Calcutta has many buildings adorned with Indo-Islamic and Indo-Saracenic architectural motifs. Several well-maintained major buildings from the colonial period have been declared “heritage structures”; however, others are in various stages of decay. Established in 1814 as the nation’s oldest museum, the Indian Museum houses large collections that showcase Indian natural history and Indian art. Marble Palace is a classic example of a European mansion that was built in the city. The Victoria Memorial, a place of interest in Calcutta, has a museum documenting the city’s history. The National Library of India is the leading public library in the country.
Calcutta is administered by several government agencies. The Calcutta Municipal Corporation, or KMC, oversees and manages the civic infrastructure of the city’s 15 boroughs, which together encompass 141 wards. Each ward elects a councillor to the KMC. Each borough has a committee of councillors, each of whom is elected to represent a ward. By means of the borough committees, the corporation undertakes urban planning and maintains roads, government-aided schools, hospitals, and municipal markets. As Calcutta’s apex body, the corporation discharges its functions through the mayor-in-council, which comprises a mayor, a deputy mayor, and ten other elected members of the KMC. The functions of the KMC include water supply, drainage and sewerage, sanitation, solid waste management, street lighting, and building regulation. The Calcutta Port Trust, an agency of the central government, manages the city’s river port. As of 2012, the All India Trinamool Congress controls the KMC; the mayor is Sovan Chatterjee, while the deputy mayor is Farzana Alam. The city has an apolitical titular post, that of the Sheriff of Calcutta, which presides over various city-related functions and conferences.
Calcutta is home to many industrial units operated by large public- and private-sector corporations; major sectors include steel, heavy engineering, mining, minerals, cement, pharmaceuticals, food processing, agriculture, electronics, textiles, and jute. ITC Limited, Coal India Limited, and Britannia Industries rank among the companies headquartered in the city. Calcutta hosts the headquarters of three major public-sector banks: Allahabad Bank, UCO Bank, and the United Bank of India. Adoption of the “Look East” policy by the Indian government; opening of Sikkim’s Nathu La mountain pass, which is located on the border between India and China, to bi-directional international trade; and the interest shown by South-East Asian countries in expanding into Indian markets are factors that could benefit Calcutta.
Calcutta is known for its literary, artistic, and revolutionary heritage; as the former capital of India, it was the birthplace of modern Indian literary and artistic thought. Calcutta has been called the “City of Furious, Creative Energy” as well as the “cultural capital of India”. The presence of paras, which are neighbourhoods that possess a strong sense of community, is characteristic of Calcutta. Typically, each para has its own community club and, on occasion, a playing field. Residents engage in addas, or leisurely chats, that often take the form of freestyle intellectual conversation. The city has a tradition of political graffiti depicting everything from outrageous slander to witty banter and limericks, caricatures, and propaganda.
Calcutta is subject to a tropical wet-and-dry climate that is designated Aw under the Köppen climate classification. The annual mean temperature is 26.8 °C (80.2 °F); monthly mean temperatures are 19–30 °C (66–86 °F). Summers (March–June) are hot and humid, with temperatures in the low 30s Celsius; during dry spells, maximum temperatures often exceed 40 °C (104 °F) in May and June. Winter lasts for only about two-and-a-half months, with seasonal lows dipping to 9–11 °C (48–52 °F) in December and January. May is the hottest month, with daily temperatures ranging from 27–37 °C (81–99 °F); January, the coldest month, has temperatures varying from 12–23 °C (54–73 °F). The highest recorded temperature is 43.9 °C (111.0 °F), and the lowest is 5 °C (41 °F). Often, in April–June, the city is struck by heavy rains or dusty squalls followed by thunderstorms or hailstorms, bringing cooling relief from the prevailing humidity. These thunderstorms are convective in nature, and are known locally as kal baisakhi (?????????), or “Nor’westers” in English.
Calcutta is the main commercial and financial hub of East and North-East India and home to the Calcutta Stock Exchange. It is a major commercial and military port, and is the only city in eastern India to have an international airport. Once India’s leading city, Calcutta experienced a steady economic decline in the decades following India’s independence due to steep population increases and a rise in militant trade-unionism, which included frequent strikes that were backed by left-wing parties. From the 1960s to the late 1990s, several factories were closed and businesses relocated. The lack of capital and resources added to the depressed state of the city’s economy and gave rise to an unwelcome sobriquet: the “dying city”. The city’s fortunes improved after the Indian economy was liberalised in the 1990s and changes in economic policy were enacted by the West Bengal state government.
