Tag Archives: Kolkata

My first visit to Kolkata (Calcutta) was very nearly my last

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IN AUGUST 2011, my wife was invited to attend a Loreto House School reunion in Calcutta (Kolkata). As I had never been to the city before, I accompanied her. While my wife took part in the daily activities with some of her former schoolmates, I explored, and fell in love with, the great city on the Hooghly River – one of the channels through which the Ganga (Ganges) makes its way to the sea.

Throughout our five-day visit to the city, the monsoon rains fell heavily and incessantly. I walked around Calcutta in sandals without socks – often wading through filthy water that submerged my feet and lapped around my ankles. Fortunately, my feet did not become infected by whatever might have been lurking in the water. However, the monsoon did not affect my enjoyment of the vibrant, but delightfully decaying. city – one could almost say it is India’s own distinctive version of Havana in Cuba.

One day, I visited Jorasanko, the palatial residence of the Tagore family, whose members included not only the Nobel Prize winner, the polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), but also artists such as Abanindranath and Gaganendranath (both Tagore). After seeing around the fascinating rooms of Jorasanko, which I enjoyed so much that I visit it whenever I am in the city, I sploshed through the flooded streets towards the Hooghly River. On my way, I walked along a busy street lined with shops and filled with crowds of people. A steady stream of rickshaws pulled by thin, sinewy men – each of the vehicles laden with two or three passengers – made its way through the busy throng. The huge wheels of these vehicles keep the passengers high above the water flooding the streets, but the pullers’ feet were permanently submerged.

I noticed that some shops – often those of clothing and textile merchants – men were distributing hot food – rice and dal – to occasional passers-by. I stopped at one of the stores, and asked about the food distribution.  It was explained to me that during Ramadan, it was a virtuous thing to feed the poor. This kindness impressed me, especially as those who were serving it were fasting.

Howrah Bridge

Eventually, after boldly crossing a wide road clogged with slow moving heavy traffic, I stepped onto the Howrah Bridge, a gigantic steel bridge – a Meccano lover’s dream come true. It traverses the Hooghly – a section of the great Ganges River system. It was constructed between 1935 and early 1943. At first, the bridge crosses over a large market that is strung along the riverbank. Then, after a few yards, it is over the water. I walked along the downstream facing pedestrian walkway, dodging many porters carrying heavy and bulky loads on their heads. I took numerous photographs until I was two thirds of the way across the river. There, I met a policeman with an ancient-looking rifle – its leather strap slung over his shoulder. Politely, he informed me that photography was forbidden on the bridge. By then, I had sufficient images stored in the memory of my digital camera.

Once over the river, I headed through the streaming rain and thick crowds to a boat station close to the Howrah railway terminus. My plan was to travel on a river bus downstream to a landing stage not far from Park Street.  I bought a ticket which was printed on such very poor-quality paper that it had to be kept dry to stop it dissolving or falling to pieces.  I asked someone on the floating platform at the water’s edge if the boat that was approaching was heading for my planned destination. I received what I believed was an affirmative reply, and then boarded a relatively empty boat with plenty of free seats. We set off.

To my surprise, the boat headed upstream rather than downstream. Soon, we passed beneath the Howrah Bridge. We sailed a long way upstream away from the city centre. The banks of the river were lined with unattractive industrial buildings, and these were punctuated by occasional bathing ghats. We were heading away from the pleasant old part of the city in which Park Street is located.

I disembarked at the boat’s first stop. Had it not been raining so heavily I would have stepped out of the boat station to explore the area around it. Instead, I bought another flimsy ticket to return to Howrah. This time, I asked several people to tell me at which of the two floating embarkation pontoons I should board the downstream boat. I waited close to the water while a large crowd of fellow passengers gathered behind me. I wanted to be sure of embarking first.

The boat approached where we were all standing. I could see from afar that it was ‘packed to the gills’ with people. When the boat was about 18 inches away from the pontoon, I felt a great push from behind me and I was catapulted across the water towards the approaching vessel. Luckily, I was able to grab something on the boat, and this saved me from falling into the water and being crushed between the boat and the pontoon. Had I not been able to do this, I feel sure my life would have ended prematurely.

