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The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta
Everything that could possibly be wrong with a city was wrong with Calcutta.
When Kushanava Choudhury arrived in New Jersey at the age of twelve, he had already migrated halfway around the world four times. After graduating from Princeton, he moved back to the region his immigrant parents had abandoned, to a city built between a river and a swamp, where the moisture-drenched air swarms with mosquitos after sundown.
Once the capital of the British Raj, and later India's industrial and cultural hub, by 2001 Calcutta was clearly past its prime. Why, his relatives beseeched him, had he returned? Surely, he could have moved to Delhi, Bombay, or Bangalore, where a new Golden Age of consumption was being born.
Yet fifteen million people still lived in Calcutta. Working for the Statesman, its leading English newspaper, Kushanava Choudhury found the streets of his childhood unchanged by time. Shouting hawkers still overran the footpaths, fish-sellers squatted on bazaar floors; politics still meant barricades and bus burnings, while Communist ministers traveled in motorcades.
Sifting through the chaos for the stories that never make the papers, Kushanava Choudhury paints a soulful, compelling portrait of the everyday lives that make Calcutta. Written with humanity, wit, and insight, The Epic City is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is a world unto itself.
When Kushanava Choudhury arrived in New Jersey at the age of twelve, he had already migrated halfway around the world four times. After graduating from Princeton, he moved back to the region his immigrant parents had abandoned, to a city built between a river and a swamp, where the moisture-drenched air swarms with mosquitos after sundown.
Once the capital of the British Raj, and later India's industrial and cultural hub, by 2001 Calcutta was clearly past its prime. Why, his relatives beseeched him, had he returned? Surely, he could have moved to Delhi, Bombay, or Bangalore, where a new Golden Age of consumption was being born.
Yet fifteen million people still lived in Calcutta. Working for the Statesman, its leading English newspaper, Kushanava Choudhury found the streets of his childhood unchanged by time. Shouting hawkers still overran the footpaths, fish-sellers squatted on bazaar floors; politics still meant barricades and bus burnings, while Communist ministers traveled in motorcades.
Sifting through the chaos for the stories that never make the papers, Kushanava Choudhury paints a soulful, compelling portrait of the everyday lives that make Calcutta. Written with humanity, wit, and insight, The Epic City is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is a world unto itself.
238 pages, Hardcover
First published August 10, 2017
106 people are currently reading
1108 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
September 21, 2017
Let's get the bad things out of the way first. This book needed some serious editing (Random repetitions of previously-mentioned incidents! Strange typos! Ugh.). Also, the number of times the words "decaying", "colonial", and "spirit" were used should have been drastically reduced.
Having said that, I'm a pathetic piece of mush as far as any literature related to Calcutta is concerned, and this book had me mushy within the first few pages. Calcutta is weird and infuriating, and so is this book.
Frankly speaking, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Having said that, I'm a pathetic piece of mush as far as any literature related to Calcutta is concerned, and this book had me mushy within the first few pages. Calcutta is weird and infuriating, and so is this book.
Frankly speaking, I wouldn't have it any other way.
July 27, 2019
‘The Epic City’ hits home and hits hard. It takes you into the heart of Calcutta, its core flaws and outstanding beauty. Calcutta/Kolkata is a busy city, with people running around as they attend to their daily schedule.
Even though Calcutta isn’t my home town, I have lived there for two years and this book made me nostalgic. Obviously, I didn’t agree with everything the author had to say, but I accepted it nonetheless because knowing a city is bigger and deeper than one person’s experience.
Kushanava Choudhury moved to New Jersey when he was 12 years old. But after graduating from Princeton, he came back to Calcutta and these stories are his view of this world where he truly belongs. His interaction with jobless men, random streets and abandoned building, and how the city helps him to cope up with his personal tragedies. It is a memoir and reads like one but the storytelling is flawless and the personal touch throughout the narration makes it interesting and fun.
There is a reason this book has been grabbing attention. The authors perspective of the city is vibrant, engrossing and very relatable. It gives an insight into what Calcutta truly is, not just a crowded city with a lot of drama. Calcutta is the yellow taxis, the rich culture, the tramways, the landscape and the small cha-biscuit shops (tea and cookies).
If you are someone who hasn’t experience what this city has to offer firsthand, this is perfect for you. And if you are from Calcutta, then this book with bing you the familiar comfort of home. The author feeds you Calcutta in small doses and the personal touch he adds makes it more engaging and informative.
Even though Calcutta isn’t my home town, I have lived there for two years and this book made me nostalgic. Obviously, I didn’t agree with everything the author had to say, but I accepted it nonetheless because knowing a city is bigger and deeper than one person’s experience.
Kushanava Choudhury moved to New Jersey when he was 12 years old. But after graduating from Princeton, he came back to Calcutta and these stories are his view of this world where he truly belongs. His interaction with jobless men, random streets and abandoned building, and how the city helps him to cope up with his personal tragedies. It is a memoir and reads like one but the storytelling is flawless and the personal touch throughout the narration makes it interesting and fun.
There is a reason this book has been grabbing attention. The authors perspective of the city is vibrant, engrossing and very relatable. It gives an insight into what Calcutta truly is, not just a crowded city with a lot of drama. Calcutta is the yellow taxis, the rich culture, the tramways, the landscape and the small cha-biscuit shops (tea and cookies).
If you are someone who hasn’t experience what this city has to offer firsthand, this is perfect for you. And if you are from Calcutta, then this book with bing you the familiar comfort of home. The author feeds you Calcutta in small doses and the personal touch he adds makes it more engaging and informative.
July 23, 2019
Chaotic, visceral, depressing yet utterly familiar. Like parts of my city baked into my soul.
January 9, 2018
By the young age of twelve Kushanava Choudhury had moved back and forwards across the planet four times. A graduate of the prestigious Princeton University and with opportunities galore in his adopted country, the call of his home country and city that his parents had left was too great. So he returned home to the city built between a river and a swamp; Calcutta.
It was a city whose golden age had long passed, once the capital when the British ruled, that had moved to Delhi. Relatives called and tried to persuade him that this was not such a good idea as other cities in India could claim to be up and coming and offer chances and business in the new global economy. He took a position at the Statesman, the leading English newspaper in the city and relished the chance of living once again in his home city of fifteen million people.
In this city of a swirling mass of humanity, and a place that assaults every sense that you have. It is a personal journey too, partly down his own memories of the city and the family that had been moved over from East Bengal after partition and Choudhury wants to rediscover the places that made him who he is now. In this thriving city, he is seeking those stories that rarely make the papers and certainly not the headlines to add greater breadth to the everyday lives of this city. It is an enjoyable book to read with a fascinating insight into a city that is still thriving coupled together with his personal story as Choudhury rediscovers all that he loves about the chaos of his home city. A minor detail on this too is that the gold blocking on the cover makes this a sumptuous cover to look at.
It was a city whose golden age had long passed, once the capital when the British ruled, that had moved to Delhi. Relatives called and tried to persuade him that this was not such a good idea as other cities in India could claim to be up and coming and offer chances and business in the new global economy. He took a position at the Statesman, the leading English newspaper in the city and relished the chance of living once again in his home city of fifteen million people.