Calcutta’s administrative agencies have areas of jurisdiction that do not coincide. Listed in ascending order by area, they are: Calcutta district; the Calcutta Police area and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation area, or “Calcutta city”; and the Calcutta metropolitan area, which is the city’s urban agglomeration. The agency overseeing the latter, the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority, is responsible for the statutory planning and development of greater Calcutta.
Calcutta’s schools are run by the state government or private organisations, many of which are religious. Bengali and English are the primary languages of instruction; Urdu and Hindi are also used, particularly in central Calcutta. Schools in Calcutta follow the “10+2+3” plan. After completing their secondary education, students typically enroll in schools that have a higher secondary facility and are affiliated with the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, the ICSE, or the CBSE. They usually choose a focus on liberal arts, business, or science. Vocational programs are also available.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, located in Dum Dum some 16 km (9.9 mi) north-east of the city centre, operates domestic and international flights. In 2013, the airport was upgraded to handle increased air traffic.
North Calcutta is the oldest part of the city. Characterised by 19th-century architecture and narrow alleyways, it includes areas such as Shyambazar, Shobhabazar, Chitpur, Cossipore, Baranagar, Sinthee, and Dum Dum.:65–66 Central Calcutta hosts the central business district. It contains B. B. D. Bagh, formerly known as Dalhousie Square, and the Esplanade on its east; Strand Road is on its west. The West Bengal Secretariat, General Post Office, Reserve Bank of India, High Court, Lalbazar Police Headquarters, and several other government and private offices are located there. Another business hub is the area south of Park Street, which comprises thoroughfares such as Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Camac Street, Wood Street, Loudon Street, Shakespeare Sarani, and A. J. C. Bose Road. The Maidan is a large open field in the heart of the city that has been called the “lungs of Calcutta” and accommodates sporting events and public meetings. The Victoria Memorial and Calcutta Race Course are located at the southern end of the Maidan. Among the other parks are Central Park in Bidhannagar and Millennium Park on Strand Road, along the Hooghly River.
Notable scholars who were born, worked or studied in Calcutta include physicists Satyendra Nath Bose, Meghnad Saha, and Jagadish Chandra Bose; chemist Prafulla Chandra Roy; statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis; physician Upendranath Brahmachari; educator Ashutosh Mukherjee; and Nobel laureates Rabindranath Tagore, C. V. Raman, and Amartya Sen.
Pollution is a major concern in Calcutta. As of 2008, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide annual concentration were within the national ambient air quality standards of India, but respirable suspended particulate matter levels were high, and on an increasing trend for five consecutive years, causing smog and haze. Severe air pollution in the city has caused a rise in pollution-related respiratory ailments, such as lung cancer.
Public transport is provided by the Calcutta Suburban Railway, the Calcutta Metro, trams, and buses. The suburban rail network reaches the city’s distant suburbs. The Calcutta Metro, in operation since 1984, is the oldest underground mass transit system in India. It spans the north–south length of the city and covers a distance of 25.1 km (16 mi). As of 2009, five Metro rail lines were under construction. Calcutta has three long-distance railway stations, located at Howrah, Sealdah, and Chitpur, which connect Calcutta by rail to most cities in West Bengal and to other major cities in India. The city serves as the headquarters of two Indian Railways regional divisions—the Eastern Railway and the South-Eastern Railway.
Rains brought by the Bay of Bengal branch of the south-west summer monsoon lash Calcutta between June and September, supplying it with most of its annual rainfall of 1,582 mm (62 in). The highest monthly rainfall total, 306 mm (12 in), occurs in August. The city receives 2,528 hours of sunshine per year, with maximum sunlight exposure occurring in March. Calcutta has been hit by several cyclones; these include systems occurring in 1737 and 1864 that killed thousands.
