There’s a reason why Jagannath Ghat in Kolkata is called what it is. Practically at the base of Howrah Bridge, the ghat, built by millionaire Bengali businessman Sobharam Basak in the latter half of the 18th century (approximately between 1758 and 1773), took its name
On August 16, 1897, Hridaynath Ghosh, manager of Kathalguri Tea Estate in what is now Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal, was found brutally murdered in his bungalow, his throat slit wide open. Topping the list of suspects was his former domestic help Ranjan Singh alias
Our world as we knew it changed drastically in January 2020, when Covid-19 made its global appearance. This may seem like stating the obvious, but life in Covid times has become so normalised that perhaps we need to step back a little occasionally, just so
Meghalaya is a beautiful combination of Sanskrit words meaning ‘abode of clouds’, from Sanskrit ‘megha’ (cloud) and ‘ā-laya’, (abode). Those who have visited this state of nearly 3.5 crore people will know that it is as beautiful as its name. And yet, not many will
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
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
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,
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
“Malik ke giye bol Khoka esechhe (go tell the owner Khoka is here)”. With the release of Srijit Mukherji’s film ‘Dwitiyo Purush’ in January 2020, this line passed into Bengal’s film history. The ‘Khoka’ in question is an apparently insane killer who terrorises people from
When we say ‘family’, what do we usually mean? In our times, the answer is likely to be a unit of four or five people, comprising a married, heterosexual couple and their biological children, with the couple’s parents or in-laws in some cases. That’s a