 The boat was stuffed with people – I am sure that sardines are less tightly packed in tins. I wanted to try to take a photograph to capture an image of this crowd, but I could not because so great was the pressure exerted by those around me that I was unable to raise my hands from beside my body. Thus wedged, I looked around and noticed there were only a few lifesaving flotation items. If our boat had sunk, I imagine that only a few of us on board would have survived.

It was a great relief to disembark at Howrah. I was drenched, somewhat shaken, and hungry. I decided to take a taxi to Flurys in Park Street. It is a European style tearoom/restaurant that served what I was yearning at that moment – toasted club sandwiches. I boarded a dented yellow Ambassador taxi in a car park near the railway station.  We inched our way forward into a mass of other similarly damaged taxis. The crowded taxis were so close to each other that it felt as if they might become welded together. It took almost an hour for my driver to skilfully manoeuvre his vehicle a couple of hundred yards from where I boarded it on to the beginning of the bridge.

At last, we arrived at Park Street, where, slightly drier because of sitting for ages in the taxi, I settled down at a table in Flurys. I ordered my sandwich and savoured the peaceful atmosphere in the tearoom*.

Despite my near escape from severe injury (or worse) on the banks of the Hooghly, my enthusiasm for Calcutta remained undiminished.

*Note: when I last visited Flurys in January 2025, it had lost most of its charm; it has become a place for tourists and Instagrammers.

This is a chapter in my book “The Hitler Lock & Other Tales of India”, which is available from Amazon

A chance encounter in the pavilion and a suitable boy

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I HAVE NEVER MET the Indian author, Vikram Seth, who wrote the long novel “A Suitable Boy”, but today, 30 July 2026, my wife and I met his sister, Aradhana, quite by chance while visiting the beautiful brickwork Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens.

In about 1968, my wife was awarded a scholarship to study for her A-Levels (university entrance examinations) in the UK. That year, she was not the only one to receive such an award, which allowed her to travel from India to study in England. Another awardee that year was Vikram Seth, now a renowned author.

In 1994, a few months before my first ever visit to India, my then fiancé, now my wife, suggested that I read Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy” because it might have helped me to ‘acclimatise’ to Indian ways of life before I arrived in the country. The book, first published in 1993, is well over 1400 pages long. Dutifully, I began reading it, but then little of it made much sense to me, and I gave up reading the book by the time I reached page 300. Thereafter, I have not touched the book until this month, July 2026.

Since 1994, I have visited India at least 50 times, often for long sojourns, and have become familiar with many aspects of life in the country. A few days ago, I started reading “A Suitable Boy”, and I am finding it both enjoyable and incredibly engaging. Much of what Seth has written makes much more sense to me than it did in 1994. And despite it being published without a glossary, many of the Hindustani words (transliterations of Devanagari and Urdu scripts) now mean something to me.

Seth has managed to write an epic novel whose pages contain a brilliant portrait of life in certain social circles in India. Although I have only just passed page 230 (in four short episodes of reading), I feel that by the end of the following few weeks, I will have read the whole book.

Meeting Vikram Seth’s sister by chance was only one part of an amazing encounter today. My wife thought she looked vaguely familiar, and that is why we engaged her in conversation. It turned out that Aradhana and my wife had attended the same school, Loreto House, in Kolkata (Calcutta), and although they differ in age, their times at the school overlapped. In addition, Aradhana, was with her friend, Amrit, whose father, we discovered, had worked in the same company as my wife’s father.

Although India’s population is about one and a half billion, I am always amazed how often we ‘bump into’ Indians, with whom my wife can find some not too distant connection.

Comparing kebab rolls in London’s Soho with those in Kolkata

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ACCORDING TO ITS website, the small restaurant in Soho’s Poland Street called The Kati Roll Company (‘KRC’):

“… serves authentic street Kati Rolls just like the ones in Kolkata, India.”

The restaurant is attractively decorated, with its wall covered with fragments of Hindi film posters and a corrugated iron ceiling. It has several tables and chairs. Food is ordered from a counter at the far end of the rectangular dining area, and is delivered a few minutes later. I could not see the kebabs being prepared, but if they are truly kati kebabs, they should have been grilled on bamboo skewers. The roll, wrapped in paper consists of a spicy meat or vegetarian filling enclosed in a rolled-up roti, which the restaurant described as a ‘paratha’.

