Kolkata

"Take your map of India, and find, if you can, a more uninviting spot than Calcutta. Placed in the burning plain of Bengal, on the largest delta of the world, amidst a network of sluggish, muddy streams, in the neighbourhood of the jungles and marshes of the Sunderbands, and yet so distant from the open sea as to miss the benefits of the breeze… it unites every condition of a perfectly unhealthy situation. The place is so bad by nature that human efforts could do little to make it worse."

"The pleasant surprise that awaits the visitor to Calcutta is this: it is poor and crowded and dirty, in ways which are hard to exaggerate, but it is anything but abject. Its people are neither inert nor cringing. They work and they struggle, and as a general rule (especially as compared with ostensibly richer cities such as Bombay) they do not beg. This is the city of Tagore, of Ray and Bose and Mrinal Sen, and of a great flowering of culture and nationalism. There are films, theaters, university departments and magazines, all of a high quality. The photographs of Raghubir Singh are a testament to the vitality of the people, as well as to the beauty and variety of the architecture. Secular-leftist politics predominate, with a very strong internationalist temper: hardly unwelcome in a region so poisoned by brute religion. When I paid my own visit to the city some years ago, I immediately felt rather cheated by the anti-Calcutta propaganda put out by the Muggeridges of the world."

"Thus the midday halt of Charnock – more’s the pity! - Grew a City As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed So it spread Chance-directed, chance-erected, laid and built On the silt Palace, byre, hovel – poverty and pride Side by side And above the packed and pestilential town Death looked down."

"But the systematic manner in which Pakistan leaders are attempting to paint the people of this country as demons out to destroy innocent Muslims, while hiding, it not defending, the horrible outrages perpetrated by members of their own community from Calcutta to Sheikhupura is nothing but an attempt to defame this country and throw dust in the eyes of the outside world regarding the crimes committed by their co-religionists. They also know, as does everyone in this country, that the Punjab disaster was but the culminating act of the tragedy which began with the unprincipled campaign of communal hated and violence which they and their party leaders had been preaching for years as the only means of securing the ambition of their heart, namely, the separation of a part of this country where they could play the role of rulers, even though at the cost of unexampled suffering and misery to their own co-religionists both in Pakistan and India."

"To countless Indians, and for most people familiar with India, the singularly unique name Chowringhee immediately identifies with Calcutta. It represents the nearest equation in India to what Piccadilly is to London, Fifth Avenue to New York and the Champs Elysees to Paris. Nostalgic Londoners like to regard their Circus as the centre of the universe. Calcuttans are more reserved in their acclaim, although the fervour they display for their city is perhaps unmatched."

"jal, juochuri, mithye katha ei tin niye kalikata."

"The vicissitudes of destiny had not completely obliterated so prestigious a heritage. Calcutta was still India’s artistic and intellectual beacon and its culture continued to be as alive and creative as ever, The hundreds of bookstalls of College Street were still laden with books – originl editions, pamphlets, great literary works, publications of every kind, in every English, as well as in the numerous Indian languages. Though the Bengalis now costituted barely half of the city’s working population, there was no doubt that Calcutta produced more writers than Paris and Rome combined, more literary reviews than London and New York, more cinemas than New Delhi, and more publishers than the rest of the country, Every evening its theatres put on several theatrical productions, countless classical concerts and recitals at which everyone, from a universally renowned sitarist like Ravi Shankar to the humblest of flute or tabla players, was united with the popular audiences before whom they performed in the same love of music."

"Calcutta is by far the richest city in India, even though its various problems have started to turn its richness into a collapsing wealth. It is possibly the richest city anywhere between Rome and Tokyo in terms of the money that is accumulated and represented here."

"The tradition is one of iconic crossings across the river Hooghly in the stretch of the river falling within the enlarged Kolkata metro area – Vivekananda Bridge (Bally Bridge), Rabindar Setu, (Howrah Bridge) and Vidyasagar Setu (Second Hooghly Bridge). While the mighty river forms the backdrop of the development of the region over centuries, it had also posed a challenge as regards connection to the rest of the country. It is this challenge that the continuing tradition addresses, and addresses a new with a state-of-the art, recently opened and the newly christened Nivedita Bridge."

"Even their enemies admit their courtesy, and a generous Britisher sums up his long experience by ascribing to the higher classes in Calcutta “polished manners, clearness and comprehensiveness of understanding, liberality of feeling, and independence of principle, that would have stamped them gentlemen in any country in the world.”"