India Stretched

Calcutta

Country boats dock at Princep Ghat overlooking the Second Hooghly Bridge.
A statue of Rabindranath Tagore at his family house at Jorasanko.
A Jhaal Muri vendor on the Esplanade.
Ashoka's lion capital in the Indian Museum.
Blowing her trumpet at Victoria Memorial.
Dhakis wait for clients.
Book store at the Howrah Station.
Finishing touches on a Kali idol at Kumartuli.
A rather non-violent Durga painted in gold during the Durga Puja festival.
Shovabazaar's royal house, the oldest puja in the city takes its idol tied between two boats, to the middle of the Hooghly for immersion.
Final prayers offered to Laxmi before immersion.
Boys sell balloons at the ghats during During Puja.
A durga idol is immersed in the Hooghly.
The immersed idols are scavenged by swimmers for their garments to be reused.
A boy retrieves a idol head for reuse from the waters of the Hooghly.

Calcutta, the second city of the British Empire in India, and the capital of Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it is the principal commercial, cultural, and educational centre of eastern India and one its largest ports. Under the British Raj, Kolkata served as the capital of India until 1911, when its perceived geographical disadvantages, combined with growing nationalism in Bengal, led to a shift of the capital to New Delhi. The city was a centre of the Indian independence movement; it remains a hotbed of contemporary state politics. As a nucleus of the 19th- and early 20th-century Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta has established traditions in drama, art, film, theatre, and literature and includes among its citizens several Nobel laureates.