A Flower Market Wrapped in Chaos and Monsoon Muddiness

I was born in Kolkata. But I’ve never lived here except for the first couple of years of my life. My acquaintance with my hometown or ‘native place’ as we Indians like to say, has been limited to visits during vacations. So I’ve hardly had the opportunity to explore the city beyond my relatives’ neighborhoods, a few historic buildings, and some shops and markets. And the city has always felt at once familiar and mysterious.

This time though, I’m visiting to do some reporting for The World. So I decided to explore a part of the city I’m not familiar with. I was considering the Howrah Bridge, Kolkata’s most famous landmark. The bridge, built by the British in the 1930s connects Kolkata with its twin city, Howrah. It’s the busiest bridge in India, and one of the busiest in the world. Tens of thousands of vehicles and millions of pedestrians cross this bridge every day.

But a friend in Boston, a seasoned Calcuttan (Calcutta is the old name for Kolkata) told me about something more interesting underneath the bridge. That’s where Asia’s largest whole-sale flower market is located. It’s called the Mallick Ghat flower market. My friend’s description of the place had me hooked.

And so I showed up at the market one rainy monsoon morning earlier this week, accompanied by my friend’s cousin, Sudeshna Basu who was happy to be my local guide.

Here (below) are the pictures from my visit.

Most of the pictures are of the colorful flower market, wrapped in the chaos of Kolkata and the muddiness of the monsoons.

There are also pictures of the goodness-knows-how-many decades old Mallick ghat. Ghats are broad steps leading to a river. The banks of the Ganges are dotted with ghats, especially in old cities like Kolkata and even older ones like Varanasi.

I’ve always found ghats a little mysterious. They’re places of worship, bathing and cremation. (Cremation is usually carried out at specific ghats designated for the purpose.) As a child, I occasionally accompanied my grandmother to a ghat not far from Mallick ghat. Like many people you’ll see in these photos, she used to bathe in the Ganges every day at the break of dawn.

I wish I could send you the sounds and smells that accompany these sights. But I was foolishly umbrella-less on this rainy morning and didn’t dare use my recording equipment for long. As for smells, ah, we’re still a long way from being able to capture and share our olfactory snapshots. But I hope you’ll enjoy this visual tour nevertheless.