The European residential quarter, running south and east from the top of The Maidan along the road of the same name.
Description
The European residential quarter, running south and east from the top of The Maidan along the road of the same name. Where Lal Dighi is the city’s business and The Strand is its trade, Chowringhee is where the British actually live.
Walled compounds, one to a plot, each with a bungalow or a small palace raised on a plinth, outbuildings, stables, garden and servants’ lines. The frontages are classical and stuccoed because that is what money looked like in 1814, and visitors from home called it a city of palaces with a straight face.
Notable Features
- Every compound has a gate and every gate has a durwan. Gatemen talk to each other every evening. This is the single most important fact about the district and nobody in the party will think about it for two weeks. See Calcutta 1814, Surveillance Networks.
- The Cavendish Compound stands here, and so does Dr Venn’s bungalow (see Lot Fourteen).
- Agency houses let compounds to new arrivals, and gossip about who takes which.
The Senses
- Smell. Wet lime plaster, lamp oil, cooking from the servants’ lines, and the flat green smell of a garden three months into rain.
- Sound. Rain off verandah roofs into gravel channels, and dogs across compound walls answering each other all night.
- Colour. Whitewash going faintly green on north walls, dark polished wood inside, gardens grown to an aggressive saturated green.
Connections
- The Maidan to the west
- Cavendish Compound
- Calcutta 1814
- Scene: Scene 04 Cavendish Compound
Appearances
Relationships
- Part of Calcutta 1814 — The European residential quarter
- Contains Cavendish Compound — The party's domestic base stands here