In this city of a swirling mass of humanity, and a place that assaults every sense that you have. It is a personal journey too, partly down his own memories of the city and the family that had been moved over from East Bengal after partition and Choudhury wants to rediscover the places that made him who he is now. In this thriving city, he is seeking those stories that rarely make the papers and certainly not the headlines to add greater breadth to the everyday lives of this city. It is an enjoyable book to read with a fascinating insight into a city that is still thriving coupled together with his personal story as Choudhury rediscovers all that he loves about the chaos of his home city. A minor detail on this too is that the gold blocking on the cover makes this a sumptuous cover to look at.
August 6, 2019
Just another book based on experience called Calcutta. There is no newness in the plot and at several places it is a drag. Does not give any great reading pleasure.
August 27, 2025
I have a fascination with India and its rich, diverse history. As I've read and loved many fictional books set in India I decided to balance that with a non-fiction choice. Kushanava Choudhury was born in Calcutta and immigrated with his scientist parents to New Jersey when he was twelve. After graduating from Princeton, he decided to move back to Calcutta to explore the city that formed his boyhood memories.
Calcutta is a city like no other and Choudhury dives into daily life, talks about his extended family, highlights artists and writers, provides an overview of the city's history, tempts us with descriptions of street food and introduces many memorable residents. There was so much to take in that sometimes it was overwhelming, but Choudhury succeeded in bringing his beloved city to life.
Calcutta is a city like no other and Choudhury dives into daily life, talks about his extended family, highlights artists and writers, provides an overview of the city's history, tempts us with descriptions of street food and introduces many memorable residents. There was so much to take in that sometimes it was overwhelming, but Choudhury succeeded in bringing his beloved city to life.
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August 12, 2024I went into the book with expectations that weren't entirely meet. But that said it was a good read. I thought it was a travelogue charting the life of the city but it's a travel memoir charting the life of an itinerant writer from Kolkata to New Jersey and back a few times.
His discovery of the layers of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) is a huge addition to the travel books on Kolkata which mainly focus on the poverty and the destitution. What Chaudhuri does that sets him apart is that he manages to distill the emotion and the rationale for Kolkata being the way it is right now to a large extent. History and the present jostle for space and attention in this book much like the way people do in Kolkata's buses and metros.
The book is divided into four parts but the theme for each part is the same - leaving and returning. A part of it is to do with Choudhury's own life but another part is to do with the way history has played out in Kolkata. The British left and the people from across the border came in. They stayed and his parents left. There is a certain rhythm to the narrative beyond the beginning-middle-end structure. At the end of which, we start questioning ourselves about where it all begins and where it ends.
I liked the fact that neither did Choudhury experience nor write about Kolkata from glass boxes either of the corporate cubicle or Starbucks variety. He did get into the narrow lanes, took buses and trams which are truly congested, lived in the houses he searched for, spoke to the people, brought his first girlfriend, then fiancé and finally wife (the same person) to this 'Epic City' to experience it completely. Working at Kolkata's premier newspaper, The Statesman, gave him a privileged point of view from where he could be both at the top of the social pyramid and walk amongst its bottom tier sometimes in the same day.
I would have expected better editorial attention and consistency especially for names of films in Bangla. In some places, the names of Satyajit Ray's and Mrinal Sen's films are in Bangla and elsewhere they are referred to only by their English translation. The first time Seemabaddha is mentioned, the English translation 'Company Limited' is in brackets. But Ray's other films like Ashani Sanket is referred to only by their English translation, A Distant Thunder and Mrinal Sen's film Akaler Shandhaney is referred to only by the English translation, In Search of Famine. From a layperson's perspective, such details might not matter. Perhaps, they can be taken care of in the reprint.
'Epic City' is a quick, fast-paced travel read which held my attention till the end. I give it a solid 3.5. Sadly, Goodreads doesn't allow half a star.
His discovery of the layers of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) is a huge addition to the travel books on Kolkata which mainly focus on the poverty and the destitution. What Chaudhuri does that sets him apart is that he manages to distill the emotion and the rationale for Kolkata being the way it is right now to a large extent. History and the present jostle for space and attention in this book much like the way people do in Kolkata's buses and metros.
The book is divided into four parts but the theme for each part is the same - leaving and returning. A part of it is to do with Choudhury's own life but another part is to do with the way history has played out in Kolkata. The British left and the people from across the border came in. They stayed and his parents left. There is a certain rhythm to the narrative beyond the beginning-middle-end structure. At the end of which, we start questioning ourselves about where it all begins and where it ends.
I liked the fact that neither did Choudhury experience nor write about Kolkata from glass boxes either of the corporate cubicle or Starbucks variety. He did get into the narrow lanes, took buses and trams which are truly congested, lived in the houses he searched for, spoke to the people, brought his first girlfriend, then fiancé and finally wife (the same person) to this 'Epic City' to experience it completely. Working at Kolkata's premier newspaper, The Statesman, gave him a privileged point of view from where he could be both at the top of the social pyramid and walk amongst its bottom tier sometimes in the same day.
I would have expected better editorial attention and consistency especially for names of films in Bangla. In some places, the names of Satyajit Ray's and Mrinal Sen's films are in Bangla and elsewhere they are referred to only by their English translation. The first time Seemabaddha is mentioned, the English translation 'Company Limited' is in brackets. But Ray's other films like Ashani Sanket is referred to only by their English translation, A Distant Thunder and Mrinal Sen's film Akaler Shandhaney is referred to only by the English translation, In Search of Famine. From a layperson's perspective, such details might not matter. Perhaps, they can be taken care of in the reprint.
'Epic City' is a quick, fast-paced travel read which held my attention till the end. I give it a solid 3.5. Sadly, Goodreads doesn't allow half a star.
June 13, 2020
I have spent my entire childhood and most of my youth in Calcutta, and left the city a few years before the author went back there to work in a Newspaper office. Even though my connection with the city was never severed, as I was making several trips a year, I was no longer an insider. My main curiosity about this book came from the expectation of seeing the city again, beyond the time of my departure, through the eyes of an insider-outsider. The author is not a pure Calcuttan, and sees the city with eyes that have seen a larger world, yet, he was living right there and struggling to survive in a city where survival itself is a struggle.
I enjoyed the shared nostalgia of the city -- its smells and sounds and people, but for that I could go to many books and essays written by other Calcuttans, or sit down in an adda with a few fellow Calcuttans. So the real value comes from the understanding of these realities and seeing it in the perspective of history and the world. That's where I felt the book left me only partially satisfied. There are glimpses of that deeper observation and understanding, but just as often his views seemed to be shallow and lacked complete understanding.
For example, one cannot talk about the city without talking about its leftist past, including the bloody Maoist phase in the late sixties and seventies. The author acknowledges this history, but it was before his time. So he tries to see it through people he met who lived through it. He dismisses most of it as the act of a few delusional people, a few adventure seekers, and many who just wanted to take advantage of it. Perhaps he didn't meet the right people who could have also showed him the deep ideological and moral conviction that many people carried, and not all of it was in vain. It is also risky to judge that political phase only by looking at what happened in the big city, ignoring the rest of the state.
It also seemed to me that his exposure to the local culture through its literature, theatre, cinema was somewhat limited. As a result it remained mostly a series of vignettes and personal impressions, which is not bad in itself, but inadequate, especially when he starts analyzing the city and its culture. In the end, I feel it is a great first draft, but a lot more has to happen to make it a memorable book.
