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Calcutta Quotes

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Calcutta Quotes

“As they were walking, a beggar came up, holding his hand out and crying, "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!" Mike kept on going but Mitchell stopped. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out twenty paise and placed it in the beggar's dirty hand. Mike said, "I used to give to beggars when I first came here. But then I realized, it's hopeless. It never stops." "Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you," Mitchell said. "Yeah, well," Mike said, "obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta.”

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Book:The Marriage Plot
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“nonchalant charminar ma, i can’t smile well-scrubbed twisted-smirks in your noble society anymore in the godly dense ocean of kindness with krishna’s duffed up white teeth with studious eyes of the devil i can’t anymore in a ramakrishnian posture use my wife according to the matriarchal customs substitute sugar for saccharine and dread diabetes no more i can’t no more with my unhappy organ do a devdas again in khalashitola on the registry day of a former fling. my liver is getting rancid by the day my grandfather had cirrhosis don’t understand heredity i drink alcohol read poetry my father for the sake of puja etc used to fast venerable dadas in our para swearing by dharma gently press ripe breasts of sisters-born-of-the-locality on holi on the day ma left for trips abroad many in your noble society had vodka i will nonchalantly from your funeral pyre light up a charminar thinking of your death my eyes tear up then i don’t think of earthquakes by the banks or of floodwater didn’t put my hand on the string of the petticoat of an unmarried lover and didn’t think of baishnab padavali ma, even i’ll die one day. at belur mandir on seeing foreign woman pray with her international python-bum veiled in a skirt my limitless libido rose up ma because your libido will be tied up to father’s memories even beyond death i this fucked up drunk am envying you carrying dirt of the humblest kind looking at my organ i feel as if i’m an organism from another planet now the rays of the setting sun is touching my face on a tangent and after mixing the colour of the setting sun on their wings a flock of non-family-planning birds is going back towards bonolata sen’s eyes peaceful as a nest – it’s time for them to warm the eggs –”

LovePoetryLonelinessCalcuttaHungryalism
Book:ফালগুনী রায় সমগ্র
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“Secrets,’ she replied, casting my trousers aside, ‘are difficult things. Not precise. Not always the same for the one who tells as for the one who receives. They make demands. They may cause you to ask yourself, “Am I worthy?”’ At which, as if to illustrate the point, she removed her bra and watched me follow the lines of her magnificent form with my eyes.”

CultureFictionFamilyIndiaHistoricalHuman HistoryFiction WritingCalcuttaDundeePeriod Drama
Book:Karna's Wheel
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“Ranjana finds Stephen lying on an old string bed staring up at the ceiling and seeing in its myriad cracks the soothing drift of clouds. She puts what she’s brought to his lips, brushes them with her fingertips, and watches as he works the sweet onto his teeth. She feels a light touch on her arm encouraging her to lie next to him. She rests on her back, the pair of them laid out like two corpses waiting for the first shower of moist earth. After a while, she rolls over, nuzzles into his shoulder, and lets her hand fall limp and sweet across his chest. She drifts off to sleep, sweating in the arms of her lover.”

LoveCultureFamilyLoversIndiaHuman HistoryFiction WritingCalcuttaDundeePeriod Drama
Book:Karna's Wheel
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“When the bell of my flat rings at four o’clock in the afternoon, I don’t expect a policeman to be standing outside. “Sorry to disturb you sir,” he says. “Detective sergeant McCorquodale. It’s about your mother.” Detective sergeant McCorquodale is an enormous lighthouse of a man with the untroubled skin of a baby and not a trace of facial hair; a sort of man-boy who’s overdosed on growth hormones.”

CultureFictionFamilyIndiaHistoricalHuman HistoryFiction WritingCalcuttaDundeePeriod Drama
Book:Karna's Wheel
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“The coolies pull them across Howrah bridge, which they share with cars, trucks, bullock carts, a party of young women in saris strolling in no hurry wearing bangles on their ankles, an elephant also in no hurry, and a cow that is lying down in the middle of the road chewing lazily a booklet entitled Dr W C Roy’s SPECIFIC FOR INSANITY. The camera pauses on a portion of the half-eaten text: “Dr Roy’s insanity medicine acted a charm. I am completely cured,” says Srinath Ghosh of Bundelkund. 5 rupees per phial.”