South Calcutta developed after India gained independence in 1947; it includes upscale neighbourhoods such as Ballygunge, Alipore, New Alipore, Lansdowne, Bhowanipore, Tollygunge, Jodhpur Park, Lake Gardens, Golf Green, Jadavpur, and Kasba. From south-west to south-east, outlying areas include Garden Reach, Behala, Thakurpukur, Kudghat, Ranikuthi, Bansdroni, Baghajatin, and Garia. Two planned townships in the greater Calcutta region are Bidhannagar, also known as Salt Lake City and located north-east of the city; and Rajarhat, also called New Town and sited east of Bidhannagar. In the 2000s, Sector V in Bidhannagar developed into a business hub for information technology and telecommunication companies. Both Bidhannagar and New Town are situated outside the Calcutta Municipal Corporation limits, in their own municipalities. Fort William, on the western part of the city, houses the headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Indian Army; its premises are under the jurisdiction of the army.
Spread roughly north–south along the east bank of the Hooghly River, Calcutta sits within the lower Ganges Delta of eastern India; the city’s elevation is 1.5–9 m (5–30 ft). Much of the city was originally a wetland that was reclaimed over the decades to accommodate a burgeoning population. The remaining undeveloped areas, known as the East Calcutta Wetlands, were designated a “wetland of international importance” by the Ramsar Convention (1975). As with most of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the soil and water are predominantly alluvial in origin. Calcutta is located over the “Bengal basin”, a pericratonic tertiary basin. Bengal basin comprises three structural unit: shelf or platform in the west; central hinge or shelf/slope break; and deep basinal part in the east and southeast. Calcutta is located atop the western part of the hinge zone which is about 25 km (16 mi) wide at a depth of about 45,000 m (148,000 ft) below the surface. The shelf and hinge zones have many faults, among them some are active. Total thickness of sediment below Calcutta is nearly 7,500 m (24,600 ft) above the crystalline basement; of these the top 350–450 m (1,150–1,480 ft) is quaternary, followed by 4,500–5,500 m (14,760–18,040 ft) of tertiary sediments, 500–700 m (1,640–2,300 ft) trap wash of cretaceous trap and 600–800 m (1,970–2,620 ft) permian-carboniferous Gondwana rocks. The quaternary sediments consist of clay, silt, and several grades of sand and gravel. These sediments are sandwiched between two clay beds: the lower one at a depth of 250–650 m (820–2,130 ft); the upper one 10–40 m (30–130 ft) in thickness. According to the Bureau of Indian Standards, on a scale ranging from I to V in order of increasing susceptibility to earthquakes, the city lies inside seismic zone III; according to a United Nations Development Programme report, its wind and cyclone zone is “very high damage risk”.
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, or BSNL, as well as private enterprises, among them Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Tata DoCoMo, Tata Teleservices, Virgin Mobile, and MTS India, are the leading telephone and cell phone service providers in the city.:25–26:179 Calcutta being the first city in India to have cell phone and 4G connectivity, the GSM and CDMA cellular coverage is extensive. As of 2010, Calcutta has 7 percent of the total Broadband internet consumers in India; BSNL, VSNL, Tata Indicom, Sify, Airtel, and Reliance are among the main vendors.
The Calcutta Rowing Club hosts rowing heats and training events. Calcutta, considered the leading centre of rugby union in India, gives its name to the oldest international tournament in rugby union, the Calcutta Cup. The Automobile Association of Eastern India, established in 1904, and the Bengal Motor Sports Club are involved in promoting motor sports and car rallies in Calcutta and West Bengal. The Beighton Cup, an event organised by the Bengal Hockey Association and first played in 1895, is India’s oldest field hockey tournament; it is usually held on the Mohun Bagan Ground of the Maidan. Athletes from Calcutta include Sourav Ganguly and Pankaj Roy, who are former captains of the Indian national cricket team; Olympic tennis bronze medallist Leander Paes, golfer Arjun Atwal, and former footballers Sailen Manna, Chuni Goswami, P. K. Banerjee, and Subrata Bhattacharya.
The city and its port were bombed several times by the Japanese between 1942 and 1944, during World War II. Coinciding with the war, millions starved to death during the Bengal famine of 1943 due to a combination of military, administrative, and natural factors. Demands for the creation of a Muslim state led in 1946 to an episode of communal violence that killed over 4,000. The partition of India led to further clashes and a demographic shift—many Muslims left for East Pakistan, while hundreds of thousands of Hindus fled into the city.
