Kolkata

 A wee bit on Kolkata

 A bit of mythology…The very name of Calcutta is derived from a symbol of fear and evil. There is no God at all more respected and feared than the goddess Kali. When Kali died, Siva her consort was both grief stricken and angry and went stomping round the world in a dervish dance of mourning. To stop him and the Universe from destruction, Vishnu took up a knife and flung it at the corpse dismembering it into 52 pieces. By the side of the great river in Bengal where a little toe of the right foot landed, a temple was built with an attendant village, called  Kalikata

A bit of modern History…Kipling called it “the city of dreadful night”- a city of unspeakable poverty, of famine, riot and disease when he wrote his thumping and ungainly verse.

“Thus the midday halt of Charnock -- more's the pity!

    Grew a City.

As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed,

    So it spread --

Chance-directed, chance-erected, laid and built

    On the silt --

Palace, byre, hovel -- poverty and pride --

    Side by side;

And, above the packed and pestilential town,

    Death looked down.”

Yet Calcutta, the Victorian seat of the British Raj, is the second city in the commonwealth, the fourth city in the world. A century or more before Kipling, Robert Clive decided that it was ‘the most wicked place in the universe’, though, admittedly, he had only England and Madras to compare it with. William Bentinck had decided in 1805 that Calcutta was the richest city he had seen after London .At the end of the 19^th century Winston Churchill told his mother “I shall always be glad to have seen it and it will be unnecessary for me to ever see it again”.

After the disastrous consequence of the partition of Bengal ,Calcutta lost its per-eminence as being the Capital of British India, when king George V under his Viceroy Lord Hardinge moved the Capital to Delhi in 1912.

A bit of modern Drama & Trivia…Calcutta has nothing to do at all with the revue  that bears its name. Oh! Calcutta! is an avant garde theatrical revue created by British drama critic Ken Tynan. The show, consisting of sketches on sex-related topics, debuted  in 1969 and then in London in 1970 Later,the Broadway revival ran for 5,959 performances, making the show the longest-running revue in Broadway history at the time.

According to Tynan The title Oh! Calcutta! was inspired by a painting by a Clovis Trouille called Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta!; it depicts a reclining woman draped in rich fabrics and revealing a pair of plump buttocks decorated with tattooed Fleur-de-lis. The choice came about in 1966. Tynan’s wife  was writing an article on Trouille, and knew that Ken admired the derriere in question When she suggested it as the title of his play he accepted with alacrity .What neither of them knew, however -until later- was that the title Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta! was a pun. Calcutta stands in for ‘Quel cul t’as!’, or ‘What an arse you’ve got!’

A bit of modern Dining… Succulent, authentic Bengali food, that's Oh! Calcutta for you. Popular ever since its inception in 2002, Oh! Calcutta dishes up delectable Bengali fare in an almost old-world surrounding that instantly makes you feel at home. Decorated with old photographs and paintings, the ambiance at Oh! Calcutta is inviting and warm. Try the prawns cooked in coconut gravy and served in a coconut shell or the boneless Bekti fish in tangy mustard sauce. The steamed Hilsa and the prawns are also great options. Oh! Calcutta restaurants have now sprung up in many metros, so Bengalis away from home don't have to go far looking for good old Bengali food.

We have come a full circle from Kalikata to Calcutta to Kolkata…

To borrow from Shakespeare

"What's in a name? That which we called Calcutta
By any other name would still be an enigma…least understood until experienced”