I enjoyed the shared nostalgia of the city -- its smells and sounds and people, but for that I could go to many books and essays written by other Calcuttans, or sit down in an adda with a few fellow Calcuttans. So the real value comes from the understanding of these realities and seeing it in the perspective of history and the world. That's where I felt the book left me only partially satisfied. There are glimpses of that deeper observation and understanding, but just as often his views seemed to be shallow and lacked complete understanding.
For example, one cannot talk about the city without talking about its leftist past, including the bloody Maoist phase in the late sixties and seventies. The author acknowledges this history, but it was before his time. So he tries to see it through people he met who lived through it. He dismisses most of it as the act of a few delusional people, a few adventure seekers, and many who just wanted to take advantage of it. Perhaps he didn't meet the right people who could have also showed him the deep ideological and moral conviction that many people carried, and not all of it was in vain. It is also risky to judge that political phase only by looking at what happened in the big city, ignoring the rest of the state.
It also seemed to me that his exposure to the local culture through its literature, theatre, cinema was somewhat limited. As a result it remained mostly a series of vignettes and personal impressions, which is not bad in itself, but inadequate, especially when he starts analyzing the city and its culture. In the end, I feel it is a great first draft, but a lot more has to happen to make it a memorable book.
November 27, 2018
There have been multiple literary works on/about/set in Calcutta so this book had a uphill task from the word go. What is particularly refreshing about this book that stands out is its brutal honesty regarding every aspect of the city. The author is evidently in a dilemma like so many youths and millennials from the city who have to take a call on whether to be in the place you belong, or the place where you work and seek greener pastures.
The more local you are, the more global you are. Migration for work life is more of a global phenomenon, the feeling of being in 'Unaccustomed Earth' (Jhumpa Lahiri), the feeling of longing
for your roots and the recurring desire of return and finally the emphatic victory of mind over heart. Since I am from the city, I am at a certain vantage point in a way that I can visualise the images that the author conjures up of streets of North Kolkata through my own experience and mind's eye. The streets of Manicktala, Bowbazar, College Street, Shyambazar are the ones I have traveled on foot umpteen times with my college friends and hostel room mates. There is hardly much to see to relish on those narrow bylanes, it was just walking through history, through a concoction different flavors and ages of humanity, an experience that is hard to explain.
And that is what kind of sums up Kolkata, a humongous conundrum, a city which you can either love or hate. Talk about one man's food is another man's poison. Honesty in the book is related to the fact that the areas where the city falls flat, falls short, falls apart are brought out in excruciating details with amazing ruthlessness of the practical eye. And of course idiosyncrasies specific to the city, the adda over endless cups of tea, the obsession over College street, the seeming apathy towards the polished and marketed 'good life', the teeming population, humidity, dilapidation of the strained infrastructure, the mini bus, the passionate arguments over history and films, the time warp. Intermittent dollops of humor does not hurt either. Overall, good weekend read especially to rejig your nostalgia in case you are harboring both fond and not so fond memories of the city.
The more local you are, the more global you are. Migration for work life is more of a global phenomenon, the feeling of being in 'Unaccustomed Earth' (Jhumpa Lahiri), the feeling of longing
for your roots and the recurring desire of return and finally the emphatic victory of mind over heart. Since I am from the city, I am at a certain vantage point in a way that I can visualise the images that the author conjures up of streets of North Kolkata through my own experience and mind's eye. The streets of Manicktala, Bowbazar, College Street, Shyambazar are the ones I have traveled on foot umpteen times with my college friends and hostel room mates. There is hardly much to see to relish on those narrow bylanes, it was just walking through history, through a concoction different flavors and ages of humanity, an experience that is hard to explain.
And that is what kind of sums up Kolkata, a humongous conundrum, a city which you can either love or hate. Talk about one man's food is another man's poison. Honesty in the book is related to the fact that the areas where the city falls flat, falls short, falls apart are brought out in excruciating details with amazing ruthlessness of the practical eye. And of course idiosyncrasies specific to the city, the adda over endless cups of tea, the obsession over College street, the seeming apathy towards the polished and marketed 'good life', the teeming population, humidity, dilapidation of the strained infrastructure, the mini bus, the passionate arguments over history and films, the time warp. Intermittent dollops of humor does not hurt either. Overall, good weekend read especially to rejig your nostalgia in case you are harboring both fond and not so fond memories of the city.
September 13, 2017
I picked up Kushanava Choudhury's debut attempt at the airport last week, attracted by the cover art and promise of tales from my home town. What followed was a trip down memory lane accompanied by muffled guffaws which my co-passengers on the flight kindly ignored. Mr. Choudhury brought alive some of the quirks which denizens of Calcutta (including yours truly) are well-known for, and yes he does go beyond the done-to-death monkey cap references. My childhood was spent in the newer South Kolkata, so the stories from the lanes of College Street and Phoolbagan in the older north helped create a perspective of the paras I have only passed through, rather than roamed and breathed in. My favourite chapter? The one where he takes us to the shut-down factories which have been replaced by the swanky malls. Having grown up next to the Usha Factory on Prince Anwar Shah Road, I know exactly how it feels when the familiar bus stop rechristens itself as South City.
Onto the brickbats then. Too often the turn of words is repetitive. I counted at least 3 instances where the author has used the exact same phrase to describe the exact same situation. And in spite of his best efforts, this part-memoir, part-social history remains at best an outsider's view. This appeals definitely to the probashi Bengali in me, but might fail to charm a resident Calcuttan. The three stars are for a reasonable attempt at capturing all that Calcutta stands for, mainly on account of the nostalgic joy-ride.
Onto the brickbats then. Too often the turn of words is repetitive. I counted at least 3 instances where the author has used the exact same phrase to describe the exact same situation. And in spite of his best efforts, this part-memoir, part-social history remains at best an outsider's view. This appeals definitely to the probashi Bengali in me, but might fail to charm a resident Calcuttan. The three stars are for a reasonable attempt at capturing all that Calcutta stands for, mainly on account of the nostalgic joy-ride.
July 23, 2018
There were some great moments in this book, but for the most part, I was, honestly, bored. Which, how you make India boring, I don't exactly know. Too poetic and not enough stories for my taste. Not to mention all the typos and repeated sentences...
August 18, 2017
The City of Joy, the city of dreamers and poets, the city that is known for its sweet delicacies and intellectual debates, the city that is now almost dead. All that is left of Calcutta or Kolkata is a ghost of a city that refuses to die despite regular murderous attempts by innumerable assassins.
Kolkata, then, was one of the richest and prosperous cities in India, with its monumental buildings, wide docks and ports for export and import of high-quality goods, artisans and craftsmen, the abundance of water and renowned educational institutions. No wonder, Bengal produced eminent personalities such as Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. Kolkata, now, has become a hell hole where talent is sucked out of deserving individuals, and the politics isn't limited to politicians, where the youngsters would give an arm and a leg to escape the disastrous city in search of better education and job opportunities. How did the capital of the imperial British Raj come down to its knees? What made this gloriously epic city come to a standstill? What is it about Calcutta that still makes the Bangali's heart swoon in pleasure? Why, despite leaving the city for well and good, do Calcuttans yearn to see its beauty every autumn? The Epic City answers all these questions by taking you into a tram ride through a beautiful yet sad city.
Read the entire review at http://theliquidsunset.com/2017/08/18...
