A city of love and warmth, sorrow and despair, dreams and hopes, poverty and squalor, grandeur and glory. Calcutta is compelling , effervescent, teeming with life and traditions - a medley of moods, styles, cultures, politics, industry and commerce.More than 300 years ago, Job Charnock, an English tradesman set up a trading post on the banks of the Ganga along the three-village nucleus. Gradually Europeans started setting up business and trade establishments, the moneyed class taking interest in banking and usury. The East India Company steadily encroached into matters of state.The fate of the Nawabi rule was sealed in the Battle of Plassey and the English went ahead to seize power, a grip which loosened only 250 years later when power was transferred from the British Empire to the Indians.