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Book:Karna's Wheel
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“এইখানে এইখানে সমুদ্র ঢুকে যায় নদীতে নক্ষত্র মেশে রৌদ্রে এইখানে ট্রামের ঘন্টীতে বাজে চলা ও থামার নির্দেশ এইখানে দাঁড়িয়ে চার্মিনার ঠোঁটে আমি রক্তের হিম ও ঊষ্ণতা ছুঁয়ে উঠে আসা কবিতার রহস্যময় পদধ্বনি শুনি-শুনি কবিতার পাশে আত্মার খিস্তি ও চীৎকার এইখানে অস্পষ্ট কু-আশার চাঁদ এইখানে ঝরে পড়ে গনিকার ঋতুস্রাবে এইখানে ৩২৩ খ্রীষ্টপূর্বাব্দের কোন গ্রীকবীর রমন বা ধর্ষণের সাধ ভুলে ইতিহাসে গেঁথে দ্যায় শৌর্য ও বীর্য এইখানে বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়ার শরীরের নরম স্বাদ ভুলে একটি মানবী থেকে মানবজাতির দিকে চলে যায় চৈতন্যের উর্ধ্ববাহু প্রেম-সর্বোপরি ইতিহাস ধর্মচেতনার ওপর জেগে থাকে মানুষের উত্থিত পুরুষাঙ্গ এইখানে এইখানে কবর থেকে উঠে আসা অতৃপ্ত প্রেমিকের কামদগ্ধ কয়েকলক্ষ উপহাসের মুখোমুখি বেড়ে ওঠে আমার উচ্চাশা এইখানে প্রকৃত প্রশ্নিল চোখে চোখ পড়লে কুঁকড়ে যায় আমার হৃদপিণ্ড এইখানে এইখানে সশ্রদ্ধ দৃষ্টির আড়ালে যাবার জন্য পা বাড়াতে হয় আমি নারী মুখ দ্যাখার ইচ্ছায় মাইলের পর মাইল হেঁটে দেখি শুধু মাগীদের ভিড় সাতাশ বছর-একা একা সাতাশ বছর বেক্তিগত বিছানায় শুয়ে দেখি মেধাহীন ভবিষ্যৎ জরাগ্রস্ত স্নায়ুমণ্ডলীর পাশে কবিদের কবির কবিতা চারিধারে ঢিবি দেওয়ালের নীরেট নিঃশক্ত অন্ধকার।”

LoveLifeDeathSolitudeDrugsPosterityFutilityCalcutta
Book:নষ্ট আত্মার টেলিভিসন
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“Imagine a room With six walls and a ceiling Two full of windows Two full of mirrors And two cream walls that could easily be mistaken as being painted by light. Each morning, the scorching sun enters the room And fills each corner till it is overflowing- The windows give and take sunlight (There is no escape door or breather). The mirrors burn and blind All the walls are fires of their own. In that choking space, you have a small table fan to your name. Calcutta summer for you.”

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Author:Devika Todi
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“For years and years, even during the time of my first visit in 1962, it has been said that Calcutta was dying, that its port was silting up, its antiquated industry declining, but Calcutta hadn't died. It hadn't done much, but it had gone on; and it had begun to appear that the prophecy has been excessive. Now it occurred to me that perhaps this was what happened when cities died. They don't die with a bang; they didn't die only when they were abandoned. Perhaps, they died like this: when everybody was suffering, when transport was so hard that working people gave up jobs they needed because the fear the suffering of the travel; When no one had clean water or air; No one could go walking. Perhaps city died when they lost amenities that cities provided, the visual excitement, the heightened sense of human possibility, and became simply places where there were too many people, and people suffered.”

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Author:Naipaul V.S.
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“the world’s cheapest small car, Tata’s Nano, worth only $1500. This toy-like ill-fated vehicle, whose destiny it was to look as if it had been prematurely brought into the world, more foetus than car, and whose birth was near abortive and then indefinitely delayed, this car, when it finally took to the road, turned out to have an engine that at times exploded mysteriously. Until 2009, it was seen to be Bengal’s quirky but irreplaceable mascot for development.”

