Comments on: Flâneuring around Calcutta

By: kolkata fashion

kolkata fashion — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:00:41 +0000

Kolkata has always been a place of fashion and joy. The people who have visited Kolkata once, they always kept that in their heart. Unlike tradition of Kolkata, fashion and lifestyle of kolkata is famous too. Kolkata fashion and lifestyle week is one of the greatest fashion event in India

By: Akku Chowdhury

Akku Chowdhury — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:18:48 +0000

Great that surely took me down the memory lane….I love Calcutta…such a great city….

By: Rohan

Rohan — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:37:26 +0000

Mahmud, a truly beautiful piece that really captured my imagination. When you ruminated about what your father’s interactions, thoughts, and feelings might have been for/with the family upstairs, I read spell-bound. For some reason, I remembered that scene in Wuthering Heights when Catherine and Heathcliff are looking through the window into the Linton’s stately living room? Per our recent emails, could this be your novel?

By: Maniza (Shelly) Aziz Johnson

Maniza (Shelly) Aziz Johnson — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:46:31 +0000

What a beautiful story! You actually stepped into the historical house where your father lived as a young man. He sometimes would talk about his childhood. Now I wish we talked about his life more. His life was quite intriguing. He was a brilliant man. He was so creative! I remember him always reading. If he could not find a book, he used to borrow my math book or any text book. I would be interested in reading his life sketches. Your writing is brilliant- One of these days I would like to go there. I feel I have been there already! Thanks for teaching the new word, “flaneuring”–

By: Masood Ahmed

Masood Ahmed — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:08:28 +0000

Weaving a walk into a story of a bygone era,with a bit of personal content.Just lovely.

By: Susanne Aziz

Susanne Aziz — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:26:48 +0000

Wonderful story or rather beautiful detective work in which you catch up with another, distant time and connect it to the present! I know what you call ‘flanerie’ as ‘flanieren’ in German. Actually, in my mind, ‘flaneuring’ used to be all about seeing the ‘appropriate’ people, the latest action in the city or at a certain square, and it is also about being seen by certain eligible persons. Families would parade their young, unmarried daughters and eligible sons in public on Sundays to show them off to society. It was an elegant pastime at a time when life was moving much slower. It used to be the high fashion in all the big metropoles of the world, whether in Paris at the Champs Elysees, London, or in Berlin, Unter den Linden. At the end of the movie ‘Gigi’ for instance, which Vincente Minelli directed, and which won 9 Oscars in 1959, you see Leslie Caron flaneur through a city park with her new found husband, and Maurice Chevalier singing in the background. That’s flanieren or flaneuring….. I love the fact that you dug up that posh, old word again!

By: Mousumi

Mousumi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:53:03 +0000

That’s very moving, Mahmud. Thank you for sharing your trip through memory lane.