The discovery and archaeological study of Chandraketugarh, 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Calcutta, provide evidence that the region in which the city stands has been inhabited for over two millennia. Calcutta’s recorded history began in 1690 with the arrival of the English East India Company, which was consolidating its trade business in Bengal. Job Charnock, an administrator who worked for the Company, is traditionally credited as the founder of the city; in response to a public petition, the Calcutta High Court ruled in 2003 that the city does not have a founder. The area occupied by the present-day city encompassed three villages: Kalikata, Gobindapur, and Sutanuti. Kalikata was a fishing village; Sutanuti was a riverside weavers’ village. They were part of an estate belonging to the Mughal emperor; the jagirdari (a land grant bestowed by a king on his noblemen) taxation rights to the villages were held by the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family of landowners, or zamindars. These rights were transferred to the East India Company in 1698.:1
The Calcutta metropolitan area is spread over 1,886.67 km2 (728.45 sq mi):7 and comprises 3 municipal corporations (including Calcutta Municipal Corporation), 39 local municipalities and 24 panchayat samitis, as of 2011.:7 The urban agglomeration encompassed 72 cities and 527 towns and villages, as of 2006. Suburban areas in the Calcutta metropolitan area incorporate parts of the following districts: North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, and Nadia.:15 Calcutta, which is under the jurisdiction of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation ( KMC), has an area of 185 km2 (71 sq mi). The east–west dimension of the city is comparatively narrow, stretching from the Hooghly River in the west to roughly the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in the east—a span of 9–10 km (5.6–6.2 mi). The north–south distance is greater, and its axis is used to section the city into North, Central, and South Calcutta.
The Calcutta Municipal Corporation supplies the city with potable water that is sourced from the Hooghly River; most of it is treated and purified at the Palta pumping station located in North 24 Parganas district. Roughly 95% of the 4,000 tonnes of refuse produced daily by the city is transported to the dumping grounds in Dhapa, which is east of the town. To promote the recycling of garbage and sewer water, agriculture in encouraged on the dumping grounds. Parts of the city lack proper sewerage, leading to unsanitary methods of waste disposal.
The most popular sports in Calcutta are football and cricket. The city is a centre of football activity in India and is home to top national clubs such as Mohun Bagan A.C., Kingfisher East Bengal F.C., Prayag United S.C., and the Mohammedan Sporting Club. Calcutta Football League, which was started in 1898, is the oldest football league in Asia. Mohun Bagan A.C., one of the oldest football clubs in Asia, is the only organisation to be dubbed a “National Club of India”. As in the rest of India, cricket is popular in Calcutta and is played on grounds and in streets throughout the city. Calcutta has an Indian Premier League franchise known as the Calcutta Knight Riders; the Cricket Association of Bengal, which regulates cricket in West Bengal, is also based in the city. Tournaments, especially those involving cricket, football, badminton, and carrom, are regularly organised on an inter-locality or inter-club basis. The Maidan, a vast field that serves as the city’s largest park, hosts several minor football and cricket clubs and coaching institutes.
The popularity of commercial theatres in the city has declined since the 1980s.:99 Group theatres of Calcutta, a cultural movement that started in the 1940s contrasting with the then-popular commercial theatres, are theatres that are not professional or commercial, and are centres of various experiments in theme, content, and production; group theatres use the proscenium stage to highlight socially relevant messages.:99 Chitpur locality of the city houses multiple production companies of jatra, a tradition of folk drama popular in rural Bengal. Calcutta is the home of the Bengali cinema industry, dubbed “Tollywood” for Tollygunj, where most of the state’s film studios are located. Its long tradition of art films includes globally acclaimed film directors such as Academy Award-winning director Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, and contemporary directors such as Aparna Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, and Rituparno Ghosh.
The Port of Calcutta, established in 1870, is India’s oldest and the only major river port. The Calcutta Port Trust manages docks in Calcutta and Haldia. The port hosts passenger services to Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; freighter service to ports throughout India and around the world is operated by the Shipping Corporation of India. Ferry services connect Calcutta with its twin city of Howrah, located across the Hooghly River.
The word Calcutta derives from the Bengali term Kolikata (???????), the name of one of three villages that predated the arrival of the British, in the area where the city eventually was to be established; the other two villages were Sutanuti and Govindapur. The term Kolikata is thought to be a variation of Kalikkhetro , meaning “Field of Kali”. Alternatively, the name may have been derived from the Bengali term kilkila , or “flat area”. The name may have its origin in the words khal meaning “canal”, followed by ka?a , which may mean “dug”. According to another theory, the area specialised in the production of quicklime or koli chun and coir or kata ; hence, it was called Kolikata . While the city’s name has always been pronounced Calcutta or Kolikata in Bengali, the anglicised form Calcutta was the official name until 2001, when it was changed to Calcutta in order to match Bengali pronunciation.