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Book:Calcutta: Two Years in the City
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“Its (the Left’s) intensity derives from the fact that it’s a family largely composed of, in a manner of speaking, orphans of bhadralok history (for we hardly hear of the mothers and fathers of party members), brought together not by accident but by idealism and its cousin, ideology. Bonds of orphanhood and kinship are particularly charged (as Kipling showed us in The Jungle Book) when they are self-created, and each party member is probably a bit of everything – mother, father, sibling, friend – to every other member.”

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Book:Calcutta: Two Years in the City
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“Personal Neon - Poem by Falguni Ray I am devoid of genius that is why I can touch my nose with my tongue and prove that I am really a genius Sometimes while walking in front of Manik Bandyopadhyay's house I brood about the street on which he once walked I am also on the same road, but worthless, Falguni Ray walking, sometimes I travel in second class in trams and I imagine this was the tram that overran and crushed the body of Jibanananda Das This is the way I travel-- earth sun stars accompany me.”

LoveLifeDeathCalcuttaCity Of Fallen Angels
Book:ফালগুনী রায় সমগ্র
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“Without much ado, Ginsberg, along with Orlovsky and Fakir, arrived one Sunday at the Coffee House looking for Bengali poets. The cafe was abuzz with writers, editors and journalists. Each group had a different table—some had joined two or more tables and brought together different conversations on one plate. But somehow, everyone seemed to have an inchoate understanding of the business of war and what it spelled out for them in the end.”

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Book:The Hungryalists
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“Now as the train moved towards Calcutta, Malay felt as if his life was coming full circle. It had been a strange decision to visit the city at a time when post-Partition vomit and excreta was splattered on Calcutta streets. Marked by communal violence, anger and unemployment, the streets smelled of hunger and disillusionment. Riots were still going on. The wound of a land divided lingered, refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) continued to arrive in droves. And since they did not know where to go, they occupied the pavements, laced the streets with their questions, frustrations and a deep need to be recognised as more than an inconvenient presence on tree-lined avenues. The feeling of being uprooted was everywhere. Political leaders decided that the second phase of the five-year planning needed to see the growth of heavy industries. The land required for such industries necessitated the evacuation of farmers. Devoid of their ancestral land and in the absence of a proper rehabilitation plan, those evicted wandered aimlessly around the cities—refugees by another name. Calcutta had assumed different dimensions in Malay’s mind. The smell of the Hooghly wafted across Victoria Memorial and settled like an unwanted cow on its lawns. Unsung symphonies spilled out of St Paul’s Cathedral on lonely nights; white gulls swooped in on grey afternoons and looked startling against the backdrop of the rain-swept edifice. In a few years, Naxalbari would become a reality, but not yet. Like an infant Kali with bohemian fantasies, Calcutta and its literature sprouted a new tongue – that of the Hungry Generation. Malay, like Samir and many others, found himself at the helm of this madness, and poetry seemed to lick his body and soul in strange colours. As a reassurance of such a huge leap of faith, Shakti had written to Samir: Bondhu Samir, We had begun by speaking of an undying love for literature, when we suddenly found ourselves in a dream. A dream that is bigger than us, and one that will exist in its capacity of right and wrong and beyond that of our small worlds. Bhalobasha juriye Shakti”

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Book:The Hungryalists
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“Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which nevertheless survive in the memory of generations as the only chronicle of the past. It is as if the people who inhabit the streets, inspired by some mysterious wisdom, relalise that the true history of Calcutta has always been written in the invisible tales of its spirits and unspoken curses.”

StoriesDarknessWrittenGenerationsSadnessMiseryMemoryTalesGhostsSurviveCalcuttaSpiritsApparitionsTrue HistoryChronicle Of The PastUnspoken Curses
Book:The Midnight Palace
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“Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that has been famously dying for more than a century. They resent with equal ferocity the reflex stereotyping that labels any civic dysfunction anywhere in the world 'another Calcutta.'”

