As we enter the season of “Devi Paksha”, the spirit of Feminine Divine in the Fall, regaling at the cotton ball clouds in the clear blue sky, gentle morning breeze smelling of fresh dew, rustic reconnaissance in our agile senses, the vision of a city emerges very vividly in many minds connected to India: Calcutta (now called Kolkata), the city that took exquisiteness of the decadent to a whole different level! Everything is about the bygone out there.
Perhaps, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, Calcutta is a mix of many things, all at once. While the mangrove forests been submerging in the Bay, the foothills of the Himalayas merging with the rising mists for thousands of years, footprints of many people, their ethnicities, spirituality, aspirations, and accolades adorned the soil of the land. One such seeker was Job Charnock who settled the harness of British East India Company in the city some 365 years back. The community found a home away from home, absorbing it foot by foot, building the city brick by brick. In the words of contemporary historians, Calcutta was inspirational to London, ushering a century of opulence, immersion, and multiplexity in the United Kingdom. Needless to say, people from Calcutta always relish Europe in their ethos.
It was the most coveted gift of the season when the publisher of India Currents, Vandana, handed me this rustic book to review: Old Picture Postcards from the British Raj. Chronicle of real postcards collected and curated by Madan Gopal Mukhopadhyay, compiled over generations, capturing people and places from Calcutta and the rest of India during the Colonial era. My heart danced to the tune of sepia-tinted images from the city of my birth. The book depicts nooks and alleys of the city in photographic representation, documenting urban and rural edifices and lifestyles seamlessly. There’s a surprise element in the end.
“At the end is a special set of postcards, more than a century old, featuring photographs of Indian royalty by the renowned photographer, Carl Vandyke.”
The author was born in Calcutta before the Partition, graduated from the prestigious Calcutta Medical College after which he came to the US to study and pursue his career as a physician. An alumnus of Howard University and Yale University, Madan Gopal has had many distinguished achievements as a doctor, author, social luminary, and patron of arts and culture. This book is dedicated to his progenies, “Perhaps the images of this book will remind them of their roots in the future”.
Soma Chatterjee is the Diversity Ambassador for India Currents and a Board Member for Silicon Valley Interreligious Council representing Hinduism on behalf of HAF.
