The Indonesian phrase
Semunya bisa diatur - Everything can be arranged - comes to mind as I read of the factors that helped to transform Calcutta's Stephen Court into a towering inferno. Clearly, there's nothing money can't buy. This is the compelling impetus of the tradesmen who have taken over Calcutta. This is still a city that thinks today what Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and other Indian cities will think tomorrow, but those thoughts are obsessively focused on maximising profits, never mind that the cost is in precious human lives.
Development and re-development are the pernicious mantras of the new breed of businessmen whose driving purpose is - lapsing into American jargon - to make a fast buck. That was not the way with Stephen Arathoon, one of Calcutta's Armenian pioneers, who built a grand mansion at the corner of Park Street and Middleton Row. Arathoon was long dead when two new stories were added to his mansion in 1984. By then, many of Stephen Court's wide corridors and expansive rooms had been partitioned and repartitioned into tiny wooden cubicles, the broad stairs were piled high with filth. The additional two floors were an eyesore, destroying the pillared grandeur of a classical facade. Worse, they were illegal. The corporation objected but
Semunya bisa diatur, it agreed, on payment of a penalty, to "regularise" the new floors. No doubt some of the penalty money stuck to the fingers of the hands through which it passed and which sanctioned or signed the regularisation order. But legality doesn't mean safety.
No one really established whether the old building's ancient foundations could support two new floors. No one bothered that the additional structure's narrow stairs and rabbit warren of rooms - maximising the use of space to generate profit - were a health hazard. That wasn't all. Like all self-respecting buildings of that age, Stephen Court had spiral staircases at the back. They were intended for
jemadars to sweep and swap bathrooms in a more gracious age. They were also an escape route in case of fire or other danger. The old spirals served only the first five floors. The contractor or promoter (terms that are becoming synonymous with criminal as our cities sprawl out and thrust upwards) didn't bother extending the stairs to the