About 100 years ago, someone thought of building an airport in Kolkata.  As we enter 2023, we also need to prepare for an important centenary. For it was in 1923 that ‘Calcutta Aerodrome’ was conceived, with the first flights landing here the following year.

Sadly, the more important centenary actually passed by fairly quietly in 2010, when we ought to have commemorated 100 years of the first recorded aircraft flight in Calcutta, a mere seven years after the world’s first successful testing of a motor-operated aeroplane by the Wright brothers Orville and Wilbur.

So this is as good an opportunity as any to remind ourselves that the first time an aircraft took off from Calcutta was on December 28, 1910. Well not an aircraft, but two aircraft, a Blériot monoplane flown by the Belgian Jules Tyck and a Farman biplane flown by fellow Belgian aviator Baron Pierre de Caters. Both took off from the Tollygunge Club golf course in the presence of at least 15,000 people, as recounted in detail in an article dated November 10, 1912 by the event’s organiser Ernest Esdaile in Flight, the Royal Aero Club’s newsletter.

Incidentally, India’s first recorded aircraft flight dates back to 1911, which would make Tolly Club the host of India’s first unofficial aircraft flight, which nobody seems to talk about much, strangely.   To return to Calcutta Aerodrome, the first British Royal Air Force round-the-world flight landed here in 1924, and the same year, KLM (official airline of the Netherlands) became the first commercial airline to start operations in Calcutta with its Amsterdam-Calcutta-Jakarta flight. In those initial years, Calcutta Aerodrome served primarily as a stopover from Europe and North America to Batavia (as Jakarta was then known) and Australia.

Having begun life as an open field next to the Royal Artillery Armoury in Dum Dum, the aerodrome gradually gained in importance as Sir Stanley Jackson, Governor of Bengal, opened the Bengal Flying Club at the aerodrome in February 1929. In 1930, the airfield was made fit for use throughout the year, and other airlines began coming in. For example, Air Orient began scheduled stops in Calcutta on its Paris-Saigon route, and Imperial Airways began flights from London to Australia via Calcutta in 1933.

As it changed from aerodrome to airport, Calcutta began to draw many more pioneering flights, but the most notable was probably a stopover by the legendary Amelia Earhart on June 17, 1937 during her attempt to become the first woman pilot to circumnavigate the globe. Tragically, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island just about a fortnight later on July 2, their bodies never to be recovered.

On June 17, a contemporary report stated: “Amelia Earhart landed her round-the-world plane at DumDum airdrome here today after a 1,350 mile hop across India from Karachi. Miss Earhart took off from Karachi at 7:25 a.m. Karachi time (on June 16). The flyer, who is making a leisurely flight around the world ‘just for fun’, said she intended to take off shortly after dawn Friday (June 18) for Bangkok, capital of Siam. If she adheres to her planned itinerary, she will go from Bangkok to Darwin, Australia by way of Singapore, then Batavia, Dutch East Indies, and Surabaya, Java, before starting across the Pacific.” During World War II (1939-45), Allied troops and the US Army Air Force set up headquarters in Calcutta and its airport. It was also used as a communications centre for the US Tenth Bombardment Group.

Passenger services grew after World War II, and in 1952, the British Overseas Airways Corporation used the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet powered aircraft, on their London-Calcutta route. In 1964, the first domestic Indian jet service was started by Indian Airlines from Delhi to Calcutta.

Between the 1940s and 1960s, Calcutta Airport was served by major airlines such as Aeroflot, Air France, Alitalia, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Philippine Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Pan Am, Qantas, Swissair, and SAS. However, the rapid evolution of aviation technology meant that flights were becoming longer, with fewer stopovers, which meant Calcutta gradually became less important on the global aviation map.  That, coupled with the political and refugee crises of the 1960s and 70s, resulted in fewer and fewer landings until the 1990s, when the airport received a new lease of life and a facelift, thanks largely to the arrival of private Indian carriers such as Jet Airways and Sahara. A new domestic Terminal 2 was opened in 1995, making Terminal 1 the international terminal, and the airport was renamed Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. In 2000, a new international arrival hall was opened.

On January 20, 2013, the new terminal at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport was officially inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee, and on March 16, 2013, the old international and domestic terminals were officially shut down once all operations were shifted to the new integrated terminal.

That, in a nutshell, is a history of one of India’s oldest airports. Doubtless, we will see official celebrations launched later in the year, but no harm in launching our own private little celebrations and revisiting this extremely important chapter in India’s aviation history.

*Courtesy: Ms. Ruma Sikdar* 

Chandigarh: The prolific writer, educator, Fulbright scholar, and internationally acclaimed author of nearly two dozen academic and fiction books, Dr. Manju Jaidka’s latest collection of short stories was released here at the Central State Library.

Dr. Manju Jaidka, now a Senior Professor and Dean at Shoolini University, Solan, HP, is a former Professor and Chairperson of the Department of English, Panjab University. She is the recipient of several national and international fellowships, including a Fulbright, and two Rockefeller awards. She is the author of more than twenty-five books and more than sixty research papers published in reputed national and international journals. As a creative writer she has authored two collections of poems, a play, and four novels, including Scandal Point (2011), Amaltas Avenue, (2014), and Gumshoe Mania (2021). Her non-fiction publication titled The Next Milestone (2017), was commissioned by the WHO, on the management of disability.  As the Chairperson of Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi from 2008 to 2015, Jaidka curated and held annual Literature Festivals, an exercise that she continues at Shoolini University.  She also serves on the advisory board of several international organizations and organizes international academic conferences annually.

Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of Shoolini University, Dr P.K. Khosla and Prof. Atul Khosla, noted author and ex-IAS officer Vivek Atray, Col. D.S.Cheema, Librarian of State Library Dr. Neeza Singh, along  with many noted writers and lovers of literature were present on the occasion.

Dr. Manju Jaidka in conversation with senior journalist, columnist, political analyst and former Resident Editor of Indian Express Vipin Pubby brought out the inspirations and the triggers that made her right such engaging and human interest stories with most of them inspired by true life events. The anthology contains twelve short stories that capture shades of human emotions and life’s realities that led her to pen down into engaging narratives.

Vipin Pubby brought to the fore the story of a senior police officer who molested a young girl and did his best to bury the crime through pressure tactics and harassment of girl’s family and got away with a mere six months imprisonment.

These are the moments of catharsis for a writer, Manju said, when you find yourself helpless in the face of social injustice, the writer has the responsibility to unveil such stories of human deprivation and injustice.  There are stories inspired by real-life incidents like that of 12 migrant labourers losing their lives just a few distances away from their home village, as also some light-hearted ones like the title story of a dog named Cato, “When Cato Played Cupid”.

Dr. Jaidka shared that her next book is a novel on the Shoolini University campus, where she heads the Department of Liberal Arts.  “I have lots of stories simmering within me that emerge from my daily busy work schedules and interactions, and at some stage, they precipitate into a poem, play, a short story, or a novel,” she remarked.