India Travel

Two kilometres southeast of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (Tues-Sun 10am-5pm: Rs5) on Gurusaday Road is dedicated to Indian technology. Its large pleasant galleries are set out to attract children in particular, with working models such as miniature mining scenes. A short walk further south on Gariahat Road - also known here as Old Ballygunge Road - is the lavish Hindu temple, the Birla Mandir (daily 6-11.30am & 4.30-9pm), built by the same family over 22 years and finally completed in the early 1990s. Best seen in the evenings when lights give the entire structure a dramatic effect, the chandehered temple, clad with marble and ornate sculpture from Rajasthan, encompasses several styles of classic temple architecture.

Less than 2km further south lies die intersection of Gariahat Mor at the heart of a Bengali shopping precinct, especially good for traditional cotton saris and kurta pyjamas, that comes alive in the evenings and positively animated during festival periods such Durga Puja. Adjacent Gariahat Market also has a distinct Bengali flavour, packed with food vendors. Further west, Rashbehari Avenue leads to another interesting shopping area, Lake Market, 1.5km from Gariahat Mor, renowned for its south Indian community and good for recorded music. Past the busy roundabout of Gol Park. 400m south of Gariahat Mor, the road branches southwest to the Rabindra Sarobar lakes. These man-made lakes, with their tree-lined walkways, are the base of Calcutta’s flourishing rowing clubs.

A multistorey building on Southern Avenue houses the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, also funded by the industrial Birla family (Tues-Sun 4-8pm; Rs5). Its small auditorium hosts concerts and theatre, while galleries hold exhibitions of contemporary art, plus an eclectic collection of Indian art through the ages covering folk art, bronzes, stone sculptures, terracotta, miniatures, textiles and Kalighat paintings. Among artists of the Bengali Renaissance represented here are the trio ofTagores - Rabindranath, Abanindranath and Gaganendranath. In addition, there are Indian classical dance classes and art classes.The Lake Kali Bari alongside has grown in three decades from a small roadside Kali shrine to a major temple.

Early in the nineteenth century, Kalighat was in its heyday, drawing pilgrims, merchants and artisans from all over the country. Among them were the scroll painters from elsewhere in Bengal, who developed the distinctive style now known as Kalighat pats (paintings). Adapting Western techniques, they used paper and water-based paints instead of tempera, and gradually moved away from religious themes to depict contemporary subjects. By 1850, Kalighat pats had taken on a dynamic new direction, satirizing the middle classes in much the same way as today’s political cartoons. As a result, their work serves as a witty record of the period, filled with images of everyday life. Kalighat pats can now be found in galleries and museums around the world, and in the Indian Museum as well as the Birla Academy here in Calcutta.

A road leads west through the Maidan from the top of Park Street to the gates of Fort William. As the fort functions as the military headquarters of the Eastern Command, entry is restricted and the public is only allowed into certain sections on special occasions. Built on the site of the old village of Govindapur, and commissioned by the British after their defeat in 1756, the fort was completed in 1781 and named after King William III. A rough octagon, about 500m in diameter, whose massive but low bunker-like battlements are punctuated by six main gates, the fort was designed to hold all the city’s Europeans in the event of attack. To one side it commanded a view of the Maidan, cleared to give a field of fire; to the other it dominated the river and its crucial shipping lanes. Water from the river was diverted to fill its surrounding moat. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century structures inside include the Church of St Peters (now a library), barracks and stables, an arsenal, strong rooms and a prison. Today, the army still controls the Maidan and any special construction or activity must be approved by them.

Just around the corner from the museum, the Asiatic Society at 1 Park St, established in 1784 by Orientalists including Sir “William Jones, houses a huge collection of around 150,000 books and 60,000 ancient manuscripts, some of which date back to the seventh century. The society has a reading room open to the public (Mon-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm; free) and a gallery of art and antiquities with paintings by Rubens and Reynolds, a large collection of coins and one of Ashoka’s stone edicts.

Around 2km along Park Street from the Maidan, the disused but recently restored Park Street Cemetery is one of the city’s most haunting memorials to its imperial past. Inaugurated in 1767, it is the oldest in Calcutta, holding a wonderful concentration of pyramids, obelisks, pavilions, urns and headstones, under which many well-known Brits lie buried. The epitaphs make fascinating reading.

