A time-travelling flâneur

A frequently-ignored aspect Banerjee explores is the multiculturalism of south Calcutta

MEMOIRS OF ROADS

Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization

Sumanta Banerjee

Oxford University Press

175 pages; Rs 695

Walking the streets of 19th century Paris, Charles Baudelaire experienced — as Walter Benjamin explained in his grand, incomplete The Arcades Project — both erlebnis and erfahrung, the anaesthesia and the excitement of the senses of a flâneur, as he wandered about aimlessly. This mapping the urban streets with his feet prompted him to write such lines as, “In the heart of some old suburb, muddy labyrinth, / Where humanity crawls in a seething ferment, / One sees a rag-picker go by, shaking his head,