Walking or driving through Kolkata’s BBD Bagh area, the magnificent General Post Office (GPO) building is hard to miss. It has been part of the city landscape forever, or so it seems. In reality, the GPO was only designed in 1864 by Walter Grenville, but
The ancient settlement of Jaynagar-Mojilpur stands at the gateway of the Adi Ganga in the Sunderbans. Most Bengalis know the twin towns for ‘Joynagarer Moa’, a seasonal sweet made of date-palm jaggery and Kanakchur ‘khoi’ (popped rice, akin to popcorn). That apart, Joynagar-Mojilpur is also
Who else but Rabindranath Tagore can come to the rescue of our battered mental health in these times of crisis? And why not? After all, he himself witnessed deaths of near ones over and over again to diseases that do have a cure today. His
It was French journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who in 1849 first coined the saying, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they remain the same). He could easily have been talking about what is said to
In around 1820’s, an ambitious Moira (sweetmeat maker) named Ramchandra Das from Debrajhat village in Burdwan-Khandagoshi arrived in Calcutta, then a melting pot of adventurers, businessmen, bootleggers and people from all walks of life to try his luck in this burgeoning city on the banks
Filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak was often found here at a table, indulging in heated arguments with his friends, seen walking out in a huff, only to return to the 150-year-old drinking hole of Calcutta, tucked in one corner. As the oldest bar of the city, Chhota
The fifty years since his death have passed as quietly as the 100 years since his birth in 1918. In fact, we are now in the fifty-first year since the incomparable Narayan Gangopadhyay left this world. But neither in the centenary year of his birth,
14 year-old Kharagpur boy Archisman sets two Asia records for qualifying in 73 Olympiads and presenting a Mathematics Research Paper. Presently studying in Class-IX in St. Agnes School, Kharagpur he won the titles from the coveted Asia Book of Records (ABR) and India Book of
Sati is a Sanskrit term which means ‘a wife who possesses great virtue’. Agehananda Bharati, the late Austrian-born anthropologist who was born Hindu, said that sati was the nicor (essence) of pativratadharma (moral action appropriate for married women) The sati concept was so popular at
Technically, today is the day the world celebrates the birthday of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, one of the first two known individuals to summit Mount Everest, along with New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953. Therefore, today is an occasion for twin celebrations: the