At the corner of Chowringhee and Sudder streets, the stately Indian Museum (Tues-Sun: March-Nov 10am-5pm; Dec-Feb 10am-4.30pm; Rsl50 (RslO]) is the oldest and the largest museum in India, founded in 1814. Built around a central courtyard, the present high-ceilinged building was opened to the public in 1878, and is one of the largest museums in Asia, housing a huge variety of exhibits from sculpture to natural history.

Visitors come to the museum in their thousands, many of them villagers who bring offerings to the jadu ghar or “house of magic". The main showpiece is a collection of stone and metal sculptures obtained from sites all over India, which centres on a superb Mauryan polished sandstone lion capital, dating from the third century BC. One gallery houses the impressive remains of the second-century BC Buddhist stupa from Bharhut in Madhya Pradesh, partly reassembled to display posts, capping stones, railings and gateways all made from red sandstone. Carvings depict human and animal figures, as well as scenes from the fataka tales of the Buddha’s many incarnations. There is also a huge collection of Buddhist schist sculptures, daring from the first to the third century, from the Gandhara region. Relics in the Prehistory Gallery are supposed to be those of the Buddha. You’ll also see stone sculpture from Khajuraho and Pala bronzes, plus copper artefacts. Stone-Age tools and terracotta figures from other sites.

Along with an excellent exhibit of Tibetan thangkas, the museum holds Kalighat pats (see p.946) and paintings by the Company School, a group of mid-nineteenth-century Indian artists who emulated Western themes and techniques for European patrons. Finally, there’s a spectacular array of fossils and stuffed animals, most of which look in dire need of a decent burial.

Although a rich tradition of poetry existed in India long before the arrival of the Europeans — even scientific manuscripts were written in rhyming couplets — prose was all but unknown. Thus the foundation by the British of Fort William College in 1800 — primarily intended to assist administrators to learn Indian languages by commissioning prose in Bengali, Urdu and Hindi — had the unexpected side effect of helping to create a vital new genre in indigenous literature. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838—99), a senior civil servant who wrote novels of everyday life, became known as the father of Bengali literature, white Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1829-73) introduced European poetic conventions into Bengali poetry. Simultaneously, Westernization began to sweep Bengali middle-class society, as people grew disenchanted with their culture and religion.

A leading figure in the new intelligentsia was Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1833), born an orthodox Hindu, who travelled in Tibet before joining the East India Company, and eventually died in England as the ambassador of the Moghuls. Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj, a socio-religious movement that believed in a single god and set out to purge Hinduism of its idol worship and rituals, advocating the abolition of sati and child marriage. Keshab Chandra Sen’s Navabidhan (New Dispensation), a synthesis of all the world’s major religions, created a split in 1866 over its emphasis on universal Unitarianism and the downplaying of the role of Hinduism. A reformer of boundless energy and a renowned orator, Keshab Sen travelled to Britain to lecture, commanding huge audiences and even meeting Queen Victoria.

No single figure epitomized the Bengali Renaissance more than Rabindranath Tagore, a giant of Bengali art, culture and letters, and a Brahmo, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. As well as writing several hymns, he set out the principles of the Brahmo Samaj movement in The Religion of Man. The intellectual and cultural freedom of the Brahmo Samaj earned it an important influence over the Bengali upper classes that endures to this day, but in recent years extreme Bengali reformists have attacked the movement for having been a corrupting influence on Bengali sociecy.

During and following the period of the Renaissance, Bengal saw a resurgence of Hindu thought through religious leaders such as Ramakrishna (1836—86), a great Kali devotee whose message was carried as far as North America by his disciple Vivekananda. Having spent some time in London as a student, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) returned to India to become a freedom fighter and, finally, emerged as one the most influential philosophers of twentieth-century India. Aurobindo, who went on to establish his own ashram in Pondicherry, preached a return to a reformed esoteric Hinduism.

ually crowded with hawkers and shoppers. The only one of its grand institutions to survive relatively unscathed is the Victorian Grand Hotel which, after endless renovations and changes of management remains a haven of colonialism, with its palm court inspired by the famous Raffles of Singapore.