Kolkata, then, was one of the richest and prosperous cities in India, with its monumental buildings, wide docks and ports for export and import of high-quality goods, artisans and craftsmen, the abundance of water and renowned educational institutions. No wonder, Bengal produced eminent personalities such as Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. Kolkata, now, has become a hell hole where talent is sucked out of deserving individuals, and the politics isn't limited to politicians, where the youngsters would give an arm and a leg to escape the disastrous city in search of better education and job opportunities. How did the capital of the imperial British Raj come down to its knees? What made this gloriously epic city come to a standstill? What is it about Calcutta that still makes the Bangali's heart swoon in pleasure? Why, despite leaving the city for well and good, do Calcuttans yearn to see its beauty every autumn? The Epic City answers all these questions by taking you into a tram ride through a beautiful yet sad city.
Read the entire review at http://theliquidsunset.com/2017/08/18...
November 1, 2018
Kolkata is the people's city and in such a city, the lives in the streets and the culture of its different paras or localities best describe the city.
Child of a father migrated as a refugee from East Bengal and of a mother from old North Kolkata family, Kushanava Choudhury is born in the USA and brought up partly in the USA and partly in Kolkata. After failing to get over the charm of the city, as Choudhury relocates to Kolkata, his family and personal background put him in a unique position to observe and describe the city. In search of his childhood city as Choudhury roams the streets and paras of mainly North Kolkata-the older Kolkata, he goes on describing its food, culture, politics and realises, nothing much has changed. The effect of his upbringing in his mother's aristocratic North Kolkata household is evident from his anti-communist orientation which could be different if he was brought up in his father's refugee family.
In masterful prose that read almost like a novel, Choudhury mixes his observation, nostalgia and the colonial and post-colonial history of the city to give a narration on how is Kolkata and why it is like that.
Child of a father migrated as a refugee from East Bengal and of a mother from old North Kolkata family, Kushanava Choudhury is born in the USA and brought up partly in the USA and partly in Kolkata. After failing to get over the charm of the city, as Choudhury relocates to Kolkata, his family and personal background put him in a unique position to observe and describe the city. In search of his childhood city as Choudhury roams the streets and paras of mainly North Kolkata-the older Kolkata, he goes on describing its food, culture, politics and realises, nothing much has changed. The effect of his upbringing in his mother's aristocratic North Kolkata household is evident from his anti-communist orientation which could be different if he was brought up in his father's refugee family.
In masterful prose that read almost like a novel, Choudhury mixes his observation, nostalgia and the colonial and post-colonial history of the city to give a narration on how is Kolkata and why it is like that.
September 14, 2025
Kushanava Choudhury did the unthinkable when he "remigrated" from jersey to calcutta to pursue a career in the statesman newspaper. Choudhury showed us a city with precise descriptions of paras and bazaars. Choudhury's description seemed like he was clinching onto something or someplace which existed in the past; a calcutta of his ancestors of his aunty and uncle. He described calcutta with much awe while simultaneously getting frustrated by the decline of this once great city. Through Choudhury you get to Herr about the famous addas of calcutta with there supremely intellectual discussion. You visit park street or college street now and then eating at eau chow or Arslan biryani. I visited a city that lives in nostalgia about it's great past.
February 7, 2018
This book was won in a Goodreads giveaway - thank you to the author and publisher!
The book was very well written and kept my interest. I learned some things I would never have known about Calcutta, the people, and their traditions.
Kushanava Choudhury writes about his time, both as a youngster and as an adult, living between two very distinct and different worlds: India and the United States. His parents were world travelers, and by the age of 12, he had traveled much more than most of us would ever dream of doing in 10 lifetimes.
After graduating from Princeton, his heart took him back to his beloved India. Despite the horrible weather conditions (everything from heat so terrific a person could hardly breathe, to the rainy seasons where you were damp all the time), he loved his homeland. He talks of mosquitoes so dense it was hard to walk through them, and many carried malaria. He still loved India, especially Calcutta. His relatives who lived there had a hard time understanding why he chose Calcutta, when conditions were so much better in New Delhi, Bangladore, and Bombay.
Kushanava accepted a position with the local English-speaking newspaper, The Statesman. He perused the streets, talk to the vendors hawking goods on the streets, and was wary of the Communist ministers that traveled in opulent motorcades.
He is determined to improve life in Calcutta on the whole.
In one very touching scene, his beloved grandmother dies and they must transport her to the crematorium, one of the many traditions that is followed. The narrative was touching and heartfelt. I was astonished to learn that when they waited for her ashes, which are to be placed in the sacred waters, the navel does not burn. This area of body, where life first affirms itself as the new life attaches to its mother, is thought to be of signifant spiritual importance. That touched my heart.
I highly recommend this book - travel to Calcutta, both the good and the bad, and see it through the eyes of a man whose heart remains with his birth home.
The book was very well written and kept my interest. I learned some things I would never have known about Calcutta, the people, and their traditions.
Kushanava Choudhury writes about his time, both as a youngster and as an adult, living between two very distinct and different worlds: India and the United States. His parents were world travelers, and by the age of 12, he had traveled much more than most of us would ever dream of doing in 10 lifetimes.
After graduating from Princeton, his heart took him back to his beloved India. Despite the horrible weather conditions (everything from heat so terrific a person could hardly breathe, to the rainy seasons where you were damp all the time), he loved his homeland. He talks of mosquitoes so dense it was hard to walk through them, and many carried malaria. He still loved India, especially Calcutta. His relatives who lived there had a hard time understanding why he chose Calcutta, when conditions were so much better in New Delhi, Bangladore, and Bombay.
Kushanava accepted a position with the local English-speaking newspaper, The Statesman. He perused the streets, talk to the vendors hawking goods on the streets, and was wary of the Communist ministers that traveled in opulent motorcades.
He is determined to improve life in Calcutta on the whole.
In one very touching scene, his beloved grandmother dies and they must transport her to the crematorium, one of the many traditions that is followed. The narrative was touching and heartfelt. I was astonished to learn that when they waited for her ashes, which are to be placed in the sacred waters, the navel does not burn. This area of body, where life first affirms itself as the new life attaches to its mother, is thought to be of signifant spiritual importance. That touched my heart.
I highly recommend this book - travel to Calcutta, both the good and the bad, and see it through the eyes of a man whose heart remains with his birth home.
January 28, 2018
As by heart KOLKATAN, I was in search of a book where I will find my city with its own beauty. Kushanava has fulfilled my dream in “THE EPIC CITY”; the writer neither has glorified Kolkata nor has diminished its uniqueness. This book is not about any fact or info about the city; but the author’s own experience of growing up and living in this metropolitan. The author has described the city when it was still Calcutta; he has skilfully touched all the major aspects. He has taken us to the college street boi para, to the north Kolkata gollies, to kumortuli , to the unknown food joints of park street, to the lovers nest near Ganga and last but not the least- to the Durga puja pandals.
Besides all the places, the main jewel of Kolkata is its people. Kushanava not only describes the life of Calcuttans but their thought process, their struggle, their love for the city which make this book most enjoyable. As he says you may not find many tourist places in Kolkata; to know this city you need to stay here, to spend time with this city; then only Kolkata will show its beauty to you. Then only you will find that – “The city was in its own time zone”.
Besides all the places, the main jewel of Kolkata is its people. Kushanava not only describes the life of Calcuttans but their thought process, their struggle, their love for the city which make this book most enjoyable. As he says you may not find many tourist places in Kolkata; to know this city you need to stay here, to spend time with this city; then only Kolkata will show its beauty to you. Then only you will find that – “The city was in its own time zone”.
