Calcutta

Quotes

• “jal, juochuri, mithye kathaei tin niye kalikata.”
• “Even their enemies admit their courtesy, and a generous Britisher sums up his long experience by ascribing to the higher classes in Calcutta “polished manners, clearness and comprehensiveness of understanding, liberality of feeling, and independence of principle, that would have stamped them gentlemen in any country in the world.””
• “Thus the midday halt of Charnock – more’s the pity! -Grew a CityAs the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bedSo it spreadChance-directed, chance-erected, laid and builtOn the siltPalace, byre, hovel – poverty and prideSide by sideAnd above the packed and pestilential townDeath looked down.”
• “To countless Indians, and for most people familiar with India, the singularly unique name Chowringhee immediately identifies with Calcutta. It represents the nearest equation in India to what Piccadilly is to London, Fifth Avenue to New York and the Champs Elysees to Paris. Nostalgic Londoners like to regard their Circus as the centre of the universe. Calcuttans are more reserved in their acclaim, although the fervour they display for their city is perhaps unmatched.”
• “Calcutta is by far the richest city in India, even though its various problems have started to turn its richness into a collapsing wealth. It is possibly the richest city anywhere between Rome and Tokyo in terms of the money that is accumulated and represented here.”
• “Take your map of India, and find, if you can, a more uninviting spot than Calcutta. Placed in the burning plain of Bengal, on the largest delta of the world, amidst a network of sluggish, muddy streams, in the neighbourhood of the jungles and marshes of the Sunderbands, and yet so distant from the open sea as to miss the benefits of the breeze… it unites every condition of a perfectly unhealthy situation. The place is so bad by nature that human efforts could do little to make it worse.”

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Wikidata facts

Official website

calcuttasitodi.it

Image

Calcutta, “Un giro in Europa 2024”, Olympia, Paris, France (11-06-2024) · © Danilo Samà.jpg

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