A Walk Down An Exoticized Memory Lane

Somini Sengupta must be stopped!

She is the India Bureau Chief for The New York Times and has a long history of completely, and irrevocably, exoticizing India.

She almost exclusively focuses on the negative in her articles, and this one on Calcutta is no different. [Though you would expect a PC publication like The New York Times to use Kolkata more definitively.]

Some choice lines:

"A return home to the chaotic streets...becomes a time-shifting journey between the past and the present."

"[T]he thick velvet curtain the immigrant child draws over memory."

"The only thing more confounding than going to Calcutta was coming home to suburban Southern California."

"Calcutta today is as parochial as it is modern."

"[T]he city has revealed itself to me slowly, opening one sleepy eye at a time."

"[I]t is perfectly acceptable to start up a conversation with strangers, whether about the rain or Shakespeare."

"[A] journey through the grimy layers of time."

"History is inscribed on every lane, like tattoos on an aging diva."

"Now New India pokes its finger into Calcutta’s languid belly."

"Calcutta Deco details tossed away like fish-heads."

"Jackals...like to watch golf."


Thanks NYT, at least this is what I expected. What next, a walk around Ballygunge with Jhumpa Lahiri? Nope that's The New Yorker's job.

Thanks to my friend Doney Joseph for alerting me to this.

Now I'm off to talk to strangers about the rain and Shakespeare to practice for the next time I'm back in Calcutta.

Click below to read the article.



LINKS

NY Times: A Walk in Calcutta