As the world prepares to celebrate the centenary of visionary filmmaker Ritwik Kumar Ghatak tomorrow, his childhood home in Rajshahi tells a quieter, more sorrowful story: one of loss, neglect and forgotten heritage.
Once a proud ancestral residence, the Ghoramara home where Ghatak spent his formative years has all but vanished. The site now lies in ruins, overrun by weeds, strewn with broken bricks and bordered by a crumbling wall draped in moss.
A faint mural bearing Ghatak’s name and image clings to a fragment of plaster, like the last echo of memory in a place time has almost erased.
Ghatak, born in 1925, spent his early life in this northern city, studying at Rajshahi Collegiate School and Rajshahi College. The Padma River, the Varendra Museum and the surrounding landscape would later find their way, transfigured and mythic, into his films.
But after the Partition of 1947, his family migrated to India and their home was listed as vested property under the government.
For decades, the building survived under the care of the Rajshahi Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital, which had leased the land in 1985.
“We used it as an outdoor treatment centre,” said Dr. Anisur Rahman, the college’s principal. “We tried to preserve it as best we could. But one day, some people went ahead and demolished it despite our objections. It was heartbreaking.”
Today, only debris remains; mute witnesses to a chapter of Bengal’s cultural history that could have been preserved. Yet, amid the wreckage, remembrance endures.
The annual programme honouring Ghatak’s birth anniversary continues to be held at the site, organized by the Ritwik Ghatak Film Society.
“Most people here didn’t even know Ghatak once lived in Rajshahi,” said the society’s president, Ahsan Kabir Liton. “We started the organisation to keep his legacy alive. The city shaped his imagination. The river, the museum, the air of this place. Losing his home is like losing a piece of that history.”
As the centenary dawns, tributes to Ghatak will pour in from across the subcontinent. But in Rajshahi, where his story began, only scattered bricks and memories remain, remnants of a genius whose roots now exist only in the collective imagination.
