The road running along the top of the riverbank, north from the Esplanade past the ghats, the customs house and the ranked warehouses.
Description
The road running along the top of the riverbank, north from the Esplanade past the ghats, the customs house and the ranked warehouses. Everything Calcutta buys and everything it sells passes across this ground, and a great deal of what passes is opium going east.
The landward side is a continuous wall of brick godowns with wide doors standing open on darkness. Surlish’s warehouse complex dominates one section of the frontage. Smaller and older family firms hold what floor space they can and sublet the rest, which is the exact measure of how the Company’s monopoly has reordered this street.
Notable Features
- The godowns. Jute, cotton, saltpetre, indigo, and opium chests under Company seal.
- The river world. Aratoon pays off his crew here. The fishing community lies downstream. Apu lives in this world.
- Zorab & Sons hold a godown on this frontage. See Zorab Sale.
- Movement without a ledger. Boats leave from here at all hours and not all of them are entered anywhere.
The Senses
- Smell. Jute, raw opium and something like molasses coming out of the open godown doors, over river mud and wet rope.
- Sound. Cart wheels on wet brick, the knock of chests being stacked, a foreman counting, and the river underneath it.
- Colour. Whitewash and stucco going grey with damp on the landward side, brown river on the other, and deep red-brown mud churned across the road between them.
Connections
- Chandpal Ghat below it
- Custom House Calcutta
- Lal Dighi inland
- Event: Zorab Sale
Appearances
Campaign Log
- Session 13 - Sundry Fittings — The Zorab & Sons sale was held at their godown here on the evening of 12 October. A metal cylinder spoke in a dead man’s voice and the buyers fled into the rain.
- Session 14 - A Morning of Manners and Monstrosities — Mullick’s tour of the syndicate godowns. Below, by a private river dock, Surlish’s cordoned floor: opium chests stencilled for Baranagar, a cot stained with a glimmering residue, and a drain to the river with a hum in its water. Four yellow-sashed men backed away from Georgiana’s hand.
Places Within
Custom House Calcutta
The Company's customs establishment on The Strand, where every inward and outward cargo in the port is entered, assessed and recorded.
Pargeter and Co
A narrow two-storey brick house off Clive Street, between a larger firm's godown and a native banker's shopfront, whitewashed this year, with the name on a small brass plate polished daily and a durwan on a stool at the door.
Zorab and Sons Godown
Rain comes off the river in sheets and the godown smells of wet jute, opium mash and the cold mineral smell of the Hooghly at low tide.
Known Figures
Connections
People
Ruled by
- Hawthorne Surlish NPC hostileHis warehouse complex dominates a section4 sessions, Landfall to A Morning of Manners and Monstrosities
Places
Location of
- Zorab and Sons Godown Location neutralA river-fronted brick warehouse on the Strand
Part of
- Calcutta 1814 Location neutralThe commercial waterfront of the city
Has part
- Pargeter and Co Location neutralA narrow house off Clive Street, which runs up from the Strand1 session: The Third Course
- Custom House Calcutta Location neutralOn the commercial waterfront
- Zorab and Sons Godown Location
Events
Location of
- Zorab Sale Event hostileThe Zorab godown stands on this frontage1 session: The Third Course
Mentions
Sessions
People
- Baijnath Mullick
- Crispin Pargeter
- Emma Wentworth
- Georgiana Wentworth
- Hovhannes Zorab
- Hugh Cavendish
- Josiah Venn
- Lemuel Tibbett
- Percy Cartwright