Stories
Longer reads
Six essays on the things the city is currently losing, keeping, or arguing about.
- Total
- 89 minutes
durga puja/7 min
The last few hours before immersion
Dashami afternoon at Babughat, when a fortnight of work is queued up on lorries waiting to go into the river.
2 March 2026
books/6 min
The bookshop that survived three generations
A stall six feet wide on College Street, opened in 1948 by a man who arrived with nothing, and still trading.
20 February 2026
transport/8 min
The last tram to Tollygunge
Asia's oldest electric tram network ran for 150 years. In 2024 the state announced it would keep one route. This is what the other thirty-six carried.
11 February 2026
books/6 min
A city that reads at midnight
The Kolkata Book Fair is the largest non-trade book fair in the world by footfall. It is held on a field, and it is not really about books.
2 February 2026
trams/6 min
A tram driver's morning
Signing on at five, a compressor that takes four minutes to build pressure, and a route that no longer exists.
28 January 2026
river/9 min
What the Hooghly carries
The river made the city, has been trying to leave it for two hundred years, and is dredged daily to prevent it.
19 January 2026
food/6 min
The family behind an old sweet shop
Four generations, one counter, and eight weeks a year when the whole business changes.
12 January 2026
streets/7 min
Why this street is called what it is called
Bowbazar, Chorbagan, Hatibagan, Sonagachi. The city's street names are a record of trades, gardens, elephants and things nobody will explain.
19 December 2025
night/4 min
Sodium light
A short defence of the ugliest thing about the city at night, now being replaced.
8 December 2025
kumartuli/7 min
The artist who still makes Durga by hand
No moulds, no fibreglass, no shortcuts, and a workshop that turns down more commissions than it takes.
22 November 2025
adda/7 min
The table at the Coffee House that argued for fifty years
Adda is not conversation. It is a Bengali institution with rules, and College Street is where it was formalised.
4 November 2025
durga puja/10 min
Nine days in Kumartuli
Every autumn a few narrow lanes in north Kolkata build several thousand goddesses out of river mud and straw. Then they put them in the river.
28 September 2025