About Jug Suraiya’s ‘Calcutta — A City Remembered’

“In many ways, Calcutta — or at least, the Calcutta I knew — found an apt metaphor in a derelict, tuneless piano: once grand and imposing, but now consigned to cobwebs and memories; difficult to accommodate in any practical scheme of things, yet defiantly enduring; pathetic to some, poignant to others, sufficient to itself.”

This is the first step into Jug Suraiya’s Calcutta — A City Remembered. Because as he puts it anyone who has ever been there has his own version of the city. “All you have to do is listen to it. And I have listened to mine”- writes Jug, in this heartwarming tribute to a city that resides in a lot of us.

With each facet of the city that the book unfolded, I revisited the parts I have seen, saw the parts I hadn’t discovered and discovered the ones I hadn’t known. Just like that, the book just sang along the old song — that Calcutta is- stuck in my head.

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