ringing all around. Men and women flowed out of their houses in excitement, breathing in the night breeze of a new country, awakening, as Nehru declared, to ‘life and freedom.’
Whether the statistics regarding this celebration are accurate or not is a story for another day. What is, however, evident is that there were large-scale celebrations around the Chowk, people mingling in joyous camaraderie. Locals even recall hearing about throngs of women blowing on conch shells, usually used during evening puja, as symbolic of ushering in a new dawn.
Rameshwar Singh’s family has continued the tradition of hoisting the flag at the eponymous Jhanda Chowk. It has been carried forward for over 75 years, first by Rameshwar’s son, Suresh Prasad Singh, and now by his grandson, Vipul Kumar Singh. The Dainik Jagran recently reported that the local MLAs and MPs are rallying that the Chowk is given the distinction of a state site, judging by its historical significance.
Purnea’s fascination with flags continues. In 2016, the town held the record for making and displaying the world’s longest tricolour flag at an estimated 7,100 metres. To the dismay of the residents of my hometown, this record was unfortunately broken three years later by Chhattisgarh’s Raipur.
My exploration of names continues in Hyderabad, where I recently started my post-graduate studies. On a recent metro ride, this writer was jostled out of her weary state at the startling announcement by the metro rail as it arrived at the Lakdi Ka Pool station. But that is a story for another day!
Sources:
https://purnea.nic.in/about-district/history/
About the Author
Joanna Philip
A postgraduate student of English Literature, Joanna has a budding interest in studying the heritage monuments of India and the contours of history, culture, and time that amplify them! When not writing a poem or two, she likes to spend her time talking (to herself) or trying to finish a task from her gazillion to-do lists.
