A city is more than its buildings and streets. A city is the people who live, work, and play in it and make it their own. This book brings together original essays and interviews which trace the history of the peoples in the city of Calcutta. Those who came and stayed; why they did so; and how they contributed in building the city. Once celebrated as the second city of the British Empire after London and more recently derided as the dying city, Calcutta is simultaneously associated with intellectual creativity, processions and palaces and a unique way of claiming the outsider as its own. This collection brings together the stories of the Armenians, Chinese, Sikhs, ‘South Indians’, Bohra Muslims and other communities who have come and created this wondrous mosaic, the city of Calcutta.
