Howrah Bridge and the Railway Station....
must be one of the few cities to have its railway station situated in another town!
Howrah Station has always played a significant part in my life. Howrah is situated on the other side of the Hooghly river, and was connected, for decades, by only one bridge…the (what else?)
which I snapped from the window of the local train as I was going with Geetanjali to Uttarpara:
We came back later in the evening to take the train to Dibrugarh, and I went in quest of a decent toilet (our train, the Saraighat Express, was late by more than 3 hours!)…and found that the view of the bridge was lovely from the “Upper Class Waiting Room” (the Upper Class doesn’t signify the social stratum, merely that the passengers travel by First Class on Indian Railways!)
The bridge even inspired
(er, check out the poster in that wiki link!)
And here’s a lovely song from that movie:
(Kolkata has always had a bustling Chinatown…I am one vegetarian who loves Chinese food, and the leather goods were excellent in that area of the city)
Wandering around, I found this memorial plaque to the soldiers who laid down their lives..in World War I!
That plaque only says, those who gave their lives “during the War 1914-1918”…how would anyone know that humanity would be idiotic enough to have another such war in a few decades?
However, the daily war, to earn a livelihood, goes on in the bustling station. Here’s a vendor, with his products in glorious technicolour…
Kolkata is my childhood home…another post coming up soon….