White & Black

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Globalisation has made a dramatic if belated foray into Calcutta, once considered the Second City of the Raj and India's cultural capital. The most visible of its impacts has been a rapid change in the city's skyline. The outlines of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Howrah Bridge and the Ochterlony Monument (today's Sahid Minar) that once ruled Calcutta's horizon, have been fast overshadowed by the jagged contours of high-rise and mid-rise buildings and towers masses of aesthetically-dead concrete. By contrast, the city's built heritage inherited from pre-Independence times may be in the last stages of ruination but the buildings bear traces of the glamour that once won Calcutta the sobriquet of City of Palaces.