Dear M,

The more at home I start to feel here, the more I’m continually astonished as to how much this city has in common with the city where I was born.

I feel like I’m leaving behind one home to find it all over again

One, the former capital of colonial India, the other, the storied capital of France with centuries of European history.

Both cities have served as a hub for writers, artists, important artistic and political movements.

Both cities are situated on the banks of a river— Paris on the Seine and Calcutta on the Hooghly, a distributary of the Ganga. And a whole life, like in all cities that are situated on a river, very much develops along the river banks— the tradition of taking a stroll by the river, the crossing of bridges… you’ve yet to take me on my river parade.

Paris gave the world Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, and Simone de Beauvoir, among countless others. Calcutta produced literary giants like Rabindranath Tagore (the first non-European Nobel laureate in Literature), Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.

Calcutta had Vidyasagar, Vivekananda, Ram Mohan Roy.

You have Rimbaud and Proust.

Paris had Cafe Deux Magots

Calcutta— The Coffee House on College Street which was a crucial hub for the communist thinkers of the fifties and sixties.

One of the most strange similarities perhaps lies in that both our cities have/had a very strong cafe tradition.

Paris's café tradition dates back centuries, The Parisian cafe has had to bear many stereotypes but stereotypes, as they say, are made for good resasons.

Just like the ‘green cafe’ is central to your day, and just as you are able to walk in and. out of it as though it is home, drop off papers for me, owe them months of coffee bills, so too is the coffee house, or any place where ‘serious conversation’ takes place, important for a Bengali. We call it ‘adda’. There is no dictionary meaning for it. Different days I’ll give you different definitions. Today I’ll tell you, it’s required, pointless banter.

I put serious in quotation marks because these things which you will find amusing when Bengalis get together to have a discussion about. From local to national politics, cricket, football, communism, Marxism, these sort of things but a discussion between a group of men who usually have very little knowledge about anything they wish to seriously discuss. The very little knowledge is a very important part of it. If you have a real PhD, you don’t do ‘adda’ with your friends. You’re probably well employed by an American university.

The "adda" culture of Calcutta – informal intellectual discussions – found its perfect hub in The Coffee House and quaint local sweet shops, just as Parisian intellectual life flourished in cafés like Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore.

Paris underwent its most dramatic transformation under Baron Haussmann in the mid-19th century. Commissioned by Napoleon III, Haussmann's renovations created the wide boulevards, uniform building heights, and radial street plans that define Paris today.

Calcutta has its distinct colonial architecture left behind by the British and the ‘white’ part of the city was characterized by big, wide avenues. In fact our house, when you do get to see it finally, is a perfect example of colonial architecture— from its white balustrade balconies to its fine wicker and mahogany furniture.

I suppose what is important is that in both our cities, the architecture gives it a very special distinction— not just of power and prestige— but a grandeur, an ‘old’ beauty.

I’m discovering yours. Wait till you see mine.