About the same time that Germany invaded Belgium, French violinist and conductor Phillipe Sandré was working up a different tune in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Armed with his violin, he raised a squad of pupils and in the autumn of 1915, when World War I was into its second year, set up The Calcutta School of…
Poll date: 12 May Jadavpur Key candidates: Sugata Bose, TMC I Sujan Chakraborty, CPM I Samir Aich, INC An elderly woman in a crumpled white cotton sari stands by the roadside, clutching a bunch of flowers, as a massive All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) rally meanders down the serpentine lanes of Santoshpur in south Kolkata’s…
He promises to give me “something extra” as we begin the interview in the lobby of a hotel on Kolkata’s Park Street. In the city for the Kolkata Literary Festival (8-13 January), he’s been giving several interviews. Two stacks of his just-released novel, Land Where I Flee, and the 2012 collection of short stories, The Gurkha’s Daughter,…
The Bosepukur Sitala Mandir Durga Puja pandal is difficult to miss. From a distance one can spy the spherical structure looming above the tall fencing of corrugated sheets on the Rashbehari Connector in south Kolkata. The space is cordoned off from public view, but inside, it does not take much effort to locate Kajal Sarkar. The secretary of…
Mumbai-based artist Samir Mondal remembers the day 40 years ago when he first set his eyes on the Writers’ Buildings in Calcutta, as the city was then called. The young man who grew up in a village in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district could not believe it was man-made. “I could hardly blink. I…
Anuradha Sharma 