Kolkata

Kolkata's recorded history begins in 1690 with the arrival of the East India Company, which established a trading post beside the Hooghly among the villages of Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata. Job Charnock is often named as its founder, although a court ruling in 2003 held that the city has no founder. Fort William was built to defend it; the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, captured the settlement in 1756, and the Company's victory at Plassey the following year made Bengal the base of British power in India. Calcutta became the capital of British India and, through the 19th century, one of the great port cities of the empire, exporting jute, tea and opium and building the offices, churches and mansions that still stand in the centre.

Wealth brought a remarkable intellectual flowering. Rammohan Roy, Vivekananda, Jagadish Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, all worked here, and Bengali reformers, scientists and writers reshaped Indian public life. The city was also the cradle of anti-colonial politics, which was among the reasons the capital was moved to Delhi in 1911.

The 20th century was harsh. The Bengal famine of 1943 killed millions and drove the starving into the city; communal violence in 1946 preceded Partition in 1947, which cut Bengal in two and sent waves of refugees from East Pakistan; and the 1971 war brought more. Industry declined, the port silted, and from 1977 to 2011 the state was governed by a Communist-led coalition. The city was renamed Kolkata in 2001. Since then service industries, a technology sector in Salt Lake and New Town, and an expanding metro have slowly changed it, although it has not matched the growth of India's western and southern cities.

Kolkata regards itself as India's cultural capital and makes the case relentlessly. Bengali literature, Rabindra Sangeet — Tagore's songs, known by heart in most households — the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, and a theatre tradition that ranges from commercial halls to street performance all belong here. College Street's bookstalls, the Indian Coffee House, the winter book fair and a dense calendar of recitals and lectures keep that life visible in a way few cities manage.

Durga Puja is the centre of the year. For five days in autumn neighbourhoods compete to build elaborate temporary pavilions, artists and craftsmen work for months on the idols in Kumortuli, and the whole city walks the streets at night to see them before the images are carried to the river. Kali Puja, Saraswati Puja and Poila Boishakh follow their own rhythms, and Christmas on Park Street, Eid in the central and eastern quarters and the Chinese New Year of the small Chinatown community add to them.

Politics and football are the other constants. The rivalry between the Mohun Bagan and East Bengal clubs traces back to the 1920s and maps onto old divisions between west Bengal families and those who came from the east. Street processions, strikes and wall graffiti are ordinary features of civic life. Manners are formal but warm: guests are fed, arguments are enjoyed, and Bengalis of all communities share a pride in the language that outsiders quickly notice.

About 4.5 million people live within the city's municipal limits and roughly 15 million in the wider metropolitan area, which stretches along both banks of the Hooghly. Density is extreme in the north and centre, where families live in subdivided old houses and low-rise blocks along lanes too narrow for cars, while the south and the planned suburbs of Salt Lake and New Town are more spacious and newer.

The economy is dominated by services, trade and government. Jute and engineering, which made the city, have largely gone; the port has moved much of its business downstream to Haldia; and information technology, hospitals, education and retail employ the middle class. Many young Bengalis leave for Bengaluru, Delhi or abroad, and West Bengal's growth has trailed India's richer states, which is a steady subject of local complaint.

Daily rhythms start early, with the fish market and the morning walk, and run late, with tea stalls, sweet shops and restaurants busy until well after dark. Tea in small clay cups, the evening adda on a rooftop or at a corner, and the Sunday mutton curry are common to most households. Flooding in the monsoon, worsening winter air quality, ageing buildings and the long-running expansion of the metro are the recurring civic issues.

Bengali cooking is built on rice, freshwater fish and mustard oil, and the Kolkata version adds layers from the city's many communities. Machher jhol is the everyday fish curry; shorshe ilish is hilsa in a pungent mustard paste, the monsoon delicacy; chingri malai curry uses prawns in coconut milk; and kosha mangsho, slow-fried mutton, is eaten with luchi, the puffed fried bread of feast days. Vegetable dishes such as shukto and the lentil-and-vegetable ghonto fill out a meal served in courses, ending with chutney and papad.

The street food is a cuisine of its own. Phuchka, crisp hollow shells filled with spiced potato and tamarind water, are the best-known item; kathi rolls, invented in the city, wrap kebab, egg and onion in a paratha; and Kolkata biryani, brought by the exiled Nawab of Awadh in the 19th century, is distinguished by the whole potato and boiled egg buried in the rice. Chinese food cooked Indian-style began in Tiretta Bazaar and the Tangra district, and is now eaten across India.

Sweets carry the greatest weight. Rosogolla, spongy cheese balls in syrup, whose invention Bengal and Odisha both claim; sandesh, pressed fresh cheese flavoured with jaggery in winter; and mishti doi, sweetened yoghurt set in small clay pots, are sold by long-established shops in every neighbourhood. Tea, brewed strong and sweet with milk and served in disposable clay cups, punctuates the whole day.