Kati Roll Company, London

KRC was, according to its website, started:

“… by Payal Saha shortly after she moved from her hometown of Kolkata to New York City. Without any experience running a restaurant, she let her desire for authentic kati rolls drive her passion.”

Well, it was with great interest that today, 3 September 2025, I visited and ate at KRC in Poland Street. I was curious to see how their rolls compared with those at Nizams in central Kolkata. I have written quite a lot about this restaurant in my latest book “88 Days in India: A Journey of Memory and Discovery”. Here is a short excerpt from my description of the rolls at Nizams:

“The kathi roll consists of a kebab (usually chicken or mutton, or potato for vegetarians) wrapped, with or without a cooked egg (like an omelette), in a rolled up flaky paratha. Onions and chillies can also be included in the roll. The paratha is heated in a large amount of oil on a tava (a circular, concave metal hotplate). It is the same one that was installed when the restaurant first opened. According to an article in The Telegraph Online (dated August 2024), the tava weighed 185 Kg in 1932, but through constant use it has lost weight. By 2024, it weighed 80 Kg. Until 1964, the kebabs were grilled on iron skewers. After that, the metal skewers were replaced by cheaper bamboo sticks, known in Bengali as ‘kathi’. The rolls have always been served, wrapped up in paper so that the customers (often in the early days, British men out on the town with Indian ladies) did not get grease on their fingers whilst consuming them. Interesting as the history is, it pales into insignificance when you bite into one of Nizam’s kathi rolls. I do not know how they achieve it, but the taste of Nizam’s kebab filled rolls surpasses that of every other kebab roll I have eaten. Year after year, Nizam’s manages to maintain the high quality and magical flavour of their products.”

After having eaten at Nizams many times, I waited with great interest for the 4 kathi rolls we had ordered in Poland Street to be served.

The fillings in the KRC rolls were tasty enough, and if you have never eaten at Nizams, you would think that they taste pretty good. The so-called parathas in which KRC’s rolls are wrapped seemed more like rotis than what I was expecting. In contrast, the parathas that enclose the fillings at Nizams are, as mentioned above, flaky, almost as much as Malabar or Kerala parathas, but oilier.  Although I enjoyed the rolls at KRC, and will happily eat there again, they are not nearly as satisfying and tasty as those at Nizams. However, it is much easier and quicker for us to reach KRC in Soho than it is for us to get to Nizams in Kolkata.

PS: My book, which contains a chapter about eating in Kolkata, is available from Amazon:

Bungalows of historical interest in Birchington (Kent)

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DURING OUR RECENT visit to east Kent, we spent two nights in a bed and breakfast (‘B&B’) on Spencer Road at Birchington. Despite visibility being restricted by torrential rain when we arrived at the accommodation, I was able to see that there was an attractive sgraffito frieze around the house at the level of the first floor. Even in the poor light, I could make out that frieze was created in the Arts and Crafts Style, which was popular in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Our B&B was called The Old Coach House, and I will explain why soon.

Visitors to English coastal towns will have seen the huge numbers of bungalows (single-storey dwellings) that they contain. What many people might not know is that “… England’s first bungalow was built in Westgate in 1867” (www.birchingtonheritage.org.uk/articles/bungalows.htm). Birchington, which is a few miles from Westgate was home to the country’s first bungalow estate. This comprises five bungalows, each with its own watch tower. They are next to Coleman Stairs, which is a steep path leading down from the clifftop to the seashore. The bungalows, close to the cliff edge, were ready for use in 1880 and are accessed via a private lane from Spenser Road.

Each of the bungalows was provided with its own coach house, which accommodated the householder’s servants, carriages, and horses. Our B&B was one of the coach houses. It has been converted into a residence. Our first-floor bedroom would have once been one of the servant’s rooms. A small staircase leads from the ground to the first floor. This was added long after the building ceased to be a coach house. Before this was added, the servants accessed the first floor by an outside staircase, which no longer exists,

The sgraffito friezes on each of the three former stable blocks that we saw are in good condition. The coach houses were built in about 1882 and designed by John Pollard Seddon (1827-1906), who was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists. The sgraffito work on the coach housed is said to have been created by the sculptor George Frampton (1860-1928), whose other works include the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens and a statue of Queen Victoria in the grounds of the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. An article published in the Thanet Times in the 1970s revealed:

