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Earl Law College buildings served as a hospital during World War-II

By AJIT PATOWARY

The Earl Law College buildings were also used as the premises of a hospital, between 1940 and 1945, during World War-II, when the Axis Forces made the Allied Forces retreat from Myanmar and heavily bombed the latter�s Manipur base. These buildings are now in the eye of the storm, following Cotton University authorities� bid to demolish them and the resistance offered by the city�s heritage lovers under the leadership of voluntary organisation Heritage Conservation Society, Assam (HeCSA),

According to 92-year-old Nilima Kakati, daughter of the late Dr Lalit Borah, Earl Law College buildings were turned into a makeshift hospital for the injured soldiers and labourers of the Allied powers and a three-room part of the bungalow that served its Principal J Barooah as his official quarter, was made the residence of her physician father and his family, while one room of the bungalow was used as the doctor�s chamber, with another room allotted to the nurses. The operation theatre, for minor surgical operations, was located in another room of this building. Popularly, this hospital was known as the Labour Hospital, Kakati said.

A house of the family of litterateur the late Satyanath Bora, adjacent to the Earl Law College buildings, was used as the barrack of the soldiers deployed in the hospital and a part of it was used as a bakery to supply baked goods to the Labour Hospital�s indoor patients. Kakati was then a student of Panbazar Girls� High School. However, she was later transferred to the newly-built TC Girls� High School, from where she did her matriculation in 1946 as a member of its first batch of matriculates. She was later married off to the late Gopal Kagti of the Kagtis of Uzanbazar area, a well-known tea planters� family.

Kakati said that the lawn-cum-tennis court of the J Barooah�s Bungalow was also made part of the hospital. The Borah family stayed there till 1945 and at the end of that year, the hospital became redundant and Dr Lalit Borah was transferred to the Guwahati Civil Hospital at Panbazar. Dr Borah got his family shifted to a rented house at Silpukhuri. This house was owned by the family of renowned singer and academician Dr Birendranath Datta. From this house, Nilima Kakati was married off to Gopal Kagti.

Gastronomy expert Jyoti Das, a granddaughter of Dr Lalit Borah and grand daughter-in-law of poet Bholanath Das of Jorpukhuripar area of the city, accompanied Nilima Kakati, her jethai (elder sister of her mother), to Principal J Barooah�s Bungalow on the morning of November 4, 2018. Das said the Bungalow was then used by Samiksha Gohain, the then Superintendent of the Kanaklata Barua Girls� Hostel of Cotton University, as her official residence. She informed that the Bungalow compound also had a separate kitchen with a dining hall, besides a separate servant�s quarter, when Dr Borah�s family stayed there. Both these buildings are now in deplorable state. Noted tea planter the late Sarat Dutta used to stay in the J Barooah Bungalow for a short stint of time, prior to its housing the Allied Forces� hospital, Das said.

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