[.ca] Calcutta (ISBN 1566564883)

A welcome introduction to a much maligned city:
Krishna Dutta does tremendous justice to a city that has quite unjustly, although, giving the perpetrators the benefit of the doubt, perhaps unwittingly been cast as an icon for poverty or human suffering, by media, some authors who have not yet given up Kipling's notion of the "white man's burden" and certain celebrities like the late Princess Diana, whose "acts of compassion" have caused many guilt-stricken people to spend a few thousand dollars apiece to fly out to Calcutta and donate a dozen shirts to the "dying and the poorest of the poor", when they could probably do a greater service to humanity by going to the underbelly of their own respective cities and spend that money on the poor and needy closer home. Krishna Dutta brings out the true image of Calcutta, complete with its history, heritage, culture and warts (all of which contribute to make it special, something that is true for all cities in the world). I sincerely hope that the book makes it to every reader who has been dazed by the sensationalism of Dominique Lapierre's City of Joy in the last few years. As an outsider who migrated to Calcutta. lived and worked there for a few years (and fell in love with the place) and then migrated away from there, I can say that people would be better off reading this book as an introduction to Calcutta, than they probably will from any other, least of all the works of Lapierre and Gunter Grass.