Though Bengali women traditionally wear the sari, the shalwar kameez and Western attire is gaining acceptance among younger women. Western-style dress has greater acceptance among men, although the traditional dhoti and kurta are seen during festivals. Durga Puja, held in September–October, is Calcutta’s most important festival; it is an occasion for glamorous celebrations. The Bengali New Year, known as Poila Boishak, as well as the harvest festival of Poush Parbon are among the city’s other festivals; also celebrated are Jagaddhatri Puja, Diwali, Saraswati Puja, Eid, Holi, Christmas, and Rath Yatra. Cultural events include the Calcutta Book Fair, the Dover Lane Music Festival, the Calcutta Film Festival, and Nandikar’s National Theatre Festival.
Spread roughly north–south along the east bank of the Hooghly River, Calcutta sits within the lower Ganges Delta of eastern India; the city’s elevation is 1.5–9 m (5–30 ft). Much of the city was originally a wetland that was reclaimed over the decades to accommodate a burgeoning population. The remaining undeveloped areas, known as the East Calcutta Wetlands, were designated a “wetland of international importance” by the Ramsar Convention (1975). As with most of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the soil and water are predominantly alluvial in origin. Calcutta is located over the “Bengal basin”, a pericratonic tertiary basin. Bengal basin comprises three structural unit: shelf or platform in the west; central hinge or shelf/slope break; and deep basinal part in the east and southeast. Calcutta is located atop the western part of the hinge zone which is about 25 km (16 mi) wide at a depth of about 45,000 m (148,000 ft) below the surface. The shelf and hinge zones have many faults, among them some are active. Total thickness of sediment below Calcutta is nearly 7,500 m (24,600 ft) above the crystalline basement; of these the top 350–450 m (1,150–1,480 ft) is quaternary, followed by 4,500–5,500 m (14,760–18,040 ft) of tertiary sediments, 500–700 m (1,640–2,300 ft) trap wash of cretaceous trap and 600–800 m (1,970–2,620 ft) permian-carboniferous Gondwana rocks. The quaternary sediments consist of clay, silt, and several grades of sand and gravel. These sediments are sandwiched between two clay beds: the lower one at a depth of 250–650 m (820–2,130 ft); the upper one 10–40 m (30–130 ft) in thickness. According to the Bureau of Indian Standards, on a scale ranging from I to V in order of increasing susceptibility to earthquakes, the city lies inside seismic zone III; according to a United Nations Development Programme report, its wind and cyclone zone is “very high damage risk”.
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, or BSNL, as well as private enterprises, among them Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Tata DoCoMo, Tata Teleservices, Virgin Mobile, and MTS India, are the leading telephone and cell phone service providers in the city.:25–26:179 Calcutta being the first city in India to have cell phone and 4G connectivity, the GSM and CDMA cellular coverage is extensive. As of 2010, Calcutta has 7 percent of the total Broadband internet consumers in India; BSNL, VSNL, Tata Indicom, Sify, Airtel, and Reliance are among the main vendors.
The Calcutta Rowing Club hosts rowing heats and training events. Calcutta, considered the leading centre of rugby union in India, gives its name to the oldest international tournament in rugby union, the Calcutta Cup. The Automobile Association of Eastern India, established in 1904, and the Bengal Motor Sports Club are involved in promoting motor sports and car rallies in Calcutta and West Bengal. The Beighton Cup, an event organised by the Bengal Hockey Association and first played in 1895, is India’s oldest field hockey tournament; it is usually held on the Mohun Bagan Ground of the Maidan. Athletes from Calcutta include Sourav Ganguly and Pankaj Roy, who are former captains of the Indian national cricket team; Olympic tennis bronze medallist Leander Paes, golfer Arjun Atwal, and former footballers Sailen Manna, Chuni Goswami, P. K. Banerjee, and Subrata Bhattacharya.
The city and its port were bombed several times by the Japanese between 1942 and 1944, during World War II. Coinciding with the war, millions starved to death during the Bengal famine of 1943 due to a combination of military, administrative, and natural factors. Demands for the creation of a Muslim state led in 1946 to an episode of communal violence that killed over 4,000. The partition of India led to further clashes and a demographic shift—many Muslims left for East Pakistan, while hundreds of thousands of Hindus fled into the city.