February 11, 2019
A little too “inside baseball” (or, I suppose, “inside cricket”?) for those who don’t know Kolkata or Bengali, and mostly too shallow for those who do, it puzzles me whom this book was written for. Ostensibly, it was written for me, a lover of Kolkata who can never get enough of the city. How disappointing, then, to be so often bored and underwhelmed by the too short, disconnected vignettes and slapdash histories here. If epicness is on display, one would have expected a bit... more.
Maybe it’s an issue of “dancing about architecture,” where it’s simply impossible to adequately reflect the essence of a city on the page? If so, I wish the author had learned this lesson soon enough to go much deeper into his family history (a book length version of the chapter “Russian Dolls” would have been excellent) or the lives of just a few characters who might have provided an adequate partial reflection of the city’s soul. As it is, the epicness of Kolkata simply doesn’t make it to these pages. Perhaps the publisher, author, and I should have known that this was impossible from the outset.
Maybe it’s an issue of “dancing about architecture,” where it’s simply impossible to adequately reflect the essence of a city on the page? If so, I wish the author had learned this lesson soon enough to go much deeper into his family history (a book length version of the chapter “Russian Dolls” would have been excellent) or the lives of just a few characters who might have provided an adequate partial reflection of the city’s soul. As it is, the epicness of Kolkata simply doesn’t make it to these pages. Perhaps the publisher, author, and I should have known that this was impossible from the outset.
October 8, 2017
This book is about migration and longing to return and romanticising the city you are from, and specifically about Calcutta, and the rise and fall of the city. It’s a wonderful read from the author’s point of view, which richly describes the city over the years - how it was shaped by the British Empire, their withdrawal, the Partition, the Communists and finally globalisation in relation to his family’s experience.
The author is educated in the US, graduates from an Ivy League school and decides to go against the grain - becoming a management consultant or investment banker - to return to Calcutta to write for the Statesman.
I don’t know if I will ever make it to Calcutta, but felt I got to live a bit of it through the tight lanes around College Street and dodging the street vendors.
The author is educated in the US, graduates from an Ivy League school and decides to go against the grain - becoming a management consultant or investment banker - to return to Calcutta to write for the Statesman.
I don’t know if I will ever make it to Calcutta, but felt I got to live a bit of it through the tight lanes around College Street and dodging the street vendors.
March 26, 2018
3.5 stars. Certain parts of this book truly spoke to me. It took me back to the days when I traversed the city, either with friends, or alone, for work. The experience of riding a tightly packed public bus, roaming the streets and getting lost in tiny gulleys, observing life that goes on in the remotest corners of this busy metropolis. Kolkata is not an easy city to love. I can not truly direct a tourist to this city, and the author successfully captures that exact feeling. The pull of Kolkata, for us, Kolkatans, is inexplicable and perhaps difficult for others to understand. There is a spontaneous beat within the city which one can only feel if one is attuned to it. The city is easy to hate and difficult to love. The author nails this dichotomy as he presents Kolkata in his book with warts and all.
September 16, 2017
A memoir as well as a book on a city, Choudhary captures the dreariness, squalor and decay of Kolkata in the 90's and 00's perfectly, with detours going back a few decades to the time of WW2 and Independence, recounting the horrors of Hindu-Muslim riots, the great Bengal famine and Partition, and the impact of these events on evolution of the city. In the midst of all this gloom, there are splendid uplifting moments such as when he meets groups of unknown poets, and publishers of 'little' magazines, who exemplify the Bengali love for the arts.
April 7, 2020
I do love reading about India, but this book wasn't particularly well structured and it was often repetitive. There is material of interest here, but it's harder than it should be to find it.
June 23, 2018
Having left Calcutta soon after my cocooned school days, I have often found a strange yearning for the city of my birth and childhood. Consequently, I latch on any link (tenuous or otherwise) to this time-warped city which so many of us love to hate but can’t do without.
Hence, when I heard of this book which took one through the by-lanes of Calcutta’s history, geography and it’s politics, I couldn’t miss the chance for a trip down memory lane. As they say, you can take a Calcuttan out of Calcutta but you can’t take Calcutta out of a Calcuttan.
It’s the same yearning that brings back the author, Kush, to Calcutta first as a reporter at The Statesman and then as a young married Bengali with an American-Delhi-Bengali wife in tow (An unmarried Bengali couple would have outraged the bhadralok society beyond explanation).
And then begins a journey which takes one back and forth across 300 years of history trying to provide an explanation about why the city is as it is. Dying but never dead. Full of contradictions. A city just unable to reconcile between its glorious past and its sub-ordinary present, its false idealistic pride and its struggling sense of self-worth.
The author takes us through the paras of North and Central Calcutta and triggers tremendous nostalgia walking through the boi-bajaar (book market) of College Street, the commotion of Sealdah, the artistry of Kumhartoli, and
Kush reminds us that the wounds of partition not only dented the Punjabi psyche but forever altered the relationships between the Bengali Hindu and Muslims such that even in the height of communism, the two communities could never truly come together.
But truly, the blame for the city’s decay lies in a misguided, militant movement which laid waste to swathes of factory land across the manufacturing hubs of the city. A movement which made the city a four-letter word for all industries and industrialists and in the process gifted its emerging generation nothing but a sense of hopelessness. An aimless wandering which led the best and the brightest to greener pastures outside and left the city the poorer for it.
Kush brilliantly leverages his own personal struggles at work and married life as well as his family history in Calcutta to break the monotony of the city and enhance the appeal of the narrative.
A good read for all Calcuttans and Calcutta enthusiasts.
PS: Be prepared for some winding walks across the history and geography of the old city which may not appeal to the Alipur / Ballygunge types.
Hence, when I heard of this book which took one through the by-lanes of Calcutta’s history, geography and it’s politics, I couldn’t miss the chance for a trip down memory lane. As they say, you can take a Calcuttan out of Calcutta but you can’t take Calcutta out of a Calcuttan.
It’s the same yearning that brings back the author, Kush, to Calcutta first as a reporter at The Statesman and then as a young married Bengali with an American-Delhi-Bengali wife in tow (An unmarried Bengali couple would have outraged the bhadralok society beyond explanation).
And then begins a journey which takes one back and forth across 300 years of history trying to provide an explanation about why the city is as it is. Dying but never dead. Full of contradictions. A city just unable to reconcile between its glorious past and its sub-ordinary present, its false idealistic pride and its struggling sense of self-worth.
The author takes us through the paras of North and Central Calcutta and triggers tremendous nostalgia walking through the boi-bajaar (book market) of College Street, the commotion of Sealdah, the artistry of Kumhartoli, and
Kush reminds us that the wounds of partition not only dented the Punjabi psyche but forever altered the relationships between the Bengali Hindu and Muslims such that even in the height of communism, the two communities could never truly come together.
But truly, the blame for the city’s decay lies in a misguided, militant movement which laid waste to swathes of factory land across the manufacturing hubs of the city. A movement which made the city a four-letter word for all industries and industrialists and in the process gifted its emerging generation nothing but a sense of hopelessness. An aimless wandering which led the best and the brightest to greener pastures outside and left the city the poorer for it.
Kush brilliantly leverages his own personal struggles at work and married life as well as his family history in Calcutta to break the monotony of the city and enhance the appeal of the narrative.
A good read for all Calcuttans and Calcutta enthusiasts.
PS: Be prepared for some winding walks across the history and geography of the old city which may not appeal to the Alipur / Ballygunge types.
