Calcutta Then – Kolkata Now is a solid tome — heavy with the weight of history and nostalgia. Part of a series of coffee table books, starting with India that was first put together 14 years ago, its text and photographs have been authored and curated by Sunanda K Datta-Ray and Pramod Kapoor for the ‘Then’ section and Indrajit Hazra and Anshika Varma for the ‘Now’.
With introductory chapters on Calcutta as one of the premier cities of the British Empire and its place in modern India as a burgeoning metropolis, interspersed with a glut of rare photographs sourced from newspapers, archives, private and institutional collections worldwide, Calcutta Then – Kolkata Now is a tenderly written love letter to the city’s culture, its literary greatness, the establishments that govern the nation today that it first introduced, its gracious buildings that earned it the moniker ‘City of Palaces’, multitudes of festivals and people and its rooted Bengaliness.
“When we completed our book on India, we had plenty of photographs of Calcutta,” says Pramod Kapoor, over telephone. “My connection to the city is umbilical; I spent summer vacations at my grandparents’ house at Jorasanko. The photographs brought back the whiff of the courtyards where we played cricket; the hand pump where we washed our hands at and the sweets shop where we went after a game are still there.”
Back in time
Although Kapoor travelled often to Kolkata, it was only 40 years later that he visited his childhood neighbourhood. “I stumbled upon photographs from the palaces and old zamindari families who had moved on. It led to us sourcing almost 5,000 to 7,000 pictures for the ‘Then’ section. Because of my love for sepia, each picture had to compete for its place,” laughs Kapoor. “With lots of help from Anshika, we brought it down to 500. It was heartbreaking to choose; these were pictures we had lived with for so long, although accessing them was difficult. Not many Indians maintain records or value their pictorial heritage.”
The nearly-300-page book has detailed essays by Datta-Ray, former editor of The Statesman and an authority on Calcutta, and writer-journalist Hazra. “They bring their scholarship and wit to the book. Anshika works in lens-based media and documents social and cultural landscapes of the country.”
The nearly-250 pages of black-and-white, sepia and colour photographs are laid out with detailed captions, with the book revealing the ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ sections when flipped over. Asked to choose some iconic photographs that best represent the city, Kapoor picks the cover pictures of ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ (steamships and coolies on the Hooghly and the women of the premier Daw family), Netaji’s nieces on horseback on the Strand in 1947 commemorating his ‘Dilli Chalo’ call of 1943, Calcutta’s colonial panorama, Howrah bridge with a ship that had run aground, and a group of women smiling for a selfie in front of the Durga.
The book also celebrates the city’s romance with parades and polo games, tea dances and trams, pukka sahibs and languid lunches at exclusive clubs. Beyond the grand, green sweep of The Maidan and the Georgian mansions where trading companies once fed the coffers of the Empire, are dense, fetid pools of poverty, where people struggle to earn a decent living and Mother Teresa found her calling.
The book explores these places as much as it does the lives of minorities such as the Anglo-Indians, Chinese, Jews and Armenians, who are as much a part of the weft of the city, but are fast fading into the pages of an illustrated history book.
City of joy (Clockwise from left) Polo players jockey about at the Pat Williamson Ground with the Victoria Memorial in the background; the Mullicks of Shovabazar travelled in a carriage drawn by an imported zebra; the Grand Stand at the Calcutta Derby Sweeps during Christmas week drew large crowds; Netaji’s nieces on horseback celebrate Azad Hind Day in 1947; and women take a selfie after a round of sindoor khela ROLI BOOKS
It’s a tome that celebrates a city that continues to be a treasure house of intellectual inheritance standing chock-a-block by soot-coated imperial relics. Where else but in 19th-Century Calcutta would you see an eccentric Bengali babu ride through the streets in a customised carriage drawn by a zebra!