Portrait of Calcutta   

     In 1690, the English merchant Job Charnock built a warehouse near two villageson the banks of the Hooghly river in Bengal. From that warehouse grew a city that not only became the capital of, first, the East India Company and then British India, but acquired the reputation as second only to London as the most cultured and elegant of all the cities of the British empire. But even in the 19th century, Kolkata had acquired another reputation, as a city of filth and poverty, and it is this reputation that has stuck, for better or for worse. In CALCUTTA: A PERSONAL ESSAY, Julian Crandall Hollick explores these paradoxes and explains why, for him, Kolkata is one of the most stimulating places on earth.