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 Lot Fourteen.
- 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
- Adventure: Lot Fourteen
- Scene: Scene 03 The Hub
Appearances
Relationships
- Part of Calcutta 1814 — The commercial waterfront of the city
- Controlled by Hawthorne Surlish — His warehouse complex dominates a section
- Site of Lot Fourteen — The Zorab godown stands on this frontage