“Frampton as a youth was a friend of the artist Solomon J. Solomon, a well known artist of his day, who had bought the annex, “The Porch,” in Spencer Road, Birchington, which was the coach house to his main house called “Whitecliff” – one of the famous Tower Bungalows.  George Frampton came to live with the Solomon’s when he was a penniless sculptor, fresh from years of apprenticeship to his profession.  Solomon wanted to help Frampton and suggested that he might create frescoes round the upper part of his new house.  Frampton made this a labour of love.  He was 22 years old at the time – 1882 ,,, But the name of his benefactor is almost forgotten – but not Frampton’s frescoes.” (www.birchingtonheritage.org.uk/)

When we booked the B&B, we had no inkling of its historical interest. We had a comfortable stay there, and were well looked after by Tim, our friendly host. His affectionate dog Louie added to our enjoyment of the place.

Recycling in nineteenth century Kolkata (Calcutta) and London

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THE GWALIOR MONUMENT stands on the bank of the Hooghly River in Kolkata (Calcutta). The monument commemorates British officers and their men, who died in the Gwalior War of 1843. Constructed in 1847 by the then Governor General of India, Lord Ellenborough, its roof is made of metal.

Several thousand miles away near London’s Hyde Park Corner and the towering Hilton hotel, there is a statue of the ancient hero Achilles. It commemorates the victories of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, and his men who helped achieve them. Standing on a granite plinth, Achilles is made of metal.

These two distantly spaced British memorials both contain metal in their construction. They have one more thing in common. The metal on the roof of the Gwalior Monument and that used to make Achilles is recycled. In each case, the metal was obtained by melting down the canons of the defeated armies. In the case of the Gwalior Monument, the metal was derived from the cannons of the defeated Marath army, and in the Achilles statue, it was derived from the enemy’s cannons captured at the battles of Salamanca, Vittoria, Toulouse, and Waterloo.

I wonder how the defeated armies would have felt if they had known that their weapons were being melted down to celebrate their opponents’ victories.

A shared taxi and Greeks buried in Kolkata (Calcutta)

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Having visited the Jewish cemetery in Kolkata, we hailed an autorickshaw to carry us to College Street. There was already one passenger in the three-wheeler that stopped for us. He moved from his seat in the rear of the vehicle to make room for us, and then sat next to the driver on his seat. After going a short distance, our driver stopped to pick up another passenger, who squeezed into the seat alongside us. She disembarked after we had driven a few blocks further, and handed the driver a few rupees. After we left the autorickshaw and paid the driver a modest fee, the other passenger continued his journey in the vehicle. Like most autorickshaws in Kolkata, the one we had just taken was a shared cab that ran on a pre-determined route.

On the way, our autorickshaw rushed past a gateway on Narkeldanga Main Road, which I noticed was marked “Greek Cemetery”. Established in 1777, it is India’s only Greek cemetery. In Henry Cotton’s encyclopaedic “Calcutta Old and New” (published in 1907), he noted that the first “eminent” Greek settler in Kolkata was Hadjee Alexios Argyree, who arrived in Bengal in 1750, and worked as an interpreter. Other Greeks in Kolkata were involved in trade and commerce. The city’s only Greek church was erected in 1780, and still stands near Kalighat on Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road, along which we often travel between central Kolkata and Tollygunge to the south of it. The well-maintained building is neo-classical in style, and Greek Orthodox services are held there regularly.  Today, there are few if any Greeks left in Kolkata, and the cemetery in Narkeldanga, home to about 300 graves, is in a sad state of disrepair (according to a report in the online Times of India, dated March 2018).

A museum of money in Kolkata (Calcutta)

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BY TAKING A SHORT walk north of Kolkata’s 18th century Church of St John one reaches number 8 Council House Street, now home to the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) Museum. In an interesting article published online, Sudabhip Mukherjee wrote that the museum is housed in what was originally the building constructed for the now non-existent Alliance Bank of Shimla, which flourished from 1874 until 1923. In 2019, the ground floor of this elegant Victorian building constructed in red brick with white stone facings was converted to become the RBI Museum.