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Author:Bharati Mukherjee
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“I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.”

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Author:Bharati Mukherjee
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“Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.”

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Author:Lester R. Brown
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“The brown toxic cloud strangling Los Angeles never lifts and grows thicker with every immigrant added. One can't help appreciate the streets of Paris will soon become the streets of LA. However, Paris' streets erupted while LA's shall sink into a Third World quagmire much like Bombay or Calcutta, India. When you import that much crime, illiteracy, multiple languages and disease-Americans pick up stakes and move away.”

WorldHelpingMovingLanguageGrowsStreetsCrimeDiseasePicksAppreciateThirdsIndiaCloudsLiftsParisBrownImmigrantsLos AngelesStakesToxicMultipleThird WorldImportsCalcuttaIlliteracyBombayStranglingQuagmireStreets Of Paris
Author:Frosty Wooldridge
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“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”

LifeInspirationalInspirationMotivationalChristianSpiritualLyingMotherFaithSpiritualityReligiousChristianityStrengthCatholicSaintFaithfulHave FaithSmall ThingsFaithfulnessSoftballRippleBeing FaithfulKeep The FaithCalcuttaGreat FaithInspire WomenGetting TiredWoman LeaderWomen LeadershipCatholic FaithAlbanianFemale LeadersGod Is FaithfulI Love JesusFaith TrustTrust And FaithSpiritual FaithFaithful WifeKeep Your FaithFaithful GodHidden StrengthSmall Things In LifeFaithful Love
Book:In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories & Prayers (Easyread Large Edition)
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“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”

LoveHappinessMotherInspiringPowerfulKindnessLove YouPositiveAnd LoveCatholicExtraordinaryLeavingSaintSpreadHappyHelping OthersBe KindInspirational LoveSelflessBeing HappyServing OthersWithout LoveLove And KindnessNunFamous LovePure LoveGreatest LoveFamous WomenKindness And CompassionCalcuttaHappiness And LoveCatholic SaintBlessed MotherPositive InspirationalKindness GenerosityInspirational CharityWomen In HistoryBest Ever LoveSuffering Of OthersHelping Others In NeedCatholic FaithCharity And LoveSelfless GivingAlbanianLoving MotherSpreading LoveHungry For LoveLeaving HimAlways LeavingWonderful Love
Author:Mother Teresa
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“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

IfsSoulMotivationalMotherHumanityPeaceCommunityCompassionFamilyMilitaryForgottenPeacefulPositive AttitudePeace Of MindBelongingCompassionateNunPeace WarPeace And JusticeNo WarLove And CompassionFamous WomenPeace And HappinessPeacemakingKindness And CompassionBeing At PeaceCalcuttaPeace JusticePeacefulnessQuakerPeaceful WorldAchieving PeaceBlessed MotherInternational PeacePeacekeepingPeace Is Every StepCompassion For OthersPeace And TranquilityWorld Peace DayFaith In HumanityNo CompassionInternational Peace DayFreedom And PeaceHuman CompassionPeace Of HeartSpirit And SoulPeace Of SoulBringing PeacePeace TranquilityPeace And UnityPeace With OthersUnderstanding And CompassionHurting Each OtherBeloved Mother
Book:Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others
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“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”

ThinkingKindSometimesHomeInspirationMotivationalPeacePowerfulPovertyWiseCatholicHungryNakedMost PowerfulRemedyHomelessGreatest LoveUnwantedCalcuttaUnlovedGreat MotherWorld PovertyUncaringNaked EyesPoor FamilyBeing Unloved
Author:Mother Teresa
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“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”

LoveInspirationalFeelingsPoorPovertyLonelinessTerribleSolitudeHeartbreakLonelyParentingTrue LoveBeing AloneFeeling LonelyUnwantedFamous WomenBeing LonelyCalcuttaUnlovedLoneliness And SolitudeHelp The PoorFeeling AloneLonely FeelingHunger PovertyLonely And AloneAlone LonelyCauses Of PovertyLonely LifePoor LifeHunger For LoveLoneliness In LifeBeing UnlovedSolutions To Poverty
Author:Mother Teresa
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