Memories of the Gkp house

See the photo  below. It is my father's. It was sometime back posted in face book by Sri T K.Joshi, my uncle.

This photo resurrects memories. Let me try to recall. This photo was taken in 1953 with a brownie reflex camera.

The box camera was purchased that year for Rs.45/- at Nainital. 

In the background of the photo of my father is a beautiful bungalow. This bungalow  was earlier a small and non- descript one, with minimum construction, and it belonged to a British lady until it was purchased somewhere in middle of nineteen  thirties by Babu Lalji, a wealthy landlord of Gorakhpur. For a few years preceding the transfer of my father to Gorakhpur it was occupied by one Sri S.S.Gosain Treasury Officer. It was an ordinary house then. 

When my father was transferred to Gorakhpur , he arrived at this house in a tonga hired at the railway station. Those were the days of horse driven carriages.

The house  was a plain looking badly maintained property. There were four main rooms, with a distant and unconnected kitchen. It had a huge   compound with wild unchecked growth. There was no compound wall at all, only a rusty barbed wire low fence ran around the front of the huge compound with a small wicket gate in the middle. The backyard  was without fencing and from the wild open bush- infested field beyond it, jackals used to enter the backyard of the house at night. 

My father persuaded the landlord to make major additions to the bunglow and agreed to pay an increase in rent. So a strong brick boundary wall came up all around. On the long front boundary wall, father trained pink and violet flowering creepers which soon covered the entire boundary wall with riots of pink and violet flowers. A  big  iron gate was fixed at one end of this front wall. From this gate a semi-arc of a red gravel driveway was constructed which ended at a new constructed portico (there was none before). On the outer pillors of this wide portico red bogunvillia were trained which went right up to the roof.

(the author as a child with Katwaru the helper. A small portion of the big bungalow is in the background)

Those are the Chandani flowering evergreen plants that you see behind the smiling gentleman in the photo below.

They were planted on both sides of the driveway with a few RAAT KI RAANI fragrant flowering plants in between. These had to be trimmed after each monsoon season to keep then in shape and flowering. 

A major transformation was in the extension made to the bunglaow. The front and the inner verandah were widened and sloping red-tile roof was added to the extended verandahs giving a picture postcard look to the bungalow. New rooms were added on the right hand side going back right up to the then unconnected kitchen. 

   ( At the back is the kitchen and pantry block). 

The newly added construction consisted of  one  large guest room, then a big pooja- room, then a flight of stairs to the roof then an independent one room and a kitchen and bathroom set and a separate small courtyard set. All these opening into a long wide running verandah right up to the kitchen. A set of servants' quarters were also added, separated from the main inner courtyard. Bael, Mango and Jamun trees were planted in the backyard. In the middle of the front lawn and inner couryard a big circular raised CHABUTARA each was constructed . In the summer we used to sleep in the open on the inner courtyard CHABUTARA.

Many of our relatives came and lived in the guest room of this bungalow for short or long periods. In the separate independent set one Sri Jagannath Bhatt lived for a few year. Then one Sri Devi Dutt Pant  (Khalkhal ji) moved in. 

That was a long time back.  I hear that the bungalow has now been demolished and a College has come up in that vast compound.