The discovery and archaeological study of Chandraketugarh, 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Calcutta, provide evidence that the region in which the city stands has been inhabited for over two millennia. Calcutta’s recorded history began in 1690 with the arrival of the English East India Company, which was consolidating its trade business in Bengal. Job Charnock, an administrator who worked for the Company, is traditionally credited as the founder of the city; in response to a public petition, the Calcutta High Court ruled in 2003 that the city does not have a founder. The area occupied by the present-day city encompassed three villages: Kalikata, Gobindapur, and Sutanuti. Kalikata was a fishing village; Sutanuti was a riverside weavers’ village. They were part of an estate belonging to the Mughal emperor; the jagirdari (a land grant bestowed by a king on his noblemen) taxation rights to the villages were held by the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family of landowners, or zamindars. These rights were transferred to the East India Company in 1698.:1
The Calcutta metropolitan area is spread over 1,886.67 km2 (728.45 sq mi):7 and comprises 3 municipal corporations (including Calcutta Municipal Corporation), 39 local municipalities and 24 panchayat samitis, as of 2011.:7 The urban agglomeration encompassed 72 cities and 527 towns and villages, as of 2006. Suburban areas in the Calcutta metropolitan area incorporate parts of the following districts: North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, and Nadia.:15 Calcutta, which is under the jurisdiction of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation ( KMC), has an area of 185 km2 (71 sq mi). The east–west dimension of the city is comparatively narrow, stretching from the Hooghly River in the west to roughly the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in the east—a span of 9–10 km (5.6–6.2 mi). The north–south distance is greater, and its axis is used to section the city into North, Central, and South Calcutta.
The Calcutta Municipal Corporation supplies the city with potable water that is sourced from the Hooghly River; most of it is treated and purified at the Palta pumping station located in North 24 Parganas district. Roughly 95% of the 4,000 tonnes of refuse produced daily by the city is transported to the dumping grounds in Dhapa, which is east of the town. To promote the recycling of garbage and sewer water, agriculture in encouraged on the dumping grounds. Parts of the city lack proper sewerage, leading to unsanitary methods of waste disposal.
The most popular sports in Calcutta are football and cricket. The city is a centre of football activity in India and is home to top national clubs such as Mohun Bagan A.C., Kingfisher East Bengal F.C., Prayag United S.C., and the Mohammedan Sporting Club. Calcutta Football League, which was started in 1898, is the oldest football league in Asia. Mohun Bagan A.C., one of the oldest football clubs in Asia, is the only organisation to be dubbed a “National Club of India”. As in the rest of India, cricket is popular in Calcutta and is played on grounds and in streets throughout the city. Calcutta has an Indian Premier League franchise known as the Calcutta Knight Riders; the Cricket Association of Bengal, which regulates cricket in West Bengal, is also based in the city. Tournaments, especially those involving cricket, football, badminton, and carrom, are regularly organised on an inter-locality or inter-club basis. The Maidan, a vast field that serves as the city’s largest park, hosts several minor football and cricket clubs and coaching institutes.
The popularity of commercial theatres in the city has declined since the 1980s.:99 Group theatres of Calcutta, a cultural movement that started in the 1940s contrasting with the then-popular commercial theatres, are theatres that are not professional or commercial, and are centres of various experiments in theme, content, and production; group theatres use the proscenium stage to highlight socially relevant messages.:99 Chitpur locality of the city houses multiple production companies of jatra, a tradition of folk drama popular in rural Bengal. Calcutta is the home of the Bengali cinema industry, dubbed “Tollywood” for Tollygunj, where most of the state’s film studios are located. Its long tradition of art films includes globally acclaimed film directors such as Academy Award-winning director Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha, and contemporary directors such as Aparna Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, and Rituparno Ghosh.
The Port of Calcutta, established in 1870, is India’s oldest and the only major river port. The Calcutta Port Trust manages docks in Calcutta and Haldia. The port hosts passenger services to Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; freighter service to ports throughout India and around the world is operated by the Shipping Corporation of India. Ferry services connect Calcutta with its twin city of Howrah, located across the Hooghly River.
We believe that every bouquet tells a story, and our carefully curated selection is designed to brighten your day and celebrate life’s special moments.
CopyRights © 2024 flowersnjoy.com. All Rights Reserved