Kolkata was Calcutta then, and the city was in the throes of much tumult and upheaval.

In an engaging account of life as a child in the early nineteen seventies in Calcutta, Sayantani Jafa offers glimpses of another Calcutta, through snapshots of some of its best known areas – Park Street, New Market and Free School Street.
She recounts ways of life in clubs, celebrating festivals and engaging in popular pastimes while evoking the sights, sounds and places in Calcutta as it used to be including the music and food at famous Park Street establishments and the fabled X’mas as well as Durga Puja celebrations. From listening to the radio to playing hopscotch in the street life was very different to how it is now. With chapters on school life, games and hobbies, collecting vinyl records and also experiencing the undercurrents of contemporary violence, the book recaptures an important era in Calcutta.

This account of a Calcutta childhood will entertain readers while offering valuable sociological insights into a city which one can love or recoil from but never ignore!