April 19, 2018
Calcutta is one of three places I have had a lifelong wish to visit - not as a tourist, because that wouldn't do justice to a city of so many unique flavours, but as a local where I can truly soak it in. Maybe that is why I haven't been able to make that trip yet - touristy or otherwise - for fear that unless it is done right, the experience might be ruined forever.
When I sat down to read The Epic City, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Calcutta I have longed to see. What I didn't expect was for it to be so real.
This travel memoir brings the glorious world amidst the streets of Calcutta to life. Strolling through the para (neighbourhood), discovering the narrow alleys and tiny nooks, tasting the many smells of the city - it feels as if you are right in the middle of it all.
Reading this book has only made my desire to visit the city stronger. And until I can do that, I will continue to skip through the pages for a quick stop.
Side note: I believe I love the cover of this book as much as I enjoyed the book itself. A totally Instagram worthy book cover!
When I sat down to read The Epic City, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Calcutta I have longed to see. What I didn't expect was for it to be so real.
This travel memoir brings the glorious world amidst the streets of Calcutta to life. Strolling through the para (neighbourhood), discovering the narrow alleys and tiny nooks, tasting the many smells of the city - it feels as if you are right in the middle of it all.
Reading this book has only made my desire to visit the city stronger. And until I can do that, I will continue to skip through the pages for a quick stop.
Side note: I believe I love the cover of this book as much as I enjoyed the book itself. A totally Instagram worthy book cover!
April 4, 2023
A largely enjoyable read on Calcutta, with a wealth of eccentric anecdotes and introspective takeaways. It may be a little dense for anyone not familiar with the city, but an excellent companion if you intend to visit.
However, the book is not without flaws. The closing quarter reads like a manic-depressive ramble. Repetitions creep up across chapters, pointing to poor editing. The author also keeps on talking about how he gave up an Ivy League education and risked his marital happiness to remain in Calcutta, but never really attempts to analyse his compulsions beyond general and vague platitudes about ‘belonging’. And, speaking as a non-Bengali with Calcutta roots, I find it a little offensive that an entire book on the city makes practically no effort to talk about it’s many long-standing but non-Bengali migrant communities.
However, the book is not without flaws. The closing quarter reads like a manic-depressive ramble. Repetitions creep up across chapters, pointing to poor editing. The author also keeps on talking about how he gave up an Ivy League education and risked his marital happiness to remain in Calcutta, but never really attempts to analyse his compulsions beyond general and vague platitudes about ‘belonging’. And, speaking as a non-Bengali with Calcutta roots, I find it a little offensive that an entire book on the city makes practically no effort to talk about it’s many long-standing but non-Bengali migrant communities.
November 9, 2019
I visited Calcutta last week and started this book while I was there. The author is a young Indian who spent his childhood in Calcutta and the US, was educated at Princeton and then moved back to Calcutta to work as a reporter. He interweaves his personal memories, his life as a young married man, and his family history with the history of the city. Great writing and vivid observations. I learned a lot and got a kick out of reading about places and things I had just seen myself. I definitely would read another book by this author- he’s quite talented.
February 5, 2021
If you have lived in Calcutta, this book is a delightful immersion in nostalgia. Recommended if you have been to the city. If not, at times some experiences may elude you but an engaging read nevertheless.
September 6, 2018
A very NRIsh style of recounting stories of a place the author tries to relate to. Or does he? Positives include a great writing style, but surely that is to be expected by someone who spent most of his formative years in NJ, US. For the content, well, just as an NRI would react to situations beyond him.
May 27, 2019
As the name has suggested , the book gives us some inside views of Calcutta . The people of Calcutta , the street foods, the culture ,everything has been written with full heart,nostalgia and empathy . The book is full with minute details about this city and the people . A reader can easily get a vision full experiences through this amazing writing of this author . The writing of this author is very lucid, which is I really admired . This book has showcased how this city is different from other cities of India.And let's talk about the cover. The cover has showcased the street of the city with the Heritage Yellow Taxi . I think the cover is perfect for this book .
September 26, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads # of Calcutta
There is a bizarre, almost tidal rhythm in how Calcutta reveals itself to readers through its chroniclers. On the one hand, P. Thankappan Nair writes like an archivist, patient and unhurried, combing through ledgers, rare maps, court records, shipping lists, and old European diaries to reconstruct a city in embryo, long before it had a name that rang across empires. His *Calcutta in the 17th Century* feels like watching the Hooghly river at dawn: the slow mist lifting, details emerging from obscurity — settlements of fishermen and salt traders, Portuguese and Armenian merchants setting up tentative warehouses, English factors bargaining for land with local zamindars.
Nair’s approach is an act of excavation; his sentences often feel like they are carrying mud and pottery shards from a dig. In contrast, Kushanava Choudhury’s *The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta* is not an excavation but a return, a homecoming. It is written from the vantage of a modern journalist who left the city for the United States and then came back to live and work in its chaotic present. Choudhury’s prose thrums with immediacy, with the smells of frying telebhaja at a street corner, the rattle of buses that look older than the passengers they carry, the swarming lanes of College Street and the bittersweet nostalgia of a city that refuses to die but also resists being reborn.
Reading Nair and Choudhury side by side is like reading two different languages of time. Nair gives you the city as a project of European and Indian entanglement, before there were pavements or tramlines, when the English East India Company was still improvising and dependent on Mughal whims. His book is filled with the micro-histories of obscure men whose decisions shaped the geography we take for granted: who bought which strip of marshland, who built the first wharf, how villages like Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata slowly fused into a single urban entity. Choudhury, by contrast, gives you the city after three centuries of being lived in, after empire has come and gone, after capital and capitalists have migrated to Delhi, Mumbai, Dubai, New Jersey. His narrative pulses with the disillusionment of educated youth, the grey zones of crumbling institutions, the humour and stubbornness of ordinary Calcuttans who survive amidst dysfunction. Where Nair’s pages smell of archives and brittle paper, Choudhury’s smell of rain on tram tracks and the tang of politics in roadside addas.
The two books are also in conversation about memory. Nair’s memory is institutional — he is not from Calcutta originally, and perhaps that distance gives him a kind of monkish objectivity. He catalogues the city’s past the way a botanist might catalogue flora. The effect is sometimes dry but always reliable; one emerges from his book with a clear mental map of 17th-century Calcutta and its cosmopolitan cast. Choudhury’s memory is embodied. He left Calcutta as a child, grew up in New Jersey, returned as an adult reporter for The Statesman. His Calcutta is not an object of study but a subject of longing and irritation, a city that both nurtured and betrayed him. When he walks its streets, he hears ghosts, not of Job Charnock or Nabakrishna Deb but of his own family, of college friends, of newspaper colleagues who still fight daily battles against poverty, bureaucracy and inertia. In Choudhury’s hands, the city is alive and argumentative, capable of breaking your heart precisely because it was once home.
Another striking difference lies in narrative tempo. *Calcutta in the 17th Century* is a slow-burn; one cannot read it like a thriller. It demands you pause over footnotes, check maps, imagine topographies now lost under flyovers. It is a work of reconstruction, not sensation. Nair writes to record, not to entertain. In contrast, *The Epic City* is structured like a sequence of essays or vignettes. Choudhury moves fluidly from street to street, mood to mood, past to present. One chapter might describe the daily grind of a Statesman newsroom, the next the ghost of colonial grandeur in North Calcutta mansions, the next a meditation on political rallies that clog Esplanade. The prose has a journalist’s crispness but also a memoirist’s vulnerability. It is possible to read the book in a single sitting because its texture is conversational rather than academic. Yet the two books complement each other; Nair provides the skeleton, Choudhury the flesh and heartbeat.
