Sutanuti Diaries Part 1- Bagbazar and Kumortuli walk, Kolkata

About this place

Step into Bagbazar, the North Kolkata neighbourhood where modern Calcutta was born and the Bengal Renaissance took root. This is the ground once walked by Sri Ramakrishna, whose leelabhumi it was, along with Ma Sarada, Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, the pioneering theatre-maker Girish Chandra Ghosh, and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Science and philosophy, literature and art, sport, politics and spirituality all found a home here — even the lanes remember it, with two streets, Udbodhan Lane and Bishwakosh Lane, named after a magazine and an encyclopaedia, a rarity found almost nowhere else in the world. Along the neighbourhood's edge flows the Ganga, past a string of stately old ghats raised by the city's merchant princes — each steeped in history, devotion and memory. The oldest surviving road of Calcutta runs through here too, still whispering the story of Siraj-ud-Daulah's siege of the city. A few steps on lies Kumortuli, the artisans' quarter where clay becomes art. The Durga idols shaped here travel far beyond Bengal and India — worshipped in pandals across the globe and displayed in international museums — and their makers stand celebrated not simply as idol-makers but as sculptors of world renown. And no walk ends without a rosogolla, the beloved sweet born on these very streets.