Calcutta’s crumbling weather eaten buildings and anarchic streets can create an intimidating first impression. Given a little time and patience, however, the huge metropolis starts to resolve itself into a fascinating conglomerate of styles and influences with a variety of impressive skylines to match.

The River Hooghly, which was until recently only spanned by the remarkable cantilever Howrah Bridge, is not all that prominent in me life of the city. Instead its heart is the green expanse of the Maidan, which attracts Calcuttans from all walks of life for recreation, sports, exhibitions and political rallies. At its southern end stands die white-marble Victoria Memorial, and close by rise the tall gothic spires of St Paul’s Cathedral. Next to the busy New Market area alongside looms the all-embracing Indian Museum. Further north, the district centred on BBD Bagh is filled with reminders of the heyday of the East India Company, dominated by the bulk of the Writers’ Building with St Andrew’s Kirk nearby; a bit further out, the Armenian Church stands on the edge of the frenetic, labyrinthine markets to Bara bazaar. while the renowned and influential temple of Kalighat is aw» to the south, in one of the city’s more congested areas. Tangra, or Chinatown, is located 3km east of the Maidan. Calcutta’s two main stations, Howrah and
Sealdah, are 4km apart, both north of the Maidan and on opposite sides of the Hooghly River.

The Maidan, New Market and Park Street

The Maidan - literally “field” - which stretches from the area known as Esplanade in the north to the racecourse in the south, and is bordered by Chowringhee Road to the east and the Strand and the river to the west, is one of the largest city-centre parks in the world. This vast area of open space stands in utter contrast to the chaotic streets of the city that surrounds it, big enough to swallow up several clubs, including the Calcutta Ladies Golf Club, and the immaculate greens of the Calcutta Bowling Club. It was created when the now-inconspicuous Fort William was laid out near the river in 1758, and Robert Clive cleared tracts of forest to give its guns a clear line of fire. Originally it was a haven for the elite, with a strictly enforced dress code. Now, early each morning, ordinary citizens come to exercise, shepherds graze their flocks, and riders on horseback canter along the old bridleways. In the late afternoons, it plays host to scores of impromptu cricket and football matches, as well as games of kabadi (seep.71).

Esplanade

The 46-metre column of Shahid Minar {Martyrs’ Memorial) towers over busy tram and bus terminals and market stalls at the northeast corner of the Maidan, known as Esplanade. As the Ochterlony Monument, it was built in 1828 to commemorate the memory of David Ochterlony, who led the Ease India Company troops to victory in the Nepalese Wars of 1814-16. Further northeast, m the small Curzon Park among the trees and fenced-off patches of greenery beyond the tram terminus, a colony of rats has burrowed a warren of holes. Local office workers spend their lunch hours feeding the fat and complacent rodents.

New Market and Chowringhee

Beneath its Gothic red-brick clock tower, the single-storey New Market, in the centre of cosmopolitan Calcutta, can have changed little since it opened in 1874. Its real name is Sir Stuart Hogg Market; supposedly, the ghost of Sir Stuart haunts the market, roaming the corridors at night crying out for peace. It would be easier to imagine that he was bemoaning die antics of its coolies, who drag willing and unwilling customers into the various shops in search of commission, and also double as black-market touts. At the north end of the market, a characterless multi storey building has been erected to replace sections gutted by a fire in 1985.

The market itself stocks a vast array of household goods, luggage, ready-made garments, jewellery, curio shops, bookshops, textiles, and kitchenware, as well as meat, vegetables and fruit. Among shops that stand out from the rest, Chamba Lama sells Tibetan curios and antique items such as silver jewellery and new bronzes. The Symphony music store has a good selection of classical and popular Indian music, while Sujata’s is known for its silk, and Nahourn & Sons is a Jewish bakery. Further up the corridor, condiment stalls offer cheese from Kahmpong, miniature rounds of salty Bandel cheese, and anisliat, blocks made up of sheets of dried mango.

As soon as you arrive in Calcutta, taxi-drivers are likely to assume that you’ll be heading for central Sudder Street, east of Chowringhee Road. As the main travellers’ hub in Calcutta, the area is a sociable place to stay with numerous small to mid-sized hotels; in fact, many visitors spend most of their time in this one enclave. Most Sudder Street hotels are m the budget or mid-range brackets. The cheaper options are generally small and grubby so it may well be worth spending a few rupees more for a hotel with a terrace or courtyard.

