The middle class, dhoti-panjabi-clad bhadralok has appropriated a large part of the written history of colonial Bengal. This urban, middle-class, liberally educated individual had also become the cultural symbol of Calcutta, marginalising other social or ethnic groups by the sheer normalising power of this image. In the past two decades, there has been a dramatic alteration in the rate at which things change, at least in the material realm, around this urban populace. There has also been a perceptible, howsoever feeble, attempt on the part of this population to find a way to maintain a continuity with its past in a way that resists change, or at the least tries to modulate its rate.
The neighbourhoods and homes of the urban Bengali middle class in Calcutta and in mofussil towns are currently undergoing tremendous changes. There is an overt change in how urban settlements look, and what constitutes 'the neighbourhood'. But there is an ongoing change within homes, as well. Such changes have been uneven – certain ways of living, of being, arranging and utilising the living space – and have proved to be more resistant to changes than have others. Exploring this differential provides an interesting insight into a very particular question: What constitutes the 'signature' of the Bengali urban middle-class identity?
A closer look at the past and present living spaces and practices of the Bengali urban middle class might offer a few clues as to their 'middle class-ness'. Any attempt to do so, however, needs to proceed with caution. The aim is not to document how these spaces looked in the past versus the present. Rather, it is about what aspects of the past remain today, in spite of greater spending capacity per family and the overarching logic of 'saving time'. It is this gap between affordability and reality that is of most interest: the specific patterns of 'falling short' can be quite illuminating.
Bengali boudoirs
To the middle-class Bengali, the bedroom is not the sanctum it is for the middle-class Westerner. Among the first order of business after everyone awakes is to 'sweep the bed clean', neatly arranging the pillows and placing the mosquito net in a corner. The bed is then covered with a heavy bedspread, which, tucked tightly under the mattress, encapsulates and protects the privacy of the nights spent on it, and prepares the bed for use as a seat for close friends and visiting relatives. The drawing room, in contrast, is used to entertain formal guests who fall outside the large circumference of those who are considered to be 'like family'. The traditional distinction between the bedroom and the drawing room, the use of the bedroom to conduct heartfelt conversations or engage in simple adda, and the practice of sweeping the bed with a jhnata (a broom of thin, stiff rushes) have all survived Bengal's changing lifestyles.