Heritage

In the heart of Calcutta lies a quaint time-bubble, the Marble Palace. I walked in to see and feel what the walls, pillars and statues of the Marble Palace had seen through the many generations they h...

As the metal clinks against the glass, and the buzz mixed with laughter rises from the low tables covered in maroon or yellow tablecloths, and the shaded lamps throw light on black- and-white old Calc...

Since time immemorial when man hunted for his food, it has been an irredeemable fact that people have to eat to live. However, this same adage does not hold true for all Bengalis who live to eat! Whet...

I have a friend who, as it turns out, is a mystic. She named her cat Tipu Sultan. It was only upon visiting Srirangapatna a few months ago, about half-an-hour away from Mysore, that I realised that T...

Two decades ago, a kilometre-long stretch of north Calcutta — Bidhan Sarani, formerly Cornwallis Street — had as many as 10 cinemas. Uttara, Sree, Rupbani, Radha, Purnasree, Bidhusree, Mitra, Mina...

What would Winston Churchill make of Priya? Or, for that matter, Navina, another cinema hall on the southern fringes of Calcutta, once the second city of the Empire? The question, although quirky, is ...

René Goscinny, the witty comic book writer who created Asterix along with the illustrator, Albert Uderzo, was wrong. The Gauls are not crazy; but visitors to Gaul can be loony. Maurice, a cockerel, w...

This spring, people of Chandernagore are enjoying their riverbank more, thanks to a week’s collaborative intervention by design students of India and France, facilitated by the consulate general of ...

Sometimes philosophers tend to be like palm trees — you keep craning your neck upwards only to see the flourishing fronds reaching up and touching something beyond you. For they talk upwards and out...

The rector of Notre Dame Cathedral says the Paris landmark is still so fragile that there's a “50% chance” the structure might not be entirely saved, because scaffolding installed before this year...