The many guesthouses now on offer all over Calcutta - usually comfortable private houses or flats, with the use of a “cook-cum-bearer” - provide mid-budget travelers with an alternative to Sudder Street. Be sure to clarify the food arrangements and all costs at the start of your stay. The Guest Agency, a division of Travel & Cargo Service, 23 Shakespeare Sarani, represents guesthouses throughout the city The Government of India Tourist Office, 4 Shakespeare Sarani also runs a paying guest scheme which costs Rs300-500 per night.

Some of the city’s very top hotels are slightly further afield; the luxurious Taj Bengal for example is in Alipore to the south.

Well-heeled travellers might also consider a stay at Calcutta’s most exclusive club, considered one of the best in the world, the Tollygunge Club, at the southern end of the Metro line, at 120 Deshaptan Sasmal Rd. Accommodation, with a choice of exclusive cottages or rooms in one of two newish blocks, includes temporary membership and the use of an eighteen-hole golf course, plus riding, swimming, tennis and squash facilities, as well as open-air and indoor restaurants and a good bar. You will need to contact the secretary well in advance to reserve a room as the club is extremely popular and often full.

Sudder Street, Park Street and Chowringhee

Astoria. Sudder Street. Mid-range alternative with old-fashioned rooms for those who’ve slummed it once too often.

Centrepoint Guest House. 20 Mirza Ghalib St. Friendly and popular, though cramped, with a range of rooms (some a/c) and two cheap clean and cramped dorms (Rs70) - one for men and one for women.

Crystal. 11/1 Kyd Street (Dr Mohammed Ishaque Road. Friendly hotel with decent-sized rooms - some with a/c - and hot showers.

Dolphin, 8 A K Mohammed Siddique Lane. Ten minutes’ walk from Sudder Street, tucked away down a tiny lane. Small clean rooms with TV and cold showers.

Fairlawn, 13A Sudder St,. A famous old-fashioned hotel with exudes a decadent and eccentric Raj atmosphere, chock-full of memorabilia. Nonresidents can sample a drink in the lush garden. From $57.
Galaxy, 3 Stuart Lane. Small hotel with just a few rooms all with TV. Clean and good value.

Lindsay, 8A/B Lindsay St. You couldn’t get closer to New Market. A somewhat dull mid-range option with a forex bureau, restaurant and a bizarre coffee shop.

Lytton, 14 Sudder St. The most modern and comfortable hotel on the street with central a/c but otherwise lacking in character. Facilities include a bar and a couple of good restaurants

Maria, 5/1 Sudder Street. Old building with high ceilings and good-sized budget rooms which are often full; there is also a dorm (Rs70], a good cybercafe and a pleasant terrace upstairs.

Modern Lodge, 1 Stuart Lane. Cramped but reasonably priced hotel with a relaxing roof terrace, popular since the 1960s with budget travellers.

Neelam, 11 Dr Mohammed Ishaque St. Pleasant hotel a couple of blocks from the main drag with reasonably sized rooms.

New Kenilworth. 1 & 2 Little Russell St. Comfortable and plush place with better value in the new block; it has a reputation for good service and comes with a good restaurant, a coffee shop, two bars and a multi gym with steam bath and sauna. From $110.

Oberoi Grand, 15 Chowringhee Rd. With its white Victorian facade which harks back to the Raj, this completely revamped central hotel is very much part of the fabric of the city. Very luxurious with a swimming pool, and Thai and Indian restaurants. From $250.

Oriental, 9A Marquis St, off Mirza Ghalib St. Small clean rooms away from all the touts, with cable TV and cold showers.

Paragon, 2 Stuart Lane. Dark and dingy downstairs rooms but nevertheless a popular and traveller-friendfy place: slightly better rooms are around the rooftop courtyard.

Park, 17 Park St. Modern five-star hotel in a good location on a cosmopolitan street, with all amenities including swimming pool, multi gym, late checkout and good food at the hotel’s two restaurants, Comfortable if characterless, with a bar that’s lively at weekends. From $250.

Peerless Inn, 12 Chowringhee Rd. An expensive four-star hotel with a very upmarket Bengali feel. The restaurant specializes in local cuisine, and there is also a 24hr coffee shop. From $95.