The aim of the museum is to give visitors an understanding of all aspects of money and banking from the beginning of time until the present. It achieves this very well using imaginatively designed displays, which render the subject of interest to visitors of all ages. Rather than being a dull museum with conventional display cabinets, the designers of this place have produced displays that are both original and artistic. The visually exciting features begin as soon as you enter the building. For example, the pillars in the entrance hall are decorated with patterns made using out-of-date Indian currency coins, and in the centre of one of the larger display rooms, there is a dramatic sculpture that depicts the circulation of money across the globe. Had we not walked past the entrance to this museum after visiting St Johns Church on a Friday morning in late December 2024, I doubt we would have got to know about it. Many of our friends in Kolkata had never heard about the place.

An artist who depicts nature only naturally

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AJIT KUMAR DAS was born in 1957, son of a laundry man (washer man). From an early age, he became fascinated with the wonderful  colours of the textiles that his father washed. He became involved with traditional fabric printing and design. Today, Das is recognised as one of India’s foremost natural dye painters.

 

Das paints on cloth using natural dyes, rather than artificially created colours. He uses dyes derived ed from sources such as, for example,  pomegranate rind, turmeric, fermented iron solution, indigo, and madder. He applies them using bamboo brushes and handmade quills. The colours are fixed using alum as mordant. With decades of experience and experimentation,  he is able to use the natural dyes to produce interesting colourful effects.

 

At his exhibition held in a  magnificent gallery in the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, we were able to view more than 20 of his paintings. All of them feature closely observed natural objects, such as foliage, birds, and fish, all arranged in patterns on the textiles. Some of these compositions are naturalistic. In others, Das has arranged the details from nature to produce lovely patterns.

 

We were fortunate to have been at the inauguration of the exhibition, during which the soft-spoken Das discussed his works with a panel of invited guests. From what I could gather, the panellists were more interested in the current state of natural dye crafts than the artist’s works on display. I am pleased that we made the journey from central Kolkata to the outlying district of Anandapur to see the exhibition and to learn a little about the use of natural dyes in traditional methods of textile making.

A truly exciting and creative experience in a suburb of Kolkata

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THE KOLKATA CENTRE for Creativity (‘KCC’) was established by the businessman Radhe Shyam Agarwal,  executive chairman of the Emami Group. He commissioned architect Pinakin Patel to build the arts centre that stands in Kolkata’s Anandapur district. Inaugurated in late 2018, it has 70,000 square feet of floor space for art, artists, and art lovers. This includes an auditorium, gallery spaces, an elegant café, shops, a dance studio, and a library.

 The building is a superb example of contemporary architectural design, both externally and internally. Inside, it is spacious and well-lit. The building, which serves its various purposes well, is in itself a work of art: a functional sculpture, one might say. We attended the inauguration of an exhibition, which was held in the auditorium,  which forms part of the gallery space. I will describe the exhibition in another piece, but suffice it to say,  the KCC, although distant from central Kolkata,  is worth visiting.

An artist who works and lives in Kolkata

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WHEN VIEWING ARTWORK or listening to music, my reaction  to, and enjoyment of it is governed by my initial visceral feelings that it evokes. If these feelings are satisfactory, my interest and enjoyment of the art increases, and I might begin to delve more deeply into understanding what the creator is trying to convey with his or her work.

 

My initial reaction to the oil paintings and ink drawings by Kolkata based artist Debajyoti Roy were very positive. Each of his works on display appealed to me. Many of the images are in black ink on white paper. A couple of larger paintings were more colourful, created with oil colours and inks.

 

 Some of the works in ink reminded me a little of Chinese or Japanese calligraphy. The works are both abstract and at the same time somewhat figurative. Yet, as I studied them, they gave me the feeling that they are abstractions of reality, often of biological phenomena.  As Roy explained in the exhibition catalogue:

“When someone engages with a piece of art, it is inevitable to interpret its visual aspects. Still, the essence lies in deeper inquiries that provoke interpretation of the perception and reality.”

I felt that this was certainly the case with what I saw of his creations.

 

Debajyoti Roy has created a set of images that are intriguing both visually and intellectually. It is a shame that his exhibition at the Jogen Choudhury Centre for Arts in south Kolkata is ending soon (on 11 January 2025). If you happen to be in Kolkata before it ends, it is well worth viewing.