Manas Ranjan Mahapatra, Puri, 25 December 2022
I heard the word/name Allahabad at the age of 7 when Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Ji, a friend of my father, visited our house from Allahabad. My father was in the Swatantra Party, but was a well wisher of the Socialist Movement. My brother, Dr. Babaji Mahapatra, was in the Socialist Party. In 1967, Dr. Lohia travelled the whole country to request people to oust the Congress party from power. Dr. Babaji Mahapatra published a Souvenir after the death of Dr. Lohia.
In 1981, I came to Delhi for the first time to appear in an interview at UPSC. Neelachal Express was a tri-weekly train at that time.The train was starting from Puri at 12 noon and reaching New Delhi at 9 pm the next day. It was not a super fast train. The day Puri Superfast passed through Allahabad in 1985, the whole city came to the railway station to welcome us with sweets. The people of Allahabad were interesting!
Later, I came to Allahabad with my father to immerse the bones of my mother at Sangam in 1988. I could not, unfortunately, immerse my father’s bones at Sangam. When I came with my father, my friend, Dr. Hemant Kumar, guided me how to do everything here. His father was a great man, a professor, and we had been to their house. I was at Lucknow those days. His father was a great author of children’s books and is no more.
With this association with Allahabad of almost 5 decades, I directed a course in Book Publishing at Allahabad University in 2019. In one of the classes, I taught ‘Publishing as a Career’ to 60 odd students of the course. While I was at Allahabad for the teaching at the course, I was passing through Johnstonganj one evening and became nostalgic. 15 years back, in 2004, I had organised an exhibition of Books at 10 different locations in this city. I have fond memories of spending a week in this city that time in a hotel at Johnstonganj.
When I came for the preparatory work for that series of exhibitions, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi was the Union Minister for HRD. His wife was the younger sister of Shivani, a prominent Hindi writer. I met her to consult on the venue for the inauguration.
“Do it at Anand Bhawan”, she said.
“Anand Bhawan!”, I exclaimed.
“Yes. It is a National Monument. It is connected with our freedom struggle”, she replied.
My reluctance had a reason. Dr. Joshi was from BJP and Anand Bhawan was connected with Congress. But Mrs Joshi cleared the air for me. “A place of national importance can’t be ignored for its political affiliation with a party. It is a national monument” she said. Alas, people like Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi and his wife or places like Anand Bhawan are now in the past.
“Dada, what is your programme for tomorrow”, my colleague Narinder asked.
“Tomorrow I will go to Anand Bhawan”, I replied.
“Can I meet Mrs Joshi too tomorrow?”, I asked my friend Prof. Susheel Kumar Sharma.
“Both Dr. Joshi and Mrs Joshi have relocated to the National Capital Delhi a few years ago and have sold their house here”, Dr. Sharma replied.
Since Mrs Joshi was no longer at Allahabad, I had no interest to visit Anand Bhawan alone, as it was not maintained as the centre of Indian Freedom struggle anymore.
“Then, let us go to Sangam tomorrow so that I can pay my tributes to my father. And what about going to Netram for ‘kachodi’ after that for lunch?”, I asked.