Plaza, 10 Sudder St. Friendly, clean and popular with visiting businessmen.

Salvation Army Red Shield Guest House, 2 Sudder St. Good budget option, which is often booked up and has changed little over the years. Dorms (from Rs60] and a few doubles including a couple of a/c; passing through its large gate is a welcome relief from the noise and pollution outside.

Shilton. 5A Sudder St. Large old building set behind a gateway. Reasonable rooms popular with visiting Bangladeshis.

Times Guest House, Sudder Street, near the Blue Sky Cafe, Small, friendly place with a dorm (Rs60] and a few cramped double rooms.

Timestar, 2 Tottee Lane. Fair-sized rooms in old villa with a/c and hot water by the bucket. TVs in some rooms.

VIP International. 51 Mirza Ghalib St. Good location and decent-sized carpeted rooms with cable TV, but expensive.

YMCA, 25 Chowringhee Rd. Once a grand nightclub near the Indian Museum. now a faded but popular meeting place with a range of rooms, some with a/c, on a half-board basis. Temporary membership (Rs40) allows access to a well-kept snooker table and table tennis.

YWCA, Middleton Row. For women who plan to stay in town a while, there is no better place. Just off Park Street, it is built around a pleasant courtyard with an immaculate tennis court. Minimum stay is one week and meals are included.

Virtually all the different modes of transport that clog the streets of Calcutta -trams, buses, rickshaws, metered taxis, and minibuses - add to the problem of congestion. However, the Metro, India’s first and Calcutta’s pride and joy, provides a fast, clean and efficient way to get around. It’s also very easy to use, as it consists of just the one line running on a north—south axis.
The river is also used for transport, with the ghats near Eden Gardens at the hub of a ferry system. The most pleasant way to beat the traffic is to take one of the very regular ferries from Chandpal Ghat to Howrah Station; other sailings head downriver from Armenian, Chandpal or Babu ghats to the Botanical Gardens, although the running of this route is erratic. Of more use to commuters than tourists, a circular railway loops south from Sealdah before moving upriver along the Strand and Princep Chat, past Howrah Bridge and eventually to Dum Dum. While using public transport, be wary of pickpockets, especially on crowded buses.

The Metro

Despite a couple of small fires in recent years, Calcutta’s Russian-designed Metro, inaugurated in 1984, is every bit as good as its inhabitants proudly claim, a spotless contrast to the streets above, with trains operating punctually every few minutes. Services run from 7am to 9.30pm Monday to Saturday and from 2.30 pm to 9.30 pm on Sundays. Tickets are very cheap - you can travel the entire length of the line from Dum Dum in the north to Tollygunge in the south for just Rs7. The line follows Calcutta’s main arteries including Chowringhee Road, with convenient stations such as Park Street, Kalighat, Esplanade and Rabindra Sadan.

City tours

City tours (around Rs100) are organized both by the Government of India Tourist Office and the West Bengal Tourist Bureau (see opposite), leaving from their respective premises around 7.30-8.30 am and returning around 5pm. Although you don’t get much time anywhere they give you a good feel for the city.

An even better way to explore the sprawl of Calcutta is to hire your own taxi and guide, arranged through the Government of India Tourist Office. For a group of three to four people, it works out reasonably cheap (half-day tours from Rs250 and full-day tours from Rs350).

Walking tours provide a great insight into the historic heart of the city and start from BBD Bagh;

Buses and minibuses

Calcutta supports a vast and complicated bus network, in operation each day between roughly 5am and 11pm, and subject to overcrowding and attendant pick pocketing problems. The profusion of bus routes, many privately run, is best explained in the dark-blue pocket guide, Calcutta & Howrah by DP Publications (Rs9) and available through roadside magazine and book vendors and at railway-station bookshops. Once the mainstay of Calcutta Transport Corporation - CTC - today just a handful of red double-decker buses are to be seen still in service. Useful bus routes include: #8 from Howrah via Esplanade and Gariahat Road to Gol Park; #S17, from Chetla near Kalighat via Esplanade; and #5 and #6, which both travel via Howrah and the Esplanade-Chownnghee area, and stop at the Indian Museum at the head of Sudder Street.The #C6 travels via Chownnghee, passing the top of Park Street before crossing the Vidyasagar Setu, the second Hooghly Bridge, to the Botanical Gardens. Buses with an “S” prefix denote special express buses charging marginally more. Of the three Executive bus routes, the #E3 runs from Esplanade to the airport.

