calcutta
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A Strange and Sublime Address: Calcutta as it was
A Strange and Sublime Address vividly recalls Calcutta as it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Amit Chaudhuri’s first novel, published in 1991, A Strange and Sublime Address tells the story of a Bengali boy’s visits to Calcutta. Ten-year-old Sandeep goes with his mother from Bombay (Mumbai) to Calcutta to spend his summer holidays at… Read more
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Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland: The lowdown on Bengal
I just finished reading The Lowland in Kolkata, where I visited some of the places mentioned by the author, Jhumpa Lahiri. Recently I attended two weddings at the Tolly Club, which is described in the novel. Kolkata, formerly called Calcutta, features prominently in some recent novels such as Paul Theroux’s A Dead Hand and Jeffrey… Read more
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Kipling, Calcutta and The City of Dreadful Night
Today is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865- 18 January 1936). Born in Bombay, now called Mumbai, he died in London. Calcutta, now called Kolkata, has come to be called the “city of the dreadful night”. Even newspapers in Calcutta use that phrase as a synonym for the city. However, Kipling’s short story,… Read more
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Indira Gandhi and Lee Kuan Yew
Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is compared to Indira Gandhi by the Indian journalist, Sunanda Datta-Ray, who once worked for The Straits Times. In his book, Looking East to Look West, exploring India-Singapore relations, based on his interviews with MM Lee, he writes: Lee and Indira Gandhi shared a brutal commitment to power, an… Read more
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Paul Theroux on Kali and Calcutta
In A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta, Paul Theroux describes an animal sacrifice at the Kali temple in Kalighat. A goat, garlanded with flowers, is led bleating into a walled enclosure to the beat of drums. Once inside, the terrified creature is thrust between two upright stakes and caressed by a barefoot priest, who… Read more
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Remembering Steinbeck
John Steinbeck died on this day in 1968 at the age of 66, six years after he won the Nobel Prize, which even he himself didn’t expect. Critical scorn When asked by a reporter whether he believed he deserved the prize, he responded, “Frankly, no,” says Robert Gottlieb. In a New York Review of Books… Read more
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Amit Chaudhuri on Calcutta
Real Time by Amit Chaudhuri What a surprise! Dakkhinee, the bookstall I used to visit in my younger days in Calcutta (Kolkata), is mentioned by the Indian writer, Amit Chaudhuri, in his Real Time collection of short stories. “The Dakkhinee Bookshop, at the turning crossing of Lansdowne Road and Rashbehari Avenue – it was really… Read more
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Sublime writing — like a movie
Amit Chaudhuri is one of the best Indian writers in English today. Salman Rushdie may be more flamboyant, but when it comes to describing a scene, Chaudhuri is second to none. He can be as vivid as a photograph or a video. The only reason he is not better known is his short stories and… Read more
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