Kolkata: On a day when the City of Joy was ravaged by super Cyclone Amphan which uprooted trees, lampposts and traffic signals, smashed windowpanes of high rise apartments, it will not be out of context to travel back in time and see how the city had been hit by cyclones and storms in the past.
One of the worst cyclones that hit Kolkata was in 1737 when the upper dome of the Nabaratna Temple popularly known as the Black Pagoda built by Govindaram Mitra fell leading to the collapse of the structure in 1818.
It is said the height of the temple was 165 feet which was more than Ochterlony Monument, now known as Sahid Minar. The temple was damaged in such a way that it
could not be repaired. About 30,000 people died in the cyclone.
Govindaram Mitra who was popularly known as the Black Deputy had constructed the Nabaratna Temple at an estimated cost of Rs 5 lakhs.
By seeing the top of the temple from a distance, the boatmen could feel that
Kolkata was not very far. In the famous painting of Chitpore Road and Black Pagoda by Thomas Princep in 1829 and subsequently in another painting by Charles D' Oyly in 1830 titled Hundu Mutt and the Chitpore bazaar one gets an idea of the temple in dilapidated condition.
The cyclone hit Kolkata on the night of October 11, 1737. Thousands of mud houses were raised to the ground and most of the two-storeyed brick-built house were badly damaged. Next morning when people came out of their houses
they found hundreds of bodies buried under the mud
houses. As it was difficult to cremate them, the mud houses were set on fire. Gentleman, a newspaper wrote about the devastation that it was so heavy that it seemed as if soldiers had burst cannonball shells indiscriminately in the city.
Hundreds of boats that were anchored on the canal connecting river Hooghly and North 24-Parganas via Salt Lake were damaged. Later, the canal was covered up and the road is now known as the Creek Row. The ships that were anchored in river Hooghly had been totally destroyed.
In another storm that had hit the city and South 24-Parganas in 1864, October 5 had claimed 50,000 lives.
Vast areas of South 24-Parganas got destroyed including the Fort of Raja Pratapaditya.