Engaging With Stones

There are different ways of getting familiar with a city, and perhaps the descriptions of its monuments are among the most popular ways of doing so. Tourist guides and brochures of every major city in the world are replete with pictures and descriptions of its most visited and iconic monuments and buildings, more often than not, a newcomer to a city gets acquainted with it through its monuments, and therefore, a proper understanding of a city’s monuments and buildings is the crucial first step of getting acquainted with a city. The Great Houses of Calcutta by Joanne Taylor and Jon Lang attempts to familiarize a wide audience with the city of Calcutta, its socio-political and economic history and the lives of its people in an era gone by through a detailed analysis of some of the mansions of the local Bengali elites of colonial Calcutta. The book takes one through a heritage tour of old Calcutta, its houses and what lies inside each house. As the authors themselves point out, the book intends to celebrate and also reflect on the lives and values of the Rajas and merchants who occupied these houses and prospered under and alongside the British during colonial rule (p. 10).