Battala – printing, publication, pornography … and penmanship. The “Gora Sahibs” were concentrated in their White Town around Fort William – down Chowringhee, all the way to Park Street. The natives were huddled in the squalor, as the river flowed, both up and down, in what was variously, contemptuously called
Kolkata has often been called the Cultural Capital of the Nation – killing fields for the Tagores and the Rays (and innumerable others) that have, and continue to dominate our perceptions. While the creative history of the city is mostly well-documented, what is less known is the story of the
Dhar Brothers and the story of Calcutta’s brush with fountain pen making excellence – fact, fiction or folklore? Imagine that you are so well known for your skills that the Commissioner of Calcutta Police sends his prized fountain pen to you for some repair work. Mind you, this is a
Fountain pen & Ink – the story of Calcutta’s intricate connection with their development, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, is a fascinating one that demands to be told, again, to the lovers of fountain pens. Nearly a hundred years on, most sources are as dry as
Gooptu. There is only one family that spells their surname with the double o’s. How or why the peculiar spelling was, and still is, resorted to, I do not know. But what I do know is that Dr Dwarka Nath Gooptu (1818 – 1882) was in the first batch of