In addition, private brown-and-yellow minibuses travel at inordinate speeds on ad-hoc routes; their destinations are usually painted boldly in Bengali and English on their sides, and conductors shout them out at bus stops or major junctions.

Don’t be fooled by empty buses - they are either about to stop for a few hours or will fill up in a few seconds; be careful getting on and off buses as they tend to stop in the middle of the road.

Taxis

Taxis in Calcutta prove to be extremely good value, especially on long journeys such as to and from the airport (around Rs. 130 for a twenty-kilometre ride), but a few drivers can be unwilling to go anywhere for less than Rs50, even for short journeys. Sudder Street’s taxi touts are particularly averse to haggling, and you’re better off walking around the corner and flagging down a cab. Alternatively, you could use the prepaid taxi service behind Trincas Restaurant on Park Street, in the parking lot of the Park Hotel (other such services are found at the main railway stations and the airport). Most cabs have working meters and tend to use them in conjunction with the conversion charts they are obliged to carry.To complicate matters, there are two meter systems operating simultaneously. New digital meters (located inside the cab) start on RslO but add on another twenty percent. Old meters (located on the outside) start on Rs5 but the fare will be charged at double what the meter says plus another twenty percent. When fare rises are announced, the Taxi Association finds it cheaper to issue the conversion charts rather than reset each and every meter. Note there is a small additional charge for placing your luggage in the boot, which is invariably dusty and filled with oily rags.

Trams

Calcutta’s cumbersome trams, barely changed since they started operating in 1873, are on their way out; their inability to deviate from fixed rails to cope with the city’s crazy traffic makes them more of a nuisance than anything else. However, for all their grime and general dilapidation, they do have an odd quirky charm, and provide an interesting way of seeing the city; women travellers may well be glad of the rush-hour women-only coaches. Routes include #21. Howrah Bridge to Park Circus via BBD Bagh, Esplanade and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road; #20, Howrah Bridge via Sealdah to Park Circus (#26 follows the same route but continues, via Gariahat, to Ballygunge Station): #25. BBD Bagh to Ballygunge via Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Park Circus and Gariahat; and #32, Howrah Bridge to Tollygunge via BBD Bagh, Esplanade, the Maidan and Kalighat.

Rickshaws, auto-rickshaws and cycle rickshaws

Calcutta is the only city in India to saw human-drawn rickshaws, which are only available in the central areas of the city, especially around New Market where many drivers supplement their income by acting as pimps. Rickshaws come into their own during the monsoons, when the streets get flooded to hip height and the rickshaw-men can extract healthy amounts of money for their pains. If you take one, take care not to lean back as your weight will unbalance the driver. Most of the rickshaw-pullers are Bihari pavement-dwellers, who live short and very hard lives. Haggle for a realistic price but feel free to give a handful of baksheesh too.

Auto-rickshaws, rare in the centre of town’, are used as shared taxis on certain routes and link with Metro stations in suburbs such as Rashbehan and Gariahat; try to avoid a share of the front cab as accidents do happen. Cycle rickshaws, banned from much of the city, are only available in outlying suburbs.

The efficient and friendly Government of India Tourist Office, 4
Shakespeare Sarani (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-1 pm;) is your best bet for information on Calcutta, ‘West Bengal and destinations further a field, and can assist with itineraries and booking tours. The Government of West Bengal Tourist Bureau, 3/2 BBD Bagh East (©033/248 8271), arranges tours of Calcutta and package trips around West Bengal. They also issue permits and book tours and accommodation at the Sunderbans and Jaldapara wildlife parks. Tourist information counters at the airport and Howrah Station offer the same services.

English-language newspapers such as the Statesman, Telegraph and Hindusthan Standard remain the primary source for information on what’s on but the monthly CatCalling (Rs240), also found in some hotel rooms, is excellent for listings and general information on the city. Calcutta This Fortnight is a free leaflet, available from both the West Bengal and Government of India tourist offices.