Dal is to India what pasta is to Italy. Cheap to produce, highly nutritional, suitable for long storage and capable of being cooked in a basic pot on an open fire, dal has been providing nourishment to millions of Indians for millennia. It truly is a pan-Indian dish consumed by rich and poor alike.
Interest in the life and work of the Nobel-Prize-winning writer, Rabindranath Tagore, is now enjoying a revival after many years of neglect outside India. This selection of some 350 letters spanning Tagore's entire life is the first to be available to English readers. The letters are intended to show as many facets of his experience, interests and ideas as possible, and will be a valuable source of information, not only for the understanding of the complexity of Tagore's personality, but also of the times in which he lived.
A Cultural and Literary History
In the popular imagination, Calcutta is a packed and pestilential sprawl, made notorious by the Black Hole and the works of Mother Teresa. Kipling called it a City of Dreadful Night, and a century later V.S. Naipaul, Gunter Grass and Louis Malle revived its hellish image. This is the place where the West first truly encountered the East. Founded in the 1690s by East India Company merchants beside the Hugli River, Calcutta grew into India's capital during the Raj and the second city of the British Empire. Named the City of Palaces for its neoclassical mansions, Calcutta was the city of Clive, Hastings, Macaulay and Curzon. It was also home to extraordinary Bengalis such as Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate, and Satyajit Ray, among the geniuses of world cinema. Above all, Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001) is a city of extremes, where exquisite refinement rubs shoulders with coarse commercialism and political violence. Krishna Dutta explores these multiple paradoxes, giving personal insight into Calcutta's unique history and modern identity as reflected in its architecture, literature, cinema and music. CITY OF ARTISTS: Modern India's cultural capital; home city of
The exploration of Calcutta reveals its rich tapestry of paradoxes, blending personal experiences with the city's complex history and contemporary identity. Through the lenses of literature, cinema, and music, the author provides a unique perspective on the vibrant culture and contradictions that define Calcutta. Accompanied by illustrations and maps, this work invites readers to delve into the city's multifaceted character.