‘A Mesh of Lanes and Voices’ Kolkata’s Para as a Transitional Zone in Contemporary Indian Anglophone Literature

Abstract

This article examines the literary representations of Calcutta in contemporary Indian Anglophone literature and interrogates the urban-rural hybridity of the metropolis that is often put forward in fiction as well as nonfiction on Calcutta. Based on novels and essays by Amit Chaudhuri and Saikat Majumdar, among others, it contends that this imaginative geography of communal leisure and familiarity, at odds with the stereotypical image of a big city, derives in part from the ‘most ubiquitous institution of Calcutta, and the most invisible’ (Supriya Chaudhuri), the para. More than the geographical reality of a neighbourhood, para refers to a social and imaginative reality, a ‘locality’ as Appadurai defines it, constantly invented by the collective ‘work of imagination’ (Appadurai 1996) even if rising from specific architectural and urban features that the article will address. Often focussing on a small network of lanes and houses, Kolkata’s narratives capture the ecotonal dimension of the para, a transitional zone between private and public space, village and city practices, geographical and imaginative reality. This extended realm of familiarity appears crucial in the constitution of Calcutta’s cultural identity as an amalgam of villages. The polycentric map of Calcutta’s paras that these narratives draw ultimately challenges the North-South divide of the city inherited from colonial urban planning to offer a more nuanced understanding of urban space.

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