Calcutta—Kolkata— Once the second most powerful city after london in British India exists not merely as a city, but as a lingering fragrance, an old melody, a pulse that beats beneath layers of time. To write about this city is to walk through the shifting mist of memory and present, where tram bells echo like half-forgotten songs and the river Hooghly keeps watch over centuries of longing, rebellion, and quiet tenderness.
This book of poems is born from the simple truth that Calcutta does not just inspire; it inhabits. It slips into your breath on a winter morning, follows you through narrow lanes drenched in monsoon light, and whispers its own stories as you pause by the tea stalls at dusk. Every poet who has lived here—whether for a moment or a lifetime—has carried away something of its soul: the softened gold of evening over College Street, the fierce melancholy of Howrah Station, the old-world charm that survives in peeling blue shutters and fading colonial facades.