ABSTRACT
The first stop on our theatrical journey was my home city of Calcutta. A turbulent metropolis of approximately 10.2 million people, notoriously chaotic and contradictory, where nothing seems to work and yet everything continues, Calcutta remains one of the most human cities in India today. Having grown up in this city and on returning to it on many occasions, I continue to wonder at its resilience. Despite its history of problems and calamities-including the manmade famine of Bengal in 1943, which destroyed millions of people, communal riots and killings, a persistent influx of refugees both before the Bangladesh genocide and after, and a steady withdrawal of businesses and industries to more lucrative cities like Bombay and Delhi-Calcutta continues to live, defying Rajiv Gandhi’s controversial (and politically self-injurious) statement that it is a ‘dying city’.