Both writers also share a subtle sense of irony about the city’s destiny. Nair’s narrative implicitly undercuts the myth that Calcutta was “founded” by Job Charnock in 1690, showing instead a gradual, negotiated emergence, shaped by Indian agency as much as European initiative. His footnotes reveal layers of myth-making and legal wrangling, a reminder that even the city’s birth certificate is contested. Choudhury, writing in the 21st century, undercuts a different myth — that Calcutta is a “dying city.” He shows instead a city that has endured economic decline but refuses erasure, where art, theatre, and everyday resilience continue. Both books are acts of demystification, though at opposite ends of the timeline.
What makes the comparison richer is how each author handles the question of belonging. Nair is a meticulous outsider, a Malayali who made Calcutta his home but approached it as a subject for life-long research rather than confession. He writes the city into historical consciousness. Choudhury is a prodigal son, a Bengali who left and came back to test whether the city of his childhood could still be his future. He writes the city into emotional consciousness. Between them, we get a stereoscopic view: one eye on the slow forces of geography, trade and empire; the other on the quick pulses of nostalgia, frustration and affection. Reading both back-to-back is like walking down Chitpur Road and then suddenly seeing a 17th-century map of the same path — the bends and crossings, the names and houses, the ghosts of what came before.
Stylistically, the two books are studies in contrast. Nair’s prose is functional, careful, almost Victorian in its reserve. It is the prose of someone who believes the facts should speak louder than the narrator should. Choudhury’s prose is alive with metaphor, anecdote, and sensory detail. He quotes taxi drivers and poets with equal ease. His voice is recognisably that of a generation who came of age between continents, toggling between nostalgia and cosmopolitanism. Yet both achieve a kind of intimacy: Nair through his persistence, Choudhury through his presence. You can trust Nair’s dates and footnotes; you can trust Choudhury’s smells and silences.
There’s also a generational dimension. *Calcutta in the 17th Century* came out at a time when academic urban history of Indian cities was still taking shape; Nair virtually invented a subfield, producing dozens of books on the city’s street names, communities, and institutions. His work forms a backbone for anyone trying to understand how Calcutta’s colonial infrastructure was layered onto an existing social landscape. *The Epic City*, published in 2017, belongs to a different publishing ecology — one of global memoirs and narrative nonfiction where the personal and the political blur. It speaks to readers who may never have been to Calcutta but who are curious about how cities shape identity. It is as much about the author’s own coming-of-age as about the city’s. Together, they reveal how Calcutta itself has shifted from being a node of empire to being a symbol of memory.
Ultimately, what binds these two works is an ethic of attention. Nair pays attention to documents no one else bothered to index. Choudhury pays attention to street corners no one else bothers to describe with such tenderness. Both refuse the easy cliché — whether of “Job Charnock the founder” or “Calcutta the dying city.” Instead they offer a more complex, layered truth: that cities are processes, not monuments; that their past and present coexist like the old tramlines embedded in new asphalt. After finishing both books, one carries away a double vision: the marshy villages slowly becoming an imperial hub, and the imperial hub slowly becoming a city of resistance, humour, and survival.
If one were to imagine these books as two halves of a single narrative, Nair gives you the prologue — the city’s improbable birth amid trade, diplomacy and empire. Choudhury gives you an interlude — the city’s restless middle age, after greatness but before whatever comes next. Neither pretends to offer closure. Nair stops at the threshold of the 18th century; Choudhury ends without a neat moral, leaving us with an image of a city still breathing, still arguing with itself. Together they teach the reader not just about Calcutta but about how to read cities: with patience for archives and love for streets, with respect for both maps and memories.
This is why a comparative reading of *Calcutta in the 17th Century* and *The Epic City* feels more than academic. It feels necessary. One book equips you with the scaffolding of history, the other with the pulse of lived experience. One book shows you where the streets came from, the other shows you how they are walked today.
Between them, they map not only a city but an idea: that Calcutta, in all its contradictions, cannot be contained by a single narrative voice. It demands both the chronicler and the wanderer, the historian and the homecomer. And by reading both, we become, however briefly, both.
Give it a go, by all means.
There is a bizarre, almost tidal rhythm in how Calcutta reveals itself to readers through its chroniclers. On the one hand, P. Thankappan Nair writes like an archivist, patient and unhurried, combing through ledgers, rare maps, court records, shipping lists, and old European diaries to reconstruct a city in embryo, long before it had a name that rang across empires. His *Calcutta in the 17th Century* feels like watching the Hooghly river at dawn: the slow mist lifting, details emerging from obscurity — settlements of fishermen and salt traders, Portuguese and Armenian merchants setting up tentative warehouses, English factors bargaining for land with local zamindars.
Nair’s approach is an act of excavation; his sentences often feel like they are carrying mud and pottery shards from a dig. In contrast, Kushanava Choudhury’s *The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta* is not an excavation but a return, a homecoming. It is written from the vantage of a modern journalist who left the city for the United States and then came back to live and work in its chaotic present. Choudhury’s prose thrums with immediacy, with the smells of frying telebhaja at a street corner, the rattle of buses that look older than the passengers they carry, the swarming lanes of College Street and the bittersweet nostalgia of a city that refuses to die but also resists being reborn.
Reading Nair and Choudhury side by side is like reading two different languages of time. Nair gives you the city as a project of European and Indian entanglement, before there were pavements or tramlines, when the English East India Company was still improvising and dependent on Mughal whims. His book is filled with the micro-histories of obscure men whose decisions shaped the geography we take for granted: who bought which strip of marshland, who built the first wharf, how villages like Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata slowly fused into a single urban entity. Choudhury, by contrast, gives you the city after three centuries of being lived in, after empire has come and gone, after capital and capitalists have migrated to Delhi, Mumbai, Dubai, New Jersey. His narrative pulses with the disillusionment of educated youth, the grey zones of crumbling institutions, the humour and stubbornness of ordinary Calcuttans who survive amidst dysfunction. Where Nair’s pages smell of archives and brittle paper, Choudhury’s smell of rain on tram tracks and the tang of politics in roadside addas.
The two books are also in conversation about memory. Nair’s memory is institutional — he is not from Calcutta originally, and perhaps that distance gives him a kind of monkish objectivity. He catalogues the city’s past the way a botanist might catalogue flora. The effect is sometimes dry but always reliable; one emerges from his book with a clear mental map of 17th-century Calcutta and its cosmopolitan cast. Choudhury’s memory is embodied. He left Calcutta as a child, grew up in New Jersey, returned as an adult reporter for The Statesman. His Calcutta is not an object of study but a subject of longing and irritation, a city that both nurtured and betrayed him. When he walks its streets, he hears ghosts, not of Job Charnock or Nabakrishna Deb but of his own family, of college friends, of newspaper colleagues who still fight daily battles against poverty, bureaucracy and inertia. In Choudhury’s hands, the city is alive and argumentative, capable of breaking your heart precisely because it was once home.
