Walking through the streets of Calcutta can be a “time-shifting journey between the past and present,” said Somini Sengupta in The New York Times. A port town once rich with opium, muslin, and jute, the crumbling metropolis situated along the Hooghly River is now “littered with the remains of many worlds”: an Armenian cemetery, the rickshaws brought over by the Chinese, and the sounds of jazz introduced by Americans during the war years. Although known as India’s first modern city, this urban sprawl on the country’s eastern border “lives in the past as much as it lets the past decay.” Its many cultural influences only shape—rather than define—the complicated city.
The best way to explore Calcutta is to follow the Hooghly itself, “meandering on and off the main thoroughfares by foot, tram, and subway.” Start by boarding a tram to Cornwallis Street, now known as Bidhan Sarani, where you can get lost amid the “dense alleys” of book stalls. Pick up a title and pop into the Indian Coffee House, which for centuries has remained the city’s “most venerable institution of revolutionary chatter and flirt.” Around the corner stand three buildings that together sum up “Calcutta’s melting pot heritage”: the Baptist Mission, a model of Indo-Saracenic architecture; the Mahabodi Buddhist temple, founded by a Sri Lankan monk; and the Bengal Theosophical Society, “one of the world’s first esoteric East-meets-West religious movements.”
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