CALCUTTA’S BUSINESS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 12

CALCUTTA’S BUSINESS.

ITS SOLE JUSTIFICATION FOR EXISTENCE. Dhl° al n Utta , ° ff ? nded me,” writes +M G ° pa . Mu - kerjl in the Atlantic Monthly, returning to India after a long absence. . “As a town it zvas bad enough fifteen years ago. Now, zvith endless electric car lines, zvith numberless taxicabs as zvell as private automobiles, the second largest city of the British Empire zvas unendurable beyond description. Business was the genesis of this tozvn zvhen it was built and fortified in the last lap of the seventeenth century; and it will be business I hope, that zvill kill it some x> ay ' tY . u,lbe 4 r able Gothic and *£ enc h-ReiTai.s.s a nee architecture of the offices of the Government produced an excruciating effect on me, particularly when they were reinforced by European houses modelled after the hor*I b e „ m ediocre _ middle-class homes of the io’s in Britain and Germany. “A thousand years from nozv, when visitors marvel at the beauteous architecture of the Mogul India, they will marvel equally at the ugliness of" British India.. If there is anything more exo.tieally.uglv and unnatural than those Gothic Horrors in tropical Calcutta, I should like to be zz r arned, that I may forever avoid seeing it. I misfit adzdse a. Western tourist not to- judge India by Calcutta, for it would he nothing short of judging salvation by suicide. If you can imagine Brixton, East Ealing, Bayswater all on the shores of the Gauges, then you can imagine the unimaginable—Calcutta. “It has a long river front covered with jute mills owned by Scotsmen, Americans, Greeks, Jezz’s and Englishmen. And where there are bathingghats for Hindus, the steps dozvn are of cast iron made in Sheffield. Where there are no ghats nor factories there aie steamboat landing stations as ugly as any the zvorld over. Added to this, a horrible steam freight train line runs along the full length of the town up and dozvn the river to carry jute from factory to zz’arehouse and back again. The oply relief from the reign of ugliness is a few Indian temples arid the Maidaii. “The Maidazz is a large park with gardens, cricket fields, and polo grounds, the ceizti'e of which is occupied by the garrison called Fort William. Beautiful grey macadam and red-gravel roads serpentine their way through the thick tropical z r erdzzre of this park, which is, hozvez r er. being encroached upon rapidly by statues and public buildings. Ez r en in the Maidan, if one has any hope left for beauty, it is zvell crushed by the military band that plays indifferent Western riiusic there zz r ith great gusto.”