Another striking difference lies in narrative tempo. *Calcutta in the 17th Century* is a slow-burn; one cannot read it like a thriller. It demands you pause over footnotes, check maps, imagine topographies now lost under flyovers. It is a work of reconstruction, not sensation. Nair writes to record, not to entertain. In contrast, *The Epic City* is structured like a sequence of essays or vignettes. Choudhury moves fluidly from street to street, mood to mood, past to present. One chapter might describe the daily grind of a Statesman newsroom, the next the ghost of colonial grandeur in North Calcutta mansions, the next a meditation on political rallies that clog Esplanade. The prose has a journalist’s crispness but also a memoirist’s vulnerability. It is possible to read the book in a single sitting because its texture is conversational rather than academic. Yet the two books complement each other; Nair provides the skeleton, Choudhury the flesh and heartbeat.
Both writers also share a subtle sense of irony about the city’s destiny. Nair’s narrative implicitly undercuts the myth that Calcutta was “founded” by Job Charnock in 1690, showing instead a gradual, negotiated emergence, shaped by Indian agency as much as European initiative. His footnotes reveal layers of myth-making and legal wrangling, a reminder that even the city’s birth certificate is contested. Choudhury, writing in the 21st century, undercuts a different myth — that Calcutta is a “dying city.” He shows instead a city that has endured economic decline but refuses erasure, where art, theatre, and everyday resilience continue. Both books are acts of demystification, though at opposite ends of the timeline.
What makes the comparison richer is how each author handles the question of belonging. Nair is a meticulous outsider, a Malayali who made Calcutta his home but approached it as a subject for life-long research rather than confession. He writes the city into historical consciousness. Choudhury is a prodigal son, a Bengali who left and came back to test whether the city of his childhood could still be his future. He writes the city into emotional consciousness. Between them, we get a stereoscopic view: one eye on the slow forces of geography, trade and empire; the other on the quick pulses of nostalgia, frustration and affection. Reading both back-to-back is like walking down Chitpur Road and then suddenly seeing a 17th-century map of the same path — the bends and crossings, the names and houses, the ghosts of what came before.
Stylistically, the two books are studies in contrast. Nair’s prose is functional, careful, almost Victorian in its reserve. It is the prose of someone who believes the facts should speak louder than the narrator should. Choudhury’s prose is alive with metaphor, anecdote, and sensory detail. He quotes taxi drivers and poets with equal ease. His voice is recognisably that of a generation who came of age between continents, toggling between nostalgia and cosmopolitanism. Yet both achieve a kind of intimacy: Nair through his persistence, Choudhury through his presence. You can trust Nair’s dates and footnotes; you can trust Choudhury’s smells and silences.
There’s also a generational dimension. *Calcutta in the 17th Century* came out at a time when academic urban history of Indian cities was still taking shape; Nair virtually invented a subfield, producing dozens of books on the city’s street names, communities, and institutions. His work forms a backbone for anyone trying to understand how Calcutta’s colonial infrastructure was layered onto an existing social landscape. *The Epic City*, published in 2017, belongs to a different publishing ecology — one of global memoirs and narrative nonfiction where the personal and the political blur. It speaks to readers who may never have been to Calcutta but who are curious about how cities shape identity. It is as much about the author’s own coming-of-age as about the city’s. Together, they reveal how Calcutta itself has shifted from being a node of empire to being a symbol of memory.
Ultimately, what binds these two works is an ethic of attention. Nair pays attention to documents no one else bothered to index. Choudhury pays attention to street corners no one else bothers to describe with such tenderness. Both refuse the easy cliché — whether of “Job Charnock the founder” or “Calcutta the dying city.” Instead they offer a more complex, layered truth: that cities are processes, not monuments; that their past and present coexist like the old tramlines embedded in new asphalt. After finishing both books, one carries away a double vision: the marshy villages slowly becoming an imperial hub, and the imperial hub slowly becoming a city of resistance, humour, and survival.
If one were to imagine these books as two halves of a single narrative, Nair gives you the prologue — the city’s improbable birth amid trade, diplomacy and empire. Choudhury gives you an interlude — the city’s restless middle age, after greatness but before whatever comes next. Neither pretends to offer closure. Nair stops at the threshold of the 18th century; Choudhury ends without a neat moral, leaving us with an image of a city still breathing, still arguing with itself. Together they teach the reader not just about Calcutta but about how to read cities: with patience for archives and love for streets, with respect for both maps and memories.
This is why a comparative reading of *Calcutta in the 17th Century* and *The Epic City* feels more than academic. It feels necessary. One book equips you with the scaffolding of history, the other with the pulse of lived experience. One book shows you where the streets came from, the other shows you how they are walked today.
Between them, they map not only a city but an idea: that Calcutta, in all its contradictions, cannot be contained by a single narrative voice. It demands both the chronicler and the wanderer, the historian and the homecomer. And by reading both, we become, however briefly, both.
Give it a go, by all means.
August 13, 2020
To describe the essence of a city and to put it to paper is a Herculean task in itself and when it comes to Calcutta , the difficulty is a notch higher. Debut writer Kushanava Choudhury does this brilliantly , leaving no stone unturned in capturing the myriad of colours that the mysterious , enigmatic and joyous city of Kolkata has to offer .
"The Epic City" is what the book is called and it is truly an apt title . Kolkata is surrounded with a rich cultural , socio - economical , political amd most importantly gastrological background. The book is insightful and nuanced . Choudhury is an astute observer . He picks up minute references of things that are so Bengali at heart that you will marvel at it's relatability ( if you are a Bangali or a Calcuttan at least !) For example , he refers to our grandparents carefully storing their health reports and doctor's prescriptions in crispless plastic packets as if they were some prized certificates. The book relates to a spiritual level if you happen to live in Kolkata through it's family memoir fashion . Being a Calcuttan myself , I absolutely loved how he describes the things that have never changed like the dark and dingy golis , the obsolete newspaper offices and the mysterious worship of Kali.
He takes every aspect of the city into account - from hot delectable Kochuris , to Durga Pujo , to ancient books huddled up in a run down shop across College Street and even the Naxalite Movement ! Besides this aspect , the intricacies of modern relationships are beautifully explored .
Pick this book up as soon as possible. It truly is a soulful ode to Calcutta ! .
Book - The Epic City
Author - Kushanava Choudhury
Publisher - Bloomsbury
Genre - Memoir , Travel literature , Autobiography
Price - ₹399 .
"The Epic City" is what the book is called and it is truly an apt title . Kolkata is surrounded with a rich cultural , socio - economical , political amd most importantly gastrological background. The book is insightful and nuanced . Choudhury is an astute observer . He picks up minute references of things that are so Bengali at heart that you will marvel at it's relatability ( if you are a Bangali or a Calcuttan at least !) For example , he refers to our grandparents carefully storing their health reports and doctor's prescriptions in crispless plastic packets as if they were some prized certificates. The book relates to a spiritual level if you happen to live in Kolkata through it's family memoir fashion . Being a Calcuttan myself , I absolutely loved how he describes the things that have never changed like the dark and dingy golis , the obsolete newspaper offices and the mysterious worship of Kali.
He takes every aspect of the city into account - from hot delectable Kochuris , to Durga Pujo , to ancient books huddled up in a run down shop across College Street and even the Naxalite Movement ! Besides this aspect , the intricacies of modern relationships are beautifully explored .
Pick this book up as soon as possible. It truly is a soulful ode to Calcutta ! .
Book - The Epic City
Author - Kushanava Choudhury
Publisher - Bloomsbury
Genre - Memoir , Travel literature , Autobiography
Price - ₹399 .
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