After you pay your £2 entrance fee and heave yourself through a creaking turnstile, it feels like entering another time. Victorian, Edwardian or Nehru-era India: it’s hard to pin down, but it doesn’t feel like the present. Looking across the vast area of the course, you can see the marble Victoria memorial shimmering on the smoggy horizon. Lest we forget.
Kolkata, comfortable in the ruin and grandeur of its imperial buildings, seems immune to a new India. Its residents are more concerned with conversation and intellectual matters than following the country’s other metropolises into corporate modernity, or joining the disturbing march towards Hindu nationalism. The racetrack is a time warp befitting the city, with its own ghosts and remnants of the Raj but which thrives as a uniquely Indian phenomenon.
Everyone loves a winner, but which horse will it be? As well as scrutinising any horse’s form by research or rumour, there’s always divine intervention. Bookies hedge their bets, hanging flowers with their favourite deity on the back of their betting boards.
The men’s fashion choices are idiosyncratic, with some suits more flamboyant than others – but they are all given a full workout when Bollywood music is blasted at the end of the day and the party continues. Perhaps in anticipation of this, the sanctity of the afternoon nap is widely respected.
Kolkata, then spelled Calcutta, was the first base of British power in India. With its cavalry-based army, sports such as hunting, polo and racing were popular.
Organised horse races were first held in India on 16 January 1769 at Akra, near Kolkata, in the Garden Reach area. It was where the king of Oudh and his descendants, deposed by the British, lived in palatial garden houses.
The Bengal Jockey Club was formed in 1803 and is considered the precursor of the RCTC. In 1809, horse racing shifted to the Maidan, a vast area of greenery that was known as the lungs of Kolkata and is now virtually the centre of the city.
The RCTC became the foremost horse-racing organisation in India during the British Raj. At one time it was the governing body for nearly all racecourses in the subcontinent, defining and applying the rules governing the sport. During its heyday, RCTC-organised races were among the most important social events of the bigwigs’ calendar, opened by the viceroy of India.
In the days of the Bengal Jockey Club, race meetings were held in the mornings, followed by sumptuous breakfasts. The club was a highly organised institution and was constantly in touch with racing affairs in England. Results of races were regularly published in the British press.
The RCTC strictly follows traditional British horse-racing rules as set out by the Jockey Club of the UK. The maharaja of Burdwan, Bijay Chand Mahtab, was the first Indian to be elected a full member of the club in 1908.
In 1912, after King George V visited the races, the club got its elevated status from the British government. Queen Elizabeth II visited in 1960 to award her own trophy and every year she would send a silver cup from Buckingham Palace for the trophy of the Queen Elizabeth II Cup race. Several of the Queen’s own jockeys, including Lester Piggott, Wally Swinburn and Joe Mercer, have ridden thoroughbreds there.
As with racecourses and horsey folk everywhere, there is a clear and obvious social division between the haves, the not-quite-haves, the have-nots, and those that just want the hottest tip. Certainly, there is more dash in the public areas, with many sporting movie star attire and attitude.
There is more of a buzz to last-minute gambling with the bookies at ground level, more to celebrate and more to lose when the race is done. Some opt to remain in the hot, cavernous barn, preferring TV screens and the cut and thrust of the bookies to seeing the horses in the flesh.
In the lofty owners’ and members’ grandstand you could be forgiven for thinking you were at Ascot – until you look down and see an elegant team of sari-clad women walking the course after each race, manually fixing the divots made by the horses’ hooves.
And on your way out, a man on the pavement collects and recycles the day’s racecards with BOL on the cover, counting his own blessings, to generate a little income.
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