Status Updates From Calcutta: Two Years in the ...

Whoever devised the six Indian seasons took into account this nuance and play; they knew the year, like a day, is not only a progression, a movement from one phase to another, but a passage through echoes, reminiscences, and expectation, through intermediary periods that recall one another, as dusk and twilight do in the day's twelve hours.

"Indians don't like fresh olives," says chef Mukherjee, making it pretty clear he doesn't like them himself. "They're extremely salty." Briefly at a loss, he breaks into Bengali—"Ki rokom ekta kash achhe na?" ("Don't you think they have an acidic aftertaste?") It's an aside: as if we are sharing a little-conceded but incontrovertibly plain fact.

I'm liking the book, but in such a manner that I impulsively confirmed that the typeface that is treating my attention span so gently is Adobe Garamond. Wondering now how many books teetered on the wrong edge of my dislike due to not having the sense to go with that particular font.

Wounded but mildly relieved the kaajer lok cook comes back to work 10 days after husband dies from excruciating cancer having chewed gutka for decades.

Why we come “home”

Observe Norwich to anticipate the distant future of Calcutta

The freshness of globalisation drowned in kormaisation

Love to discover that in Bengal the “west brit” equivalent was known as an “IngaBanga”

Will we still be here after the revolution?

“A gentle slope descending into oblivion”; your father’s dementia or the Bengali Marxists?

Bliar’s Britain: Every town a Tesco and a Texaco